Three groups of horse enthusiasts Thursday, Nov 4 2010

I believe there really are three groups out there in the world of riding.

Group 1 – the Competitors. Their primary goal is competition in various disciplines be it dressage, jumping, cross-country etc. The great thing about competition is the fact that it gives you a goal and you have a clear vision of what you are working on and what you are working for. The not so great thing about competition are the riders that put winning above everything else and are therefore willing to take shortcuts. Most shortcuts come at the expense of the horse.

Group 2 – the Weekend Warriors. These are riders that primarily have time on the weekend, they often keep their horses in their own backyard and they don’t always get a chance to ride. While they love their horses, they often have little access to any formal training and also don’t always see the need for it. Their primary goal is to have a horse that is safe enough for trail riding. I truly believe that this is the group that the majority of the natural horsemanship movement is designed for. All the horsemanship trainers try to help these rider have a safe and quiet horse. That really is the main objective of their tours across the country, DVD  courses and TV shows. Thankfully they are around or there would be a lot more bad accidents. This kind of rider however is satisfied to simply get from point A to point B.

Group 3 – the Artists. These riders want to ride for the Art of Riding. Primarily in the field of Dressage. This riding is about developing a true partnership with your horse. And it requires a profound understanding of the biomechanics of the horse as well as the rider. This kind of riding also means the utmost discipline on behalf of the rider. You need to know your body and be able to control it. Once you have that you can request precision from your horse. Your horse can only move as precise as you can ride. While this is certainly the most intense and slowest path of all groups, it is the one I have chosen for myself. Progress here is often small and slow but when it finally comes together, it is truly enlightening.

I believe there is room for all three groups out there and of course anyone can choose which group they want to be in. Besides, there is cross-over, many riders in group 1 want to become better artists and I certainly enjoy a fun trail ride a few times a year.  A lot of riders start in group 2 and then strive to become better horsemen or horsewomen and move into another group.

No matter which group you see yourself in – go out there and enjoy your horse!

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Horsemanship Friday, Aug 27 2010

I am mulling over the fact that there seems to be some cross-over between the natural horsemanship movement and dressage but not terribly much. And I am asking why. What seems clear to me is that there are a lot of parallels especially if you consider the natural horsemen of the baroque times – be it Pluvinel, the Duke of Newcastle or Gueriniere. A lot of the “golden rules” of natural horsemanship make sense, e.g.

Be as gentle as possible and as firm as necessary
Do less to get more
Take the time it takes
Notice the smallest change and the slightest try, and reward him

As a matter of fact the last one sound much like this one “You must reward the slightest concession as if it was a full submission, because it will certainly lead directly to that. (Alexandre Guerin, 1817-1884).

So all these horsemen want to train to lightness, no resistance and overall balance.

I believe however that western riding- which is where the modern natural horsemanship has its roots- does not require the discipline and precision that we require in dressage. And here is the big question: Can we achieve this precision without ever using coercion? And looking at some of the “natural” training methods there are also moments of coercion in there – granted a lot less though than we find in modern competitive dressage which seems to be reduced to almost exclusively coercion and little else.

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Kyra Kyrlund wisdom from the USDF convention, Denver Dec 2008 Saturday, Dec 5 2009

