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| I said DAP, not DERP. |
DAP = Diagonal Advanced Placement
Say what? And what does this have to do with dressage?
DAP refers to one put of a diagonal pair landing a fraction of a second before the other.
Namely, DAP happens in the trot (and canter but I'm not going to get into that in this post)
A horse has positive (+) DAP when the hind foot in a diagonal pair lands a fraction of a second before the front foot.
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| +DAP :) |
A horse has negative (-) DAP when the front foot in a diagonal pair lands a fraction of a second before the hind foot.
And there are horses who have zero DAP when both diagonal pairs land together.
Sometimes DAP is rather difficult to see with the naked eye. In more severe cases, the horse will appear to be irregular in his gait. Or he may appear tense and unbalanced. You can also hear DAP on proper surfaces.
Ok, so is +/- DAP good? Bad? Nothing to care about?
-DAP is not desireable, but is very common. Even in the top levels of the sport. Because I don't want to slam anyone on my blog, I will use my own example. Hampton happens to have some fantastically horrible -DAP, but makes an excellent example! -DAP usually means the horse is not through, and on the forehand.
Check out this photo, where he is downhill in a medium trot, his right front is going to land well before the right hind. Horses with -DAP tend to be more on the forehand than those with +DAP. As you can see, my body is now behind vertical in my attempt to lift up his front end. (PSA: That doesn't work)
Granted, photos like these could simply represent a loss of balance, a moment in time. But this is Hampton's usual way of going for the most part.
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A different part of the stride, and he is a touch more uphill here, but you can see that his left front is going to land a fraction of a second before the right hind. I'm still fighting to keep us uphill (more on that later, it's the DAMN SADDLE.) Also, some horses simply travel this way.
Even so, Hamps does tend to score pretty well on his mediums and extended. I suppose if you had a truly classical/purist judge, we may not. His does offer lots of power from his hind end, but his shoulders stay on the ground for too long and so they miss the wave coming from behind. Thus, he falls on the forehand and has -DAP.
It's something we are always working on. Also, it seems I am a huge moron and some tack changes have already made a huge difference.
More on that later!
This is so interesting. I want to go analyze video in slow motion to see where Stinker falls. I think he has the opposite problem, but I am not 100% sure.
ReplyDeleteOoooo very interesting!! I must know more please :)
ReplyDeleteDAP is such a fascinating subject to me -- I've heard the purists who argue that any DAP is a gait irregularity and to be unwanted, but as someone who does a lot of photographing myself, it's rare that I don't catch + or - DAP at least once per ride, no matter the horse.
ReplyDeleteAlso, if you need photos, I gladly volunteer mine to be critiqued ;)
Ha! My horse is too tight to use his legs in anything other than perfect diagonal pairs. :p
ReplyDeletejk
sort of
There was a video going around about the horrible breeding practices of dressage horses, combined with Rollkur, and how they all had DAP, with pic after pic of well-bred young horses showing it. At the end they showed an "old school" Hannoverian who was NOT exhibiting DAP - but the pic was taken at a completely different point in his stride where it wouldn't show. I got curious and went back and started looking at videos and old pictures to see how long DAP has been around, and I managed to get a blurry screenshot of Klimke on Ahlerich showing DAP... and I think we can all agree that he didn't use rollkur and Ahlerich wasn't the product of "horrible modern breeding practices". I also found pics of lots of different breeds and different aged horses doing it, so it's not a warmblood-only dressage-only thing.
ReplyDeleteSo yeah, DAP is a thing. Hamps might be good at it but many other horses are too. He's doing 4th level, so it's obviously not negatively affecting him ;)
when i first started learning about dressage with my last mare and started to learn more about evaluating movement or quality (this will be forever a work in progress, for the record lol), one of the first things i noticed was her - DAP (didn't know the word for it until Megan L clued me in).
ReplyDeleteit really bummed me out to see such an obvious hallmark of 'being on the forehand.' these days tho i'm a bit more zen about it. even when that mare worked her best the DAP was still pretty apparent. my new guy can often have a very downhill way of going (also easily exacerbated by saddle fit!) too and... yea. - DAP.
while i think riders *can* influence it, honestly it seems to me like for most horses it has an awful lot to do with how they're built.
All the learning! Now I'm going to have to go back and watch video of Mae
ReplyDelete