Pressing Onward
A couple of years ago I started assembling some thoughts for a
blog, but, oops, it became DRESSAGE Unscrambled. Other than The
Godfather, Part II, I can’t name very many sequels that measured up to the
original. So, now it's back to Plan A. I ended D.U. for the same reason
that you stop eating potato chips—at the time I was full and, presumably, so
were you. But like an old dictator haranguing the crowd, I’ve got my second
wind now.
You probably join me in observing that
many, many riders get in their own way—by over-analysis, by under-analysis, or
sometimes because they just ought to be in analysis. Dressage is full of
Truths. You are bombarded by them in books and articles, during lessons and
lectures and even over a glass of chardonnay at your dressage club meeting. Unfortunately,
those truths are not all equally applicable across the board in all
circumstances. Some obfuscate; others downright confuse. Navigating the whole
shell shocking world of dressage is as fraught with pitfalls and booby traps as
the task of Buying Your First Horse is to an unwary and unaccompanied novice.
I
certainly don’t claim to have a monopoly on dressage wisdom, but the same rules
that apply to the human condition are equally valid as applied to our
sport—exercise some common sense and avoid the mistakes that everyone before
you has made. And, for heaven’s sake, don’t take it all so seriously. It won’t
make you ride any better.
As before, the tales which follow are
not arranged chronologically but in studied disorder. Some are meant to
illuminate. Others to distract. Some just can’t stand to hide in the dark any
longer.
And, oh, by the way, feedback is GOOD! I'm afraid that within me there's an element of Alexander Haig after the Reagan shooting or Riff in Rocky Horror--"I'VE GOT TO KEEP CONTROL!" Consequently, this isn't an open contribution blog. Tell me what you think. If it fits in, I'll post it. If not, at least I'll have learned something.
CLICK to comment on anything below
NEWEST:
I am a great believer in the visual
medium to enhance learning. Yeah, words are good, too, but one memorable
picture—well, you know...
My long-time teacher, Major Anders
Lindgren used to do clinics for us when we lived in Massachusetts, and back
then we discovered his love of boiled lobster when we took him and his wife to
one of those “in the rough,” fresh-from-the-boat lobster shacks on the North
Shore near Gloucester. Melted butter up to your elbows, fresh steamers, corn on
the cob, and muchos bright red crustaceans. Heaven, indeed.
When we moved to
It so happened that one lesson that
day was with a teenager trying to figure out the nuances of positioning his
horse for shoulder-in and travers. The old “first stride of the ten-meter
circle carried laterally down the track” thing. I tried to explain, but the
words were not getting through.
Then—inspiration! I grabbed one of
my lobsters from the cooler and gave a claymation-like graphic demonstration of
how he would be placed relative to the track for the two movements.
“Just like this,” I explained, “except
keep your horse on three tracks instead of six.”
While we’re doing creatures of the
deep, I have another lobster tale. I was told of a Mid-Westerner visiting in
Boston who was treated to his first lobsterfest. He gobbled the first lob down
and blissfully ordered up a second. When he headed back home, his
Some time passed without an
acknowledgment, and finally the sender inquired if he had enjoyed them. The
Iowan, who had only ever seen a lobster which was already steamed, said, “Oh, I
had to throw them away. I opened the box and they were all greenish brown.”
OLDER POSTS:
What's It All About,
Eberhard?
(posted 8-24-10)
If
you have read D.U., followed this
blog, or even just been subjected to my teaching for any length of time, you’ve
no doubt noticed certain themes bubble up again and again. In the great wide world
of dressage instruction you’ve got your bio mechanists, your “position-is-everything-ers,”
your dominators, Dressage-Lite proselytizers, and practitioners of at least a zillion more
flavors of training. I’m a “Form Follows Function” guy. I urge my students
never to lose sight of the basic question—what did we come here to do in the
first place? Robert Dover once defined our task as “behavior modification and
body building.” Believe me, if you’ve set out to do either of those things with
a thousand pound (or sixteen hundred pound) animal, you had better figure out
how to maximize your communication skills or it’ll be like talking to a brick Warmblood!
Along
these lines, I met a new student in Costa Rica—an American travel writer living
there and employed by a website whose clientele is comprised of U.S. citizens
shopping for vacation opportunities.
