On Saturday, I loaded the car with hors d’oeuvres, wine, and my yoga mats. The blue sky was achingly clear, the sun glaring on the white snow. Sharp wind gusts buffeted the car, sending the wind chill well below zero.  Regardless, it was the day of my second talk in my Winter Dressage Lecture Series and the show would go on! I came up with Lecture Series last year as a way to do something fun, inspiring, and dressage related with a local group of riders in the dark and cold of mid-winter.

Last year, I did five talks on topics ranging from The Rider’s Seat in Canter; to Throughness: What is it and How to Develop it; to Dressage Theory & Magical Thinking; but the Pilates Concepts for Dressage Riders was the most popular and was requested as a repeat this year. It was fun to revisit my talk and retool it; like any presentation, it improves with repetition. My role models are the polished presenters of TedTalks, but I’m not there yet!

I discovered Pilates twenty years ago when I was living in Colorado, riding all kinds of horses and skiing in the winter with a fun group of people. One of the women was a Pilates instructor, and while I was taking her classes, she encouraged me to train to become an instructor, too. I became a believer when the yearslong neck pain I had from too much wild riding as a kid lessened and finally disappeared.

Initially, I taught Pilates matwork to people who were not riders, but I knew I wanted to find a way to connect it to dressage. The cores strength component is clear, but it took me a long time to sort through what applies to teaching good riding position and what doesn’t. For example, there are twisting exercises in Pilates that may be a good spinal range of motion practice but in dressage we are definitely not twisting. Or, there are exercises that are done with a very rounded spine and scooped pelvis, which does not correlate to learning the classical seat.

After years of working on my own position (and I still am!), I landed on several concepts that directly relate to the classical seat, which is a stance-like position on the horse. This next bit might sound like word salad, but Pilates cues are clear and concrete in the actual exercises. You can learn to identify different muscles engaging, and control them.

First, Pilates teaches pelvic stablization, which muscles to engage and how. Secondly, comes shoulder girdle stablization, and learning how opposing muscles groups protect spinal alignment. Lastly, core activation of different muscle groups firm up the flexible and sometimes unstable waist and support the spine.

Anatomically, the waist is primarily muscle. The top and bottom half of our bodies are connected by only a small amount of flexible spine. As riders, we must develop the surrounding layers of muscles for a strong and properly aligned spine in the saddle. A rider’s strong core becomes a lever with which the rider can generate power and swing in the hips, which rotate on the head of the femurs.

Easier said that done! As one riding master famously quoted, “In riding there is no waist joint!”  Or, as the Duke of Newcastle put it when he described riding position in the mid 1700’s, “one part is immoveable.”

For anyone who is watching the winter Olympics, ice skaters are excellent examples of body control with very selective suppleness. To borrow a phrase from my husband, “The engima for many riders to realize is that flexible, educated hips are the result of very controlled abdominal and back muscles.” (Dressage for the 21st Century)

We all forgot about the icy wind outside during the lively discussion after my talk (did the wine help?), and then rolled out our mats for my series of Pilates matwork tailored to dressage riders.

If you’re interested in my talk/matwork “Pilates Concepts for the Dressage Rider,” it can come to your barn!

Pilates Talk 2026