Riding in the Movement
ost instructors when they teach, ask the rider for an exercise, or a series of exercises. The point of the exercise is usually to improve something in the horse. Create better movement of the hind legs, create better carriage of the neck and head. The focus is on the training of the horse.
Other instructors when they teach, instead focus on the rider. Insisting that if the rider is not correct, the horse can’t be. How can the horse do the movement correctly that you asked if you yourself interfere with the movement? If your weight is crooked, how do you expect your horse to be straight? If your seat is off balanced - how do you expect the horse to be balanced?
The first method of training through exercises focuses on the horse.
The second method the position of the rider focuses on the rider.
The second makes some logical sense in that yes how can we expect the horse to move properly no matter which exercises we choose. If, for example, we carry one hand to the side, or ride with our seat bones uneven on the horse, unaware what we are doing with our bodies.
The first method of training through exercises also makes some logical sense as how can you expect a rider to sit on a horse that has yet to learn some balance.
The second is difficult for many riders, emotionally difficult, it is the most difficult to accept. It is easier to think we need to work on the horse, then we need to work on ourselves.
The first can be difficult for those riders as they try to ride with no feedback from the instructor on what they themselves need to change to help the horse.
It would seem that the best instructors would combine the two. But that in reality rarely happens. Overall from general observation it seems most instructors teach through the training of the horse. Is this your instructor? Do you hear circle 10 meters, leg yield, extend your canter, walk, go across the diagonal, and this is what your entire lesson is comprised of? This instructor by watching the horse, tries to suggest the movement that will help the horse at that moment in time.
The horse that is starting to get a little draggy, the instructor might suggest the rider go across the diagonal, combine extended movements with collected movements.
The horse is starting to get a little overbent, then suggest a shoulder-in.
In effect the instructor is telling you, what to do as if they were riding. How based on their experiences how they would handle it, how they have learned to effect change in the horse.
For the rider with lots of natural ability, for the rider that is more advanced, this method will work. But for the rider that is not as educated, for the rider that does not have a lot of natural body awareness, for the rider who does not move with the horse, this method becomes contra-indicated. How does it help the horse to go from movement to movement if every time he tries something, he bumps into the rider’s body, where the rider’s body interferes with the movement?
And when this method doesn’t work, and the horse does not begin to balance better, move better, then the fail safe for many is to half- halt, half-halt, half-halt. If you have to half-halt this method has failed. The horse has not found release, the horse has not found better balance through the changes in the exercises. If you need to do constant half halts the horse has not re-balanced. It has not happened. Which means it didn’t work.
Plain and simple if you want to accept it or not, that is the reality.
We can often presuppose the reason it didn’t work is because the horse cannot release his body, because of something that the rider is doing wrong. Of course the mantra that as instructors we learn is that 99.9% of the time it is the rider. It takes a special rider, one with true openness and humbleness to be willing to accept that reality.
HeartFire
Equestrian Quotes
The Back Rigidity Increases With Speed
"An important charateristic of this(the back) mechanism is that this spinal rigidity increases proportionately to the speed. Further, spiral rigidity is the means by which the epaxial musculature converts hind leg energy into speed."
Jean Luc Cornille
Over-rhythm/speed creates rigidity in the spine.
This is how the body naturally protects the spine. Protecting the back. Speed is the anti-thesis to the relaxation we seek and the full mobility of the back and the loin that is the hallmark of the correctly trained dressage horse.
By Nadja King
So then what about the instructor who addresses these problems. One who from the very first lesson, insists that the rider take responsibility, accepts that his problems, his faults are going to be mirrored back to him from the horse. That the rider needs to begin by focusing on their rider position. They need to learn to become aware of how they center themselves on the horse. Are they balanced on the horse? Do they lean more to one side then the other. Do they collapse on one side of their bodies? Almost every single rider does. I mean after all how can we expect the horse to step up underneath himself if the rider’s weight is collapsed on that same side. No wonder the horse oozes off to the one side when the rider who barely sits on one side.
These instructors tend to insist that you need an incredibly strong core. That if your not strong, that will be part of your problem.