Her horse, a former jumper, was
pleasant enough, i.e. not likely to cause her serious injury, but when asked to
show me what she'd been working on, she rode him around in total passivity—no energy,
no meaningful contact, no attempt to produce any kind of frame or balance.
Alfie, you see, had ridden (equitation) as a child, then, prior to acquiring
this new horse, had been away from the sport for fourteen years.
Helping a rider identify her
priorities—what to be thinking and what to be doing—is always a big part of
every instructor's job. The problem is further complicated when we face a rider
who's new to us, and she arrives with her own baggage and a pre-conceived vision
of what she should be about.
Over the years I have discovered
that to blurt out, "Oh, my god! What in the world are you doing? Ride him
on the aids!" doesn't usually send a new student rushing back for more
lessons. Nor does shredding her dignity and self esteem by pounding her in the
first five minutes with a recitation of all the things she's doing wrong.
As much as I always want to
"get something accomplished" in the limited time I have, I try to let
things develop gradually. Over the hour the student and I can find our way to a
solution that helps her go away with an insight into the scheme she should
follow in her training. So in this case I opted to try a mechanical approach:
"feel a heavier contact," "push him into a more alive
connection," "get him coming off your inside leg more promptly,"
but nothing changed very much.
When a rider is passive to begin
with and has grown up in a tradition of keeping the aids invisible (whether she's
doing anything or not) and of avoiding getting scolded rather than discovering
ways to be creative, the challenge is obvious. It's all about changing her goals.
So we took a "study break"
and conferred in arena center.
"Alfie, tell me what you're
thinking while you're riding," I proposed.
"Well," she offered rather
tentatively, "I'm thinking of keeping my wrists 'like this.' I'm trying to
keep the rhythm of my posting steady, and I'm trying to keep my weight down in
my heels and not lean forward from my hips."
Her answer didn't surprise me at
all. But how to get her to re-prioritize and see things differently?
Keeping her "other life"
in mind, I suggested this scenario:
"Imagine you've gone off to
survey a new resort... you've tried all the amenities.... you've sampled each
of the main dishes at the restaurant.... and you've gone home to write it up
for the website. You're sitting at home on your deck by the pool, and forsaking
your laptop, you're writing up your review on an old fashioned, lined tablet
with a pencil in your hand. And I interrupt and say to you, 'tell me what
you're thinking about.'
"If you answer I'm thinking about holding the pencil just
so between my thumb and my index finger, keeping the proper angle but not
putting too much pressure on the point, then it’s OK to address your riding
that way, too!
“But you’re in the business of
communicating, and that’s the essence of how we try to ride as well. If that
isn't your focus, if all the window dressings and mechanical details aren't
designed to facilitate that one over-arching goal, then all those efforts won't
amount to anything in the long run!”
I'm happy to say that Alf caught the
drift of my message, and she began to really Ride. By focusing on what she was saying to her horse, in the
span of two days she was able to establish a contact, start to shape his
topline, and tap into his potential. She's still near the beginning of the
road, and yes, she should check in on her wrists and her heels and her hip
angle periodically. But now she has found a thread of interaction to explore
between her horse and herself, step by step, second by second. That
relationship is what will make her riding less rote and end up producing real
dressage results as she goes on.
Going Both Ways
(posted 8-20-10)
Many, many years ago I was riding in
a clinic conducted by a very intimidating Dressage Luminary. Nowadays, having
acquired the graying hair, if not the wisdom, of experience, I’d just speak up.
But back then, I rode the entire lesson in excruciating pain because the seam in
the leg of my breeches had twisted around in my too-tight Dehners and was
cutting off all circulation from my shin down. I know now that Herr Clinician
would have vastly preferred.a brief interruption followed by my full attention
as opposed to having to compete for it with the throbbing in my limb.
Much has been written about the
instructor’s responsibility to his pupil, but it goes both ways. If a rider has
metal screws in her ankle, her teacher would probably like to know about them.
A third party once fed-back to me that a clinic rider hadn’t gotten much from
her lesson with me because she couldn’t hear me. Turns out she was deaf in one
ear and had only caught about 50% of my words. But she had never bothered to
mention this disability to me, and naturally I’d had no reason to adjust my
delivery to her benefit. Another time in England, I was taking a hold of a rider’s
boot to rearrange her leg position when she cautioned me to tug only lightly
because it was a prosthesis. Realizing I’d just ducked a Monty Pythonesque
moment, I was exceedingly grateful for the warning!
