Reclaiming Dressage

For 60 years, dressage has been rebranded.
Reduced.
Diminished.
Packaged as “horse ballet.”

Although dressage might be a Nutcracker ;-) — it is not Swan Lake.

Ballet entertained generals. Dressage created them.

Dressage is warfare.

For 2,000 years, elite cavalry moved as living walls — shoulder-to-shoulder, horse-to-horse — locked in formation.
They were the predecessors to today's modern special operations units.

The piaffe wasn’t created for show.
It was a live cadence signal — calling thousands of horses to shift in unison, positioning the cavalry wall for battle.

Lateral work allowed massive formations to shift without breaking rank.

Turns on the haunches and forehand repositioned units — thousands of heads strong — cohesively.

The softness and obedience allowed generals to carve off entire divisions of cavalry with a single hand motion, flanking enemy lines with surgical precision.

Dressage literally means “training” — and that training was designed to execute the strategies of military logisticians with tactical accuracy.

Impact of women on Dressage Equipment

In 1952, women were finally admitted to Olympic dressage — a sport that, until then, belonged solely to cavalry officers.

Once admitted, they claimed their excellence at the podium.

Today, women account for over 80% of international FEI competitors.

Now a discipline dominated by women, marketing decided women weren’t capable of understanding technology.
That we didn’t need science.
That we just wanted something to play dress up.
Silky fabrics. Rhinestones. Decorative piping.
Color replaced function. A prom dress vs. evolved equipment.
That thinking took hold — and the industry never corrected it.

The sport was never feminized by the riders — it was trivialized by the industry.

The cavalry legacy was reduced to ceremonial pageantry.
The equipment was reduced to fashion.
And in the process, the sacrifice of legions of riders and millions of horses was erased.

We may never know how many women rode and died in battle, but today, when we salute at X, we channel the skills of the battle-trained warriors history mistakenly thought it could trivialize, reduce, or efface.

POV from this designer on the continued misogynistic 1950s product "design":
Women carried civilization.
We can handle technology.

Materials

The demands never changed.
The needs of the horse never changed.
Only the materials evolved.

For decades, other sports advanced:

• Leather helmets became carbon-shell systems.

• Running shoes went from flat rubber soles to energy-return platforms engineered for continuous impact.

• Physics and physiology rewrote both recovery and equipment design.

A 2021 study published in Trauma Surgery & Acute Care Open confirmed what every serious rider already knows:
Equestrian athletes sustain more orthopedic trauma per hour than football, hockey, or motorcycle racing combined.

Dressage doesn’t avoid impact.
Dressage manages it.

While this industry keeps selling colors and sparkle,
we engineered elite equipment — because the horses deserved it.
(And it shouldn’t be lost on anyone that the uphill overhaul was done by a woman.)

The same technologies that protect elite athletes — and armies — now protect your horse.

We honor dressage's history.
We design for the future.
We revive the warrior ethos of dressage — an unapologetic continuation of the voices history tried to erase.

The MyKalon System

We built MyKalon on equine physiology, biomechanics, modern impact science, and the failure of saddle mechanics that we have to live with for now.

Saddle design has seen only incremental changes over the past 250 years — and flocking ignores everything modern science knows about compression, load, and impact.
(See MyKalon category description for stat graph.)

Dressage delivers some of the highest impact ratios of any human sport — but the equipment was never engineered to the science.

So we gave you the system.
Fully modular.
Fully adjustable.
Because given the tools — we have no doubt you have the intelligence to build exactly what your horse needs.

The MyKalon System Integrates:

• BreatherCore™ Aerospace Ventilation Layer — Moves heat away from the spine while maintaining structure under load.

• D-Fend™ Impact Foam — Molecular shock absorption, dissipating over 90% of impact energy with every stride.

• XRD® Extreme Impact Inserts — Elastomer technology engineered to manage sustained, repetitive force without collapse.

• Independent Panel Construction — Eliminates interference across the topline and enables natural contralateral movement, rather than restricting it.

• Bi-Level 20-Micron Fleece Contact Layer — Breathable, conforming support without heat buildup or pressure points.

• ETC™ Anti-Friction Top Layer — Stabilizes saddle placement while reducing heat generation under dynamic load.

• Structural Twill Base — Adds strength and structure to the entire platform.

• Unquilted Construction — Because quilting this design would be like snapping blades off a fan.

The protection is advanced.
The technology is state-of-the-art.
The feel stays connected.
The color isn’t fashion — it’s your signature.

Now pick up the reins — and ride like a fucking girl.