This method does rely on strength, the instructors often suggesting training off the horse as well as on. It relies on strength, by asking for a connection from the elbows to the seat, of dropping and centering your shoulder blades. This puts the strength of your seat in your hands. In your reins.
Many riders when presented with this methodology, unfortunately end up fixed in position. Almost in a frozen state, and then conciously need to learn how within that state they are still supposed to follow the horse. A difficult task indeed.
The problem with this methodology of teaching is that while we encourage riders to accept the responsibility of what their body is doing, this rider can go on and on without progressing sometimes for years, and they still blame themselves. When perhaps if the method is not working they should be looking at the method.
The problem with either method is that if we think exercise will solve the problem and it doesn’t we blame the horse. The horse becomes the problem. So for many people the solution becomes get rid of the horse. Incredibly sad. But how much worse is it, if riders are taught it is always, always your fault, and they are not finding a solution. Most people end up feeling guilty and not liking feeling guilty they end up quitting. How much more incredibly sad is that. That because of a method of teaching, they give up their passion, their life’s dream.
What happens when as riders - as instructors instead of focusing on the perfect position, instead of focusing on the movement, we instead focus on the rider, riding in the movement?
Those who put position first and foremost, negate the wonder of the horse. How horses and riders who are not perfect can come together, to become better because they are together. How can you insist that a rider requires core strength, when the reality of a handicapped child riding shows us how through riding we can take broken bodies and heal them. That handicapped child had no strength. Did not have the ability to sit up by themselves. Fell over if you tried to sit them on a chair. But we can sit them on a horse, and they don’t fall over. We can sit them on a horse and that child becomes strong. Strong enough that one day, that a miracle occurs and for the very first time in their lives they can sit up alone and unaided.
But what if…
What if there was a training methodology…. That like the disabled rider, helped the rider become stronger, just through riding. What if… there was a way to teach riders, to become centered and better balanced, isometrically, without their conscious violation. That it just happened almost naturally. What if… there was a training method that naturally introduced the rider to the correct timing of the aids. What if …there was a training method… that respected first and foremost the movement of the horse… that was all about the rider learning to be with the horse. One with the horse. What if we took the movement of the horse, and through the movement, the rider sat better, more securely. What if …we could through the movement of the horse, help the rider become straighter.
With handicapped children we can medically prove we can physically change the degree of scoliosis, which is the curvature of the spine, but we can’t find a riding method that helps crooked riders? This seems absolutely ridiculous.
If we have a training method that allows us to help the riders to learn to ride with the horse, within the movement of the horse, without interfering with the horse, then the exercises we present to the horse, become 100% effective. Then the exercises will work. This is why some trainers use the exercise method. Because of course there is a truth in the method, it does work. At times they do run into the problem that they only fix the horse, and forget that more often we need to fix the rider. But if we help the rider to learn to ride within the movement, to follow the movement, the exercise can then work as it was originally intended to do.
For this to happen we as instructors must focus first and foremost on the rider. Again here is why the second method of working on position is often used by some instructors. Because again there is a truth in the method. If we don’t fix the rider, it seems silly to expect the horse to be able to do well.
We must always begin by riding to the horse. We must join up with the horse. Not just in a round pen. But phsyically and personally when we are up on his back. It does no good to have join up on the ground, and then be disconnected when we are on their backs.
Ride to the horse. Teaching the riders how to completely follow the movement of the horse. Without this as a basis the rider is doomed to failure. As is the horse. The horse can only do what is requested, if he is allowed to. If he is enabled to.
Movement comes first. The horse is a creature of movement.
The horse does not care what you look like up there. He only cares what he feels from you.
And then when you begin to ride to him, you will begin to feel him and he will begin to feel you. And he will trust you with his body. He will give access to the depths of his body that he has never given to anyone before. No longer does he have to protect himself, in his suit of armor. He can trust you with his body, he can trust you with his soul. Only then can we become one.
For the rider, learning to ride within the movement. Means becoming a true partner.
In next issue of HORSES For LIFE™: Riding into Movement: How it Works
