Classical vs Competitive Dressage: A Compassionate Discussion of the Differences

Over the last 30 or so years, there’s become something of a rift between classical and competitive dressage. Classical riders often seem to view competitive riders as prioritizing ribbons and scores over their horses, to the point of abuse, and competitive riders often seem to view classical riders as “armchair quarterbacks” that see abuse behind every door, picking on the tiniest details to say that the horse is suffering. There’s truth in both of these views; there’s abuse in the competitive world, and there are also people who claim to be classical and scream “abuse” if a nostril is wrinkled. But where is the practical, compassionate truth? Most of you who read our blog probably see that I generally stay far away from controversial topics and focus on education, but this is one that I feel needs to be addressed.

In short, I believe there should be no difference between competitive and classical dressage. What you see at competition should follow classical principles. Many riders do, and many judges reward it. However, the very nature of competition leaves room for there to be a disconnect. One of the biggest philosophical issues I take with competition is the newer emphasis on the quality of the horse. In the past, this was less of an issue, but now that horses are bred with bigger, more extravagant gaits, this has become the basis for scoring. If you come in with a horse with exceptional gaits that would score a 9 at evaluation, your baseline score starts at that. Then, the movements can either take away or maybe add points on top of that. But what if you come in with an ordinary horse with, say, 6 or 7 quality gaits? That’s your starting point. Sure, some movements can get you bonus points, but chances are, you’re not going to outscore the fancy horse. If the fancy horse is classically trained, super! If it’s brought too deep and is ridden too rushed, it may lose a point, but it’s still at an 8, while an ordinary, classically trained horse is still at a 6 or 7. Over the course of the test, that translates to a huge difference in score.

People who compete and are motivated, for whatever reason, to get a higher score are automatically going to go out and get the more expensive horse. If their primary motivation is to get through the levels as fast as possible, they’re going to take shortcuts, and the quality of their horse will make up for that difference. Sure, they could score higher if they didn’t, but they’re still going to get more points than someone with an “average” horse.

This is also where “rollkur” comes in. This method of training, bringing the nose deeply behind the vertical toward the chest, produces a certain result. It makes the neck look “rounder,” which is aesthetically pleasing to a lot of people, and it shortens the brachiocephalicus muscle, which is responsible for higher steps from the front legs. This can make somewhat ordinary horses look a lot flashier.

However, we’ve learned that the biomechanics of rollkur are harmful. The horse’s spine is held together and connected from the skull to the pelvis by a long ligament, called the nuchal ligament in the neck and the supraspinatus in the back. Ligaments don’t stretch, and if they do, they tear (or they’re made up of faulty collagen, which is another soapbox I can get on but won’t right now). So, when the head is brought behind the vertical and down, two things can happen: 1, the pelvis can flatten, putting more stretch and strain on the back of the hamstrings and restricting forward movement of the hindlegs, or 2, the ligament can start to tear. Neither of these is great in the long run for the horse. Sure, the result is  feeling of lightness in the bridle, as the horse learns to evade the bit, and that tightened brachiocephalicus brings more extravagant front end action, but the hind legs suffer. The horse doesn’t truly get “uphill” in its carriage, and if you were to ask a horse trained this way to perform in mounted fencing, it wouldn’t be able to. It would be unable to collect to that level, nor would it be that “sharp” to the rider’s aids.

Here’s where the compassion starts to come in. I’ve spoken with riders who once practiced rollkur, and they truly felt that what they were doing was like yoga for the horse. If you’ve done yoga, you can imagine where over-stretching can easily happen, and natural ranges of motion are exceeded for a pose. Yoga that ignores natural range of motion can overstretch ligaments and lead to damage, especially in the back and hips. Good yoga preserves health. See the parallel? The problem is the horse can’t always clearly say “ouch, that doesn’t feel great.” Other horses curl up because, frankly, it’s “easier” than using their muscles to carry themselves when they’re weak. We do the same thing; proper form in certain exercises is hard when you’re starting, even though it’s better for you (like rounding the back in a deadlift… you can and likely will herniate a disc doing it, but it takes less back muscle and feels “easier” than having a flat back). Other horses are tight over their topline and drop their back, so riders try to go the opposite extreme to get the back to release. Some riders think their horse is too heavy and getting them to curl a bit to make them feel lighter. Makes sense, right?

However, biomechanically, none of that is addressing the root of the problem. Why is the back or neck tight? Why is the horse heavy in the hand? Good trainers, both classical and “competitive,” will tell you that the issue is back in the hind end. They’ll also tell you that shortening the neck or bringing the head behind the vertical just puts the tension somewhere else and doesn’t actually fix it. However, what is easier in those few minutes a horse is in the show ring to identify and for the judge to comment on: the back end or the head? Which is the “lesser” fault in showing: a horse that’s braced above the bit or a horse that’s maybe a little behind the bit? The judge has one little box where they can quickly try to point the rider in a positive direction, and they’re not really supposed to give training advice. See where the problem and the divide can start to increase for fairly innocent reasons? Yes, politics can enter into it, as can a judge’s own bias if they tend to work more behind the bit, and that makes many classical riders even more bitter.