Most recently, I was accosted by an
angry husband after his wife’s clinic
and successful show for having “pushed her too hard.” Accusingly, he
proclaimed, “She has [insert dread disease here].” But since neither she nor he
had informed the organizer, the show secretary, or me about this condition or
even about any discomfort before or during her rides, it was pretty hard to not
to feel frustrated and unfairly
attacked.
So, please, if you’ve got a problem, a “situation,” or on the bright side, if you’re feeling exceptionally bionic on a given morning, do yourself as well as your instructor a favor and LET THEM KNOW!
(posted 8-14-10)
Bill Steinkraus was a show jumping
icon of the 1960s and winner of the individual gold medal in that discipline on
Snowbound at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics.
At a clinic I attended years ago, he
was speaking of schooling a hot horse that wanted to rush its fences, but his
metaphor has many applications in dressage training as well. He likened the
many circles away from the jump on the approach and halts on the line in front
of the fence as like putting deposits in a savings account. Enough deposits
made in advance and a withdrawal when you actually jump the fence won't
"bankrupt" you.
This same line of reasoning fits
into numerous dressage situations. Too much actual practicing of the desired
finished product is likely to draw down your account with your horse and leave
him out-guessing you, anticipating the movement, or inventing his own agenda.
I once watched Isabel Werth on
Gigolo in the schooling arena at
There are two ways to think of
schooling, and they are not mutually exclusive. One way you might think of as cumulative. It's a relatively linear
approach. Do A, add B. When you have A and B, add C. This is valid in that it
acknowledges the progressive development of the exercises through the levels.
But another way to school you might think of as integrative, that is, you break down the concepts a horse needs to
master in order to accomplish a given exercise into their constituent elements.
In the case of the tempis, make him quick enough off the seat and leg with one
set of exercises. Make him hold himself up in self carriage with another set.
Make him wait for the aids and not rush off with a third set. Then eventually
assemble them into a coherent package with the greatest likelihood that every
part will work as it should.
You can create similar scenarios for everything from canter departs to leg yielding to turns on the haunches, adjusting the repetitions of various elements depending on what your horse brings to the table on a given day. Sharpening your horse to the leg without “bashing” him in the actual movement; reinforcing the half halt without setting him up harshly during the exercise you’re trying to end up with keeps him from fretting about your long term intentions and lets him stay mentally calm, yet alert, when it really counts.
Teenage Wasteland—Not!
I stand on
both sides of the issue when I see kids taking days off from school to ride in
dressage shows. As Groucho Marx said, "It's against the principles I stand
on; and if you don't like my principles. I'll get some other ones."
Oh, I know all the arguments: if the
kid is ahead in her work and making good grades, why not take time out? What
with the nature of public education these days, what are they missing anyway?
And on it goes. But when I teach or judge, I can't help giving the Juniors and
Young Riders who are skipping class a little extra attention—whether they want
it or not.
I was judging a three day show in
"No," she answered.
"Do you know what Rosebud
was?"
"No," again.
"Well, are you showing again
tomorrow?"
"Yes."
"What I want you to do
overnight is find out about Rosebud, and come back and tell me tomorrow before
I judge you. You can cheat and Google it," I offered smiling.
The next day when she circled the
arena before I rang the bell, the girl stopped at my booth and announced,
"Rosebud was the sled in Citizen
Kane!" and went on to recite more details about Orson Wells and
the production of that famous 1941 film
classic.
I applauded approvingly, and she
went ahead and rode her test.
This time when she halted at G, I
asked "And do you ride again tomorrow?"
"Yes."
"This last week marked the 70th
anniversary of a famous disaster," I told her. "Tomorrow I want you
to report back on it."
She cheerfully accepted her
assignment and off she went.
That night I discovered she wasn't
going to show in my arena on Sunday, but at dinner I was recounting this tale
to my fellow judges. The (late) great Tripp Harting was to be her Sunday judge,
and he agreed to quiz her before her ride on my behalf.