Notes from Kyra

• Sit in with weight in your hips and even weight always
• Elbow back – tighten tummy that’s your strength
• Only outside leg asks in canter forward and only if needed
• Don’t squeeze with leg, leg needs to be loose so you can give aid faster
• Don’t hold horse’s head up
• Horse is a river flowing freely between your legs – if you squeeze it’s like toothpaste
• Don’t try to push with seat – does not work (let them try in halt)
• Imagine knee as arrowhead – point towards head of horse and where you want to go
• Pull in tummy and push intestines against front of belly
• Keep elbow back with tummy strength
• Loose fingers, loose leg – imaging leg moving within boot, so you can hold in tummy but not jam down with seat
• Sit a little bouncy
• If a horse collects he tightens his tummy muscles and gets shorter on bottom and longer on top, also means if collection right he gets fatter between my legs
• Arrowhead knee points to mouth
• You decide the frame of horse – i.e. more rectangular for younger horse, more square for trained horse – so frame is how long the horse is, not where the head is
• Shorter frame = energy is up more than out
• Stay equal on both hip joints and keep always parallel to horse (your hip to his)
• If you want higher step you need to time when his leg is on the ground and ready to leave not set aid when in the air because then you push him down
• Horse needs to be str on circle – too many are too bent to inside
• He needs to carry me, not I carry him
• Feel your feet moving in boot
• Horse needs to balance with his own neck
• Seat bones bump within you
• Carry knee with muscles of your upper thigh, let back of upper thigh drop down
• Fell that you can put his front leg in front of his hind leg
• In a normal canter I should not work so hard
• Slow down canter without leg aid, then set impulse when he slows down not before
• How light can I be before he stops
• Ride withers towards his mouth
• Withers come up in collection
• Point withers where I want to go not the head
• Never get stuck in one speed within gate, you can always make more collected or more forward
• To change something in your body and re-learn you first have to take it back out of sub-conscious and bring back to conscious so you can change it
• Sometimes you can transfer for your clients from s.th. else they already know (champagne glasses)
• You can do mental training if you have felt it, you can re-create in your mind
• Lot of problems originate in seat, so check that first, rather than correcting leg, arm, hand etc
• If you look to outside, hips come to inside
• Hips can steer the withers
• Sit relaxed in bum, just let the seat bones bounce
• You always turn withers not head
• Weight is similar to skiing in middle of body not upper body
• Don’t’ ride the saddle ride the back
• Reins go around the chest and you keep the chest close to you
• Imagine reins as a ring around chest, if your contact is not even, you only spin the ring
• Use leg independent from seat and arm, but you can use at same time
• Chest comes back to me
• You can’t force a horse to relax, you just have to wait
• Wait for the horse to start its gait in back before you follow it
• Make the horse wait for me in corner, then I turn him
• Need 100k reps to put something into my subc
• Use whip on outside in canter just like the leg
• Vertebrae in neck more flexible than in back, bend comes from horse rotating muscle not really bending in back => tense horse cannot bend
• Collect w/o leg = don’t squeeze to collect
• If a horse does not wait for me to turn him, they fall in in corner and riders push them out = wrong, make him wait for you and then you get to turn him
• Shoulder in means withers of track, once you get that you can make it pretty – not neck in, bum out
• Small quick impulses with leg, not squeeze
• Feel the back, it starts to trot or canter and then you follow
• No compromise, always ask for 100%
• In leg yield same weight in both hips, ask to move over with leg, not hand, seat etc – it is called leg yield!
• Shoulder in – don’t use leg to push butt out, same weight in hips, don’t stop horse on inside rein
• Gelding you tell, stallion you ask, mare needs three applications
• Horse needs to stay light in base of neck
• Quicker steps w/o chest running away, don’t overbend on circle
• Use your leg until horse changes, don’t let horse change you!
• If horse gets behind me, shorter, quicker steps
• 3+1 reins good way to create tunnel
• Keep curb on bottom, that way you can lift horse with snaffle
• Canter impulse on outside and when he is coming back up
• In flying change make horse str with outside rein instead of flexing to new inside
• Don’t put leg to far back, brings haunches over and leg is not effective further back
• Keep leg by girth you ride the back not the haunches
• Don’t carry your horse
• Quick steps rather than collection
• Sit there with no leg until he carries me
• When I have more horse in front of me, I can use leg again
• Once they understand I need to back off with aids and let them do more and more on their own
• Using whip on inside in canter often makes them drop inside leg
• Balance horse as if he is a bicycle if you hang off to one side = fall over
• Needs to shorten underneck = lengthen topline
• You can use whip on outside shoulder to turn
• You can teach timing for leg through posting where you use leg when sitting down
• In posting trot you cannot lift him with leg so he has to do it himself = do passage posting
• Elbows at waist keep steady contact, but shoulders are soft to follow movement
• Needs steadiness, if he resists siderein you don’t make it 10 holes longer, so why put hand forward when he resists?
• For extension your ride the hindlegs forward
• Your hips parallel to horses
• The further your leg goes back the weaker it gets
• Hips are more your center because they are more forward than your seatbones, hip is a joint and can follow movement
• Lower back neither round nor hollow
• If I can let contact go and he stays still with me = correct
• In travers my inside leg is for bend, my outside leg is for go over
• Don’t get upset if they don’t do it right away, give them time to think
• Curb pulls down, so not crossing is better
• Head weighs 10% of total weight, so I should give it only 10% of my attention
• Between hands and legs you can springload horse, if too much explode, if too little fall apart (remember dirt ball) – and remember even left and right contact
• Watch young horse – run free, should do fly changes both directions easily
• Most horses not late behind, but early in front
• If a horse leans to outside in canter, difficult to change in that direction because I normally want to unbalance him a little into that direction to get him to change – so use outside leg more and keep forward
• Focus 90% of your thinking on his back
• Lift knee so you can freely use lower leg
• If horse pushes to one side, use quick impulses on that side and turn him away from it (outside leg turns him)
• 3+1 keeps curb steady and I can use snaffle to lift him, 3 in outside hand
• Passage needs to be in the trot before I ask for it
• Stay solid in tummy and lower back and don’t follow horse to much
• He needs to do it first, then I follow
• Improve fly changes by improving canter
• Make horse shorter in halt by stepping up, then RB, step up again, then let neck out w/o him walking off
• Once you have that more compact feeling recreate in all gaits
• Same weight in both hands and hips
• Sit still in Piaffe, use leg on way down
• Use leg when hips are on their way down
• When he gives it to you relax, but don’t stop working
• For tempi changes – move legs like climbing steps not move whole body like drunk
• Keep my head straight and move eyes only
• My head aligned with withers
• Different exercises require diff muscles, so work all of it on diff days – 2 hard days, one easy