So, now we have a divide that shouldn’t exist in the first place. “Rollkur,” or any form of training the horse intentionally behind the vertical, is not new, so the Old Masters cautioned against it. If you look back at the original purpose of dressage, which is warfare, and you ride a horse with that in mind (like many of us who practice longsword on horseback), it’s a different feel than what you get when you aim for the competition levels. It’s very cat-like and extremely light to all the aids, not just the hand. You truly feel “one” with the horse, and the tiniest shift brings a different movement. However, that makes it very easy to accidentally influence your horse into doing movements like levade or terre a terre, as your weight and position has greater influence and meaning. That’s intimidating if you’re not ready for it! It’s a lot less so having the head down and movements “flatter.” A horse that isn’t trained as sharply as needed for mounted fencing is also a bit more tolerant of a seat that is less balanced, and while this means it takes more muscle and strength to get the horse into the movements, it does mean you have fewer potentials for “goofs” in competition that might drop a good score down to a 3 or 4. Competitive dressage as a sport also came from 19th century cavalry maneuvers, the common ancestor to eventing, which is also a lot flatter in balance than the warfare practices of previous centuries, reinforcing riding styles that keep the horse a little flatter in balance and even bring the poll a little down and nose in a little. In fact, there are many riders who do intentionally bring the neck a little “rounder” without going to full-blown rollkur because they feel it reduces tension over the topline. I personally disagree with this approach and find it moves tension elsewhere and masks a lack of engagement in the hind end, but while I disagree, I won’t call those riders “abusive” or “bad riders” because they’re not. They’re not abusing their horse; they’re riding in a style that works for competition. Could that change to be better? Of course.

But what about the issue of the quality of the horses? Why aren’t there more hardcore classical riders on these flashy horses going out there and cleaning up at competition? Well, let’s face it: most people I know who come to classical riding do so because either they have a physical challenge or their horse does. Or, they have a non-mainstream breed and still want to ride dressage and not feel like the odd man out. Classical marketing focuses on the physical benefits to horse and rider and to being non-discriminatory toward odd breeds that may not have the big, flashy gaits of a modern warmblood. So, we’re not attracting people who have the fancy horses, and since these horses don’t score as well in the show ring, it reinforces the bias that “classical doesn’t score well,” so you don’t see as many classical riders competing. That’s not to say they’re not out there and doing well; I know several personally. There’s also the issue of the health of the very flashy horses, which is another topic for another day, but sufficed to say, many riders with a mind toward biomechanics prefer plainer horses with three good basic gaits because of the potential problems some of the flashier horses tend to have. Oddly enough, many of those plainer horses are competing longer at the higher levels than their flashier counterparts, and while they may not average with scores of 75-80%, they still can average at a respectable 65%. While that’s not Olympic scoring, most of us can be quite content with that, especially if the horse’s gaits are a 6 (indicating that they were able to gain enough points based on the training instead of the horse’s natural talent). Unfortunately, the trends are set more by the minority flashy horses at the international competitions than by the majority of average horses at the local shows.

See where the divide is more complicated than it may sound on the surface? Of course, there are abusive riders at the Olympic level who use rollkur to the point where their horses’ tongues turn blue and they draw blood with their spurs, and there are classical riders who scream abuse over the tiniest lip wrinkle, but at your local shows, you’re going to see a spectrum all between these (yes, I’ve seen some ugly riding at shows, and I’ve seen some lovely, soft riding, and everything in between). The majority of your serious dressage trainers are trying to do their best by the horses in their care, and they’re pouring blood, sweat, and tears into it day in and day out. None of us is perfect, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find any trainer, even the hard core classical ones, who has zero moments that could be taken out of context and called “wrong.”

Where I see competitive dressage needing the biggest change is the emphasis on the quality of the horse. It makes it more difficult for our riders who cannot afford fancy horses but still have a nicely trained “ordinary” horse, and it leaves too much room for bad riding of really nice horses. I realize it’s hard to say “this fancy horse is performing the shoulder-in at a 6 for the quality of its gaits, while this plain horse is performing it at an 8 for the quality of its gaits,” but this is what is needed for the future of dressage. Tense horses with flashy gaits ridden by riders that are kicking and jerking need to be scored lower than the relaxed horse with “boring” gaits ridden harmoniously. “Dressage” means “training,” not “fancy horse.” I also think that there probably need to be more scoring elements focusing on the riders’ seat and balance (as well as tact over effectiveness), as improving this would improve the quality of riding we see enormously and would reward “ordinary” riders who have worked hard to improve themselves.

Of course, we need to decry abusive practices where we can: there’s no excuse for blue tongues and chronic bloody and scarred sides from spurs, nor is there any excuse for “nerving” horses to hide bad training. Even with positive intentions, rollkur and bringing horses severely behind the vertical is biomechanically harmful. Science has shown how harmful it is, so that kind of riding needs to be relegated to the past, even if it does make flashier movement that can make the horse seem more elastic and uphill than it is. However, just because a horse is not quite at the vertical and its poll is not quite the highest point, it does not mean the horse is trained with its nose to its chest and is being abused, so I do feel that classical purists need to have more compassion on those riders and focus on education rather than demonizing riders for being less than perfect. We’re not attracting more riders that way; we’re just creating a bullying culture, which goes against the core philosophy of classical riding. Instead, we need to educate focusing on the positives of why classical riding is better for horse and rider biomechanics instead of just focusing on what is bad about other ways. We need to focus on the incredible feeling of joy that we can share with our horse when we’re working truly in harmony, helping a horse develop its full power while also developing its connection with the rider so that the rider can feel safe and privileged to share in the incredible power created by the horse, more like a dragon rider than a tractor driver. It’s only when we start having compassion and positively cultivating riders’ learning that we will see more people wanting to learn and share in the magic that is classical horsemanship.

-Emily Wright