That interchange took place, but the
girl wasn't satisfied to leave it there. She found me during a break and
proudly recited everything she'd found out about
I was suitably impressed, and we
parted with my telling her that this information would assure that she'd not
only get into the college of her choice but that she'd be courted by a
selection of rich and handsome young doctors who would buy her very fancy
dressage horses to further her riding career.
Putting me in my place, she grinned,
"No, I think I'll be the rich doctor!"
Do Geese See God?
(posted 8-8-10)
In line with my crusade to educate
America's dressage youth—whether they need it or not—after their test I
occasionally quiz them on topics beyond what I described above. One of my
favorites is to recount the famous tale involving Theodore Roosevelt's run for
the presidency more than 100 years ago. As you may know, one of his campaign
slogans which appeared on buttons and banners was "A Man, A Plan, A Canal.
"A what?" they say, but after hearing me out, they usually smile and go off promising to spring the same question on their teacher at school, Miss Whomever. They also go away perhaps thinking that judges are weird but at least that we aren't mean.
. . . At one show an enterprising 12 year old caught me at my own game. In response to my question, from horseback she supplied me with
"Flee to me, remote elf"
"Too hot to hoot"
"Lived on decaf, faced no
evil"
and the ever popular....."Go hang
a salami, Im a lasagna hog"
After 'While, Crocodile
(posted 8-3-10)
I was judging a big show in
Five movements into the canter the
test calls for a medium canter from H to K. It began boldly but soon became a
flat-out, bolting runaway. The horse stayed in the arena but came careening
back towards us in a heart-stopping gallop. Something seriously bad was on the
verge of happening.
Miraculously, the rider got him
stopped on the circle in front of me. I jumped out of my truck(booth) to offer
aid as the woman caught her breath. After a few moments I said, "You can
try to continue if you want, or you can be excused."
Somewhat shakily, she decided to
continue.
"Don't do the medium
again," I suggested. "I think we saw that!"
She picked up the canter again in
the far end and rode a very conservative but civil half pass and flying
change—both 6s. She avoided the next extended canter and transition—both 4s.
But by then the horse was as settled as he'd begun the test. The two short
diagonals and their flying changes were 7s, and the test finished pleasantly,
obediently, and expressively.
I dismounted from my vehicle to
offer a few last words of commiseration and encouragement—some goofy young
Thoroughbred had tried to do me in just a few weeks before that. I knew the
feeling well.
"Can this not count?" the
rider asked.
"Sorry. Too late for
that," was my answer. "You DID finish the test, remember."
She proceeded on her way, and I
returned to the test sheet to finish up my remarks. For the medium
canter-misadventure I gave a 1. And an Error—minus 2—off course. For Submission
in the Collective Marks, I gave a 2—while most of the test was commendable,
running off is an egregious fault that deserves a very low score. But in the
Rider block I gave a 7—everything was handled about as well as it could have
been, and, aside from the disaster, she rode elegantly and effectively.
I was very curious to see how the
score and the placing would come out. I really didn't want her to win under the
circumstances, but we judge block-by-block and try to remain Spock-like and
emotionally unattached from the result the scorer produces. Nonetheless, when
she wound up with a 62 percent and a fourth place, I knew someone with a 56
must be standing at the scoreboard moaning, "My horse didn't do anything wrong and That Horse beat
me!" So it goes. My numbers were honest. Every one, whether high or low,
had been earned by the performance.
Much was made at the Beijing
Olympics of prominent riders who appeared to have been under-penalized for
their horses' misbehaviors in the arena, but you can bet that Anky and Isabel
didn't get 2s for Submission! Then the punishment had not fit the crime.
My little episode, however,
illustrates how judges deal with what transpires in front of us.
Occasionally a student comes back
with her test sheet and observes, "Boy, she really killed me on my walk
pirouettes" (or whatever), I try to explain that—barring some emotional
turmoil that isn't supposed to figure in—the judge wasn't the executioner. The
horse and the rider were. Truly we are a bit more than just the messenger, but
we also aren't making this stuff up as we go along! It's like in tennis: if the
linesman calls the ball "out," (and replay confirms it) then
"out" becomes an objective fact for which that official shoulders no
blame.