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Dr. Heuschmann’s clinic – Mar 2008 in Utah Saturday, Dec 5 2009

Dr. Gerd Heuschmann clinic

From April 4^th through the 6^th I had the opportunity to attend a clinic with Dr. Gerd Heuschmann in Heber City, Utah.

After reading his book “Tug of War”, I had high expectations of this clinic and have to say that he not only fulfilled but exceeded them.

The clinic started with a 3 hour lecture on Friday morning. We had at least 40 people in the room and Dr. Heuschmann dove right in. His English is very clear and easy to understand and he kept his explanations in laymen’s terms that made it simple to follow along with his arguments.

He starts with this: “The horse’s anatomy determines its way of training”. A deceptively straightforward sentence that turned out to be the basis for all his teachings.

If you imagine your horse as a simple stick figure you would have two sets of pillars in the front and back that are connected through a bridge. This bridge is made up by the spine and has to carry about 1/3 of your horse’s weight and yours if you ride it. Since the spine is only about the width of your wrist the question emerges: How does my horse do this? Most people would then argue that the back muscles are there to carry this weight and the rider. Dr. Heuschmann emphatically states that this is not the case.

Muscles he says, are for moving, not carrying. As a matter of fact if you put pressure on a muscle and force it to “carry” all you get is a stiff muscle. Those of you that have been on a tense horse know that this is not a good riding experience.

So what does carry the rider then? Well, you do have the spine and a series of ligaments and connective tissue. Most riders know that a supple back makes for good riding. How do we get the back to be supple? First and foremost we need the back to come up. Anatomically speaking this is initially only possible in the following way. Your horse has a big ligament that runs roughly from the poll to its withers, also called the nuchal ligament. It also has a ligament that runs from the withers to the tail, the supraspinous ligament. This supraspinous ligament is responsible for bringing your horses back up. Only with the back up can the two big back muscles, the longissimus muscles relax and work. If your horse stretches forward and down it engages the nuchal ligament which in turn engages the supraspinous ligament and brings the back up. In a young horse that has not had a chance to develop its neck muscles yet, this is the only way to do this. As horses get more trained the muscles in the neck can take the role of the nuchal ligament and create positive tension on the supraspinous ligament and therefore bring up the back.

Unfortunately our horses today are so well bred, that their necks give the impression of a well developed neck muscle which can lead the rider to ask the horse too soon to bring up the neck. If those muscles cannot yet create this positive tension in the supraspinous ligament, the horse cannot truly bring up its back. And that is were the true problem for most of us lies. Dr. Heuschmann illustrates clearly the difference between relative and absolute elevation.  The more your horse’s neck muscles are developed the higher it can carry its neck without a detrimental effect and at the same time bring its back up. If you bring the neck up before those muscles are ready you are taking your horse into absolute elevation for its frame no matter where that is in relation to your picture of a perfect dressage frame.

