How To Switch A Dressage Whip

I see that a lot of dressage riders face difficulty in smoothly switching their long whips between their hands. When I ask them about their problem, they respond that they feel constricted because of their fear of making their horses uncomfortable and of disrupting contact by twisting the bits in the horses’ mouth.

In the paragraphs that follow, I describe a detailed a procedure to switch the whip from one hand to the other without disrupting contact with the horse’s mouth. It would be best if one was to at first practice this technique with a bridle hung from a hook on the wall or by running a length of rope round a horizontal bar ‘like in a fence’ and using it like your two reins.

Your objective is to practice the process until it becomes deep-dyed, a second nature reaction. It’ll be absolutely necessary for you to keep practicing it in a mechanical left-brained kind of way till it shifts over to the brain’s right side and becomes an automated habit. This is precisely why you have to practice it when you are not on a horse.

1. Take up both whip and reins in one hand. For the sake of this, we’ll assume it is your right hand.

2. Turn the right hand until the thumb faces down and the small finger points up. When your hand is in this position, the whip’s butt end should be pointing at the horse’s withers and the lash end should point straight up.

3. Turn your left hand over and place it so the left thumb rests on top of the right little finger.

4. Keep your left hand in this ‘upside down’ position and curl its fingers around your whip.

5. Release the whip from your right hand and move the left hand so that the whip points straight down. The whip should be gripped in your left hand and the reins in your right.

6. Split up the reins and pass one to the left hand.

You should have succeeded in smooth switching the dressage whip from one hand to the other and have avoided disturbing the bit in the horse’s mouth.

Horses are Heather Tomspassion and she enjoys sharing her extensive knowledge through her 100s of articles with other horse lovers http://horsehorses.net/