The word dressage is originally from French, and it means to arrange and organize. So, in equestrian sports, regulating the horse’s natural movements can be called dressage.

Dressage is the mother of all equestrian disciplines and if it is not given importance and the horse is not properly trained, it will never be able to use all its ability to perform movements.

All horses need to be trained in a basic and fundamental way for this sport. Even a horse intended for free riding needs training. This means that his movements should be disciplined, for example, if his rider dismounts from him during the patrol, he will slowly stand next to him and let him mount him again easily. This itself can be a form of dressage. So it can be concluded that dressage in the beginning means introducing the foal to the fender and raising the hands and feet until the last stages of the horseman’s performing arts such as khramesh, passage, piaffe, etc.

A rider must also be properly trained from the ground up to be able to display the best movements with his horse.

The history of dressage

Dressage competitions were included in the list of Olympic Games (Stockholm) for the first time in 1912. Of course, this type of art was also popular in ancient Greece, and horsemen used to compete with each other to show their horses and display movements.

How to hold dressage competitions

The dressage competition arena is 60 meters long and 20 meters wide. Riders take turns to appear on the field and perform their show according to the schedule. Programs can be optional and accompanied by music, or predetermined by the judges. The jury, according to the smoothness of the show and its level of difficulty, accuracy in performing movements, the degree of obedience of the horse, the quality of his movements and behavior, how the rider is placed on the horse and… scores between 0 (not performing the movement) and 10 ( A perfect and excellent movement) is noted for each movement. The rider should try to make his movements to guide the horse as hidden as possible and not be seen, so that it feels like there is a mental connection between the two. This work may seem very easy to the audience, while it is the result of years of hard work