If a horse is brought into elevation that is too high in relation to its muscle development you will get a stiff back muscle. That in turn creates problems with the gaits and we might see a lateral walk, loss of rhythm in trot and canter and in more extreme cases it will develop into rein or bridle lameness. As a USDF “L” graduate I have the opportunity to judge local shows and unfortunately have observed all of the above before. A stiff back also will create problems in the lengthenings and often draw the following comment: “out behind”. For more details on the biomechanics I highly recommend that you read his book.

As we moved on in the lecture, Dr. Heuschmann often quoted from books and writings that have been created for the German cavalry. Some of the gems that stuck with me were:

Horses need to be trained for about two years to make them a riding horse. After that you decide if the horse is more talented for jumping or dressage but your first goal must be to just create a ride able horse.

Rule of thumb on how many days a week to work a horse – 3 days for a 3-year old, 4 days for a 4-year old, 5 days for a 5- year old and so on. That would mean if I want to ride my horse every day, it should be 7 years old at least and of course have been started as a 3 year old.

Obviously back then they tried to create a horse that could carry you from Berlin to St. Petersburg without braking down and our requirements today are different, but I felt there was still a lot of truth to these teachings.

Dr. Heuschmann then went on to show us some of the problems he sees with the international dressage horse and explained why some of the movements are no longer true in the biomechanical and classical sense of riding. He is of course highly controversial in Europe and jokingly stated that half of the horse community would want to marry him; the other half would rather see him go away. It was a true eye opener for many people to see how many of the movements that we thought were performed well, are actually performed rather poorly.

After the lecture we moved to the indoor arena for the hands-on portion of the clinic.

We had 8 lovely horses from Morgans to American Warmbloods, Arabians to Friesian Crosses, Paints, Danish Warmbloods,  you name it. A wonderful cross section of horses in America and some of them quite a surprise to Dr. Heuschmann. He rode every one of them to make sure that he understood what the riders were dealing with. More than once he remarked that this was a first for him (first Paint, first Morgan etc) to sit on a horse of that particular breed.

He pointed out that most horses were not supple enough in their backs to bring their hindquarters underneath themselves. We had horses that ran the gamut from Training Level to Prix Saint Georges and yet he used the same ideas on every one of them. He started with some walk work and asked for shoulder-in or leg yield (with quarters to the outside) on the circle. Those horses that had difficulty with that movement started with leg yield along the wall, facing the wall. As the horses were working laterally we all could observe that they started to move their mouths, chewing the bits more – he calls that “talking”. As soon as they start “talking” you can ask for trot, with the idea of engaging the inside hind leg and riding that leg towards the poll. Trot was initially all posting and often he asked for the rider to get into a light seat or 2-point seat.

The back muscles move unilateral at the trot, meaning that while one shortens (that is the side where the hind leg steps forward), the other one must lengthen. In the canter the muscles move almost bilateral. Therefore it is often possible to relax the back quicker in canter. Some riders were asked to get into a 2-point and canter down the long side with as much speed and energy as they could muster. Coming towards us at full speed (we auditors sat at one short side), more than one of us flinched. It was clear though that this was a big release and improvement in most horses.

Dr. Heuschmann requested many walk breaks on a long rein. He pointed out that a trained horse does not need a long break, half a circle is often enough. As the horses progressed he worked on rein-back with deliberate steps backwards and forward often asking for 10 or more backwards steps. He always asked for the lateral work and to get the mouth “talking” before any trot or canter. The last day we even saw some of the horses in working Piaffe, one horse showed finally clean changes with a relaxed back and we observed some good trot extensions. All the horses improved over the three day clinic some of them very dramatically. Dr. Heuschmann is a very kind and gifted teacher that clearly put the well-being of the horse over working on any movements or drills. As he says, once the back gets right, the movements almost come by themselves. He clearly demonstrated that to the audience with Piaffe on a horse that had not done this before.

All in all an outstanding clinic with a wealth of information. His book should be required reading for anyone that wants to ride, no matter the discipline. Better knowledge and more correct information will make us all better riders.

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The Three Tenors Saturday, Dec 5 2009

Just having a little fun with my friends.

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