This wasn't always so. I remember
back in the '70s when a lot of the older judges used to keep running tallies of
all the riders' scores. Some held all the tests until the end of the class and
jimmied the scores up or down to produce the result they "felt" was
desirable. Much more standardized judges' training and the new age of
transparency—each individual score made public—has put a damper on most of
these strange habits. Judges may give out the numbers but the scorer is the one
who determines the winners and losers!
Getting back to my runaway, about a
week after the show I was pleased and surprised to receive an e-mail from her.
The rider had gone to the trouble of searching out my address in the Judges
Roster and wrote to thank me for how I had dealt with her in the arena. "I
haven't been to many recognized shows and when you got out of your truck,"
she wrote, "I thought you were going to tell me never to ride dressage
again or at least not to come back the next day. Instead you made me feel
better, and on Sunday (in front of a different judge) I won my class."
Tammy, Tell Me “Through”
(posted 7-30-10)
This
is about “throughness.”
I
was riding in a clinic with Major Lindgren about fifteen years ago (more
recently than I’d care to admit because professionals are supposed to be on top
of this stuff ) when the problem came up. I was on a lower level horse I had in
training. He was being round and pleasant on a 20-meter circle, but from the
sideline Lindgren kept urging, “Make him come through! More than that! More through!”
And
I was thinking, “Hmmm, it feels OK to me. What’s he looking for?”
Fifteen
years later, I think I know, though—truth be told—probably five or ten years
from now, I’ll likely be saying “No, now
I know what he was looking for!” And another five years after that. And so on.
Our sense of these concepts is supposed to mature over time, right?
Some
images came to my mind. The question I asked him was like when you poke a
potato with a fork to see if it’s done yet…. Or like when you push a wooden toothpick
into a cake layer in the oven to see if it comes out dry or sticky…. When you
gently touch the surface of gelatin with a finger to see if it has set…. Or
pull carefully on an old rubber band to see if still has some “give” and it won’t
just snap.
In
other words, you make tests. Only
experience will help you discover how big a given test ought to be and what result
reasonably you should expect. But the answers you seek from your horse must come
from questions you remember to ask.
So
do yourself a favor, and when you’re riding, be sure to do the asking! Build
yourself a mental rolodex of the replies you get.
Real learning takes place when I, as an instructor, can put my student in a situation where the horse will show her a particular response to the question I have her pose, and I can say to her, “That’s it. That’s the way it should feel to you when (Tammy’s) coming through!”
I fell into conversation with an imperious young member of the Wellington chapter of Dressage Queens in Training. She thought rather highly of her opinions, and seemed impatient with anyone who wasn't on a first name basis with Anky. Or who couldn't afford a made Grand Prix horse.
I personally am delighted to teach
people who can have such horses, but the life-experience a rider gains working
with an ordinary horse or an aged schoolmaster of limited scope can be just as
valuable, don'tcha know?
The woman under discussion was
scribing for me at the time, and my comment about a rider forgetting her outside
leg in a shoulder-in and her inside leg in the travers set her off on a lecture
about Anky von Grunsven's seminar after the Palm Beach Masters.
"Anky says she never uses her
inside leg in a half pass," she noted.
My reaction was this: What anyone
uses for aids has to be situationally-defined. Maybe her international horses
are enough in front of her leg and on her seat that the effect of the inside
leg can be assumed without being overtly stated. But not to use the inside leg
in that movement isn't advice I'd be spreading around to typical riders
learning to make a half pass happen with an honest bend through the horse's
body. Several tests earlier, I pointed out, we had witnessed a horse falling
sideways through the half pass and getting to the center line much too soon. If
ever there was an example of a rider needing the modifying inner leg to keep
her horse thinking forward and connected into the outside rein, that had been
it!
Fortunately,
I recalled a story in one of the dressage books on my shelf that could put all
this in context: Douglas Adams' The
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. In it, he posits three stages in the
development of civilization, stages which have their parallel in the
development of a rider's understanding of a horse being on the aids.
Anky's comment about the half pass
was clearly delivered with her head in Phase Three. It doesn't make it untrue,
but its relevance to ordinary people with ordinary problems of the Phase One
and Two variety may be limited. Picking the right dressage bistro is worth some
thought in your spare time, but getting to G with the horse bent ought to be a
higher priority for most of us in real life.
