Advanced Dressage Training

In Advanced Dressage Training, Grand Prix rider/trainer Angela Niemeyer Eastwood outlines the hows and whys of advanced training in a practical, logical fashion, with the aim of helping you to create harmonious partnerships with your horses. Dressage has moved beyond the basics of just riding and training a horse, and now encompasses many complementary disciplines, including psychology. This has always been part of the most successful athletes' repertoires and is now acknowledged as being one of the main contributory factors to excellence in any sport. Technical skills need to go hand in hand with mental commitment, discipline, dedication and resilience. Mindsets can be changed - what is needed is knowledge, support, imagination and perseverance. This book introduces the idea that aids are just that: they let the horse know what the rider wants. When this is understood, the horse should be allowed to do whatever has been asked of him - alone and unaided - until something else is required or the horse needs a reminder. The pursuit of excellence - not perfection - is what dressage is all about. Advanced Dressage Training offers advice and encouragement towards the improvement and development of you and your horse as an advanced partnership, taking you towards excellence in the process.

Angela Niemeyer Eastwood is German and trained to Grand Prix with Ernst Worbs and Hans Dahmen in Germany. She came to the UK in 1970 and competed to Inter II, as well as 3-D eventing, hunting and point-to-point. Angela is a British Dressage Accredited Trainer, holds her BD UKCC Level 3 Dressage Coaching Certificate, is a Para Dressage Coach and is a member of the International Dressage Riders' Club. She was one of the original twelve BD trainers accredited to train apprentices. As a successful freelance trainer and a position and posture specialist, Angela gives regular clinics and private lessons from novice to Grand Prix. Andrea Hessay BA is English and has worked professionally with horses for most of her life. She is a listed BD dressage judge. She and Angela co-authored Understanding Dressage Training (Crowood 2011). She writes the official report for the Global Dressage Forum, held annually in Europe, and also writes articles for Horse International and British Dressage magazine. She is a British Dressage Supporters Club committee member.