David Oliveira training

On Saturday I took a two hours drive together with a friend to watch a David Oliveira training.

David has won the World Championships in Working Equitation.
(If you want to see some impressing riding, watch the clip from the European Champs at the bottom of the post.)

It was very exciting as David often mounted the participating horses himself, and to watch him work was a treat.

What David is working with is based on old Portuguese traditions, where you need absolute balance in horse and rider, very quick reactions and a high degree of collection in the horse.

The participants were very varied, both horses and riders.

Some of the participants are active in riding tournaments (medieval style), and some were dressage riders.

Due to this, the tasks were also very varied.

What David worked with in general was:

- Quick reactions. Many, many transitions. He did not want that the riders to keep the same gait for too long. Much work with transitions walk-canter-walk- rein back-canter.

- Circles and voltes. Small ones, and changes in direction (figure eights). Always with support from outer rein and often with the outer hand placed slightly higher than the inside one, outer rein pressing on the neck. Soft inside rein, only working as a leading rein opening towards the middle.

- Rider's seat. SIT-SIT-SIT was a returning theme. Shoulders back. Very important to displace weight towards the inside when turning and open upper body in the turning direction.

- Leg yields combined with voltes. Leg yields in all gaits, but in particular in canter, along the longside, turning into a volte so the horse places more weight on the haunches and going out again regaining impulsion. Quick turns!

Here Pelle, who arranges the training, is working on collected movements with his horse.
Pelle is one of the guys riding tournaments.

They got some nice work out of it.

His horse has such a cute face, and eyes. You can tell he's a good guy.

Now here is an interesting story.

This pony was bought for big money as a show jumper.

After some time he was lame, and was about to be put down.
He was instead given to his present owners that took time to get him rehabilitated. Shoes off, and a year free with other pals outside.

This was a couple of years ago, and he has never been lame since.

You can still see that he is a bit locked in his hindpart, especially in canter, so work like this does him good.

David worked on lateral movements first, mainly in canter, to loosen him up.

His owner took over afterwards, and continued the work with him. He looked more and more through in his body, and she was very happy as he foamed between the hindlegs, lol! She had not seen it happen before :)

They worked on flying changes in the end, riding diagonals in leg yield and placing the change returning to the track.

After some initial problems they got the instruction from David to place the horse in a slightly travers position, and that did the trick. They had som nice clean changes after that.

Happy owner, happy and tired horse!

David comes to Norway regularily, but it was the first time I have been around and watched a training.

He is returning in September.
I would love to participate, but there is a limited number of places and strange enough the ones that has participated earlier wants to continue to ride for him.

Maybe someone turns sick?
Swine flue?