WTF
Please show me where I was ever advocating super strong contact or see sawing to get head carriage
I was just trying to interpret the OP post and consider what the trainer may have been trying to say.
Obviously you can go too far both ways:eek:
2 Likes
Thanks, Crockpot. I was going to call that out, too. Where are you seeing this “more often,” Scribbler? Where the heck do you ride that someone is teaching that? I don’t see it at all, but then I would not permit my students to have such a crappy understanding of connection. What you describe is what non-dressage riders think is contact. I can’t imagine anyone working with an instructor rides like that.
4 Likes
Sorry, I wasn’t saying you were advocating this! Not at all.
I was just saying that I didn’t locally see anyone aiming for loose reins.
I would agree that if your horse is not consistently taking some degree of contact, dressage training won’t work.
Your hands also have to move to allow telescoping of your horse’s head and neck where necessary. An example relative to your level: I can not keep my hands still and get a good canter/walk transition followed by a good walk, because unmoving hands are ungiving hands and my horse won’t walk properly after that.
My thoroughbred was afraid of contact, and I got in the habit of REALLY giving him something to lean on… then with my mare who didn’t have bit issues, she started to lock her jaw against my hands. The contact needs to be alive, neither a floppy dead fish of a handshake nor a locked hitching post against which the horse pulls.
2 Likes
I know, I know. This is the general riding style by the very small name trainers at my basically recreational barn. Crank and spur. Put your full weight on the reins to get him round (that’s a direct quote from a friend who later changed trainers). Riding makes your hands and arms hurt, it’s a great workout. Spur every step of the way because he’s lazy. Etc etc.
The instructors ride this way, btw.
They do go out to training and first level shows, and a couple folks muscled up to about fourth rarely breaking 60 however. So they aren’t outrageous by local standards.
People ride with them because that’s what they think dressage is about and they are now going up the levels.
I am always heartened when folks on COTH express shock and horror when I describe this. However, the actual riders don’t want to hear it. Not until they move barns and realize how much work it will take to fix their horse.
4 Likes
Try Adeline Cornelissen on Parzival…
This is a 2012 Olympic rider…getting +80% scores on this horse…
There is no “descente des mains” going on here…This video is the entry to the arena, but she is bouncing off that horse’s mouth. Video is nice and short for those who have short attention spans.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cVzjWr5oSI
Interestingly, I tried to find videos of her work at the trot…it is very hard to find.
Typically I found the canter work…and when there was trot work, the camera zooms in, then camera cuts away from the horse and goes to focus on his feet.
1 Like
Exactly! With My mare if the outside rein is too quiet she will lock her poll or jaw. There’s weight in the rein but she’s not with me. It happens anytime my hands turn into a dead fish handshake. She might lock up if I have an elastic connection but the elastic connection corrects it quickly. It’s become less of an evasion for her as I’ve gotten better with my hands.
1 Like
Another point is that correct elbow position is really important. That means bent elbows, elbows at your sides. Riding on contact sometimes induces people to ride with straighter arms, pinnochio arms. This gives you no way to follow or release the contact. People also end up riding with their hands too low, prying downwards. Bend your elbows and carry your hands, sit upright and have a balanced seat. That gives you scope to use rein aids and to cease to use them.
4 Likes
"Try Adeline Cornelissen on Parzival…
This is a 2012 Olympic rider…getting +80% scores on this horse…
There is no “descente des mains” going on here…This video is the entry to the arena, but she is bouncing off that horse’s mouth. Video is nice and short for those who have short attention spans.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cVzjWr5oSI"
Yes. No argument from me there. She broke his jaw. I think they blamed it on something else, but . . .
I always loved that horse, but just ick to watch her crank him.
2 Likes
Scribbler, it’s time you voted with your feet and moved barns if you are seeing this level of abuse on a daily basis.
4 Likes
Hand aids also include gently moving the bit in the horse’s mouth if he becomes even slightly tense or wants to ignore the riding aids to put his focus outside the arena or put his head up against the reins. Seesawing is a no, but gently or even not so gently sliding the bit back and forth until the horse stops fighting (then you release) teaches him that he can’t fight the contact but everything is great when he complies. When the horse experiences no PRESSURE (that is different from no contact) when he relaxes into the work is key to good training.
Yes, flexion. i almost NEVER do nothing when I ride. I always test the leg aids, the seat and flexion aids to keep my horse interested in the ride and the attention on me. In a very subtle way. Of course, it your horse is a schoolmaster, he knows his job and will need less testing than other horses, but you still want to keep his attention. You want him to stay forward, stay listening to you, and stay active in the hind legs. It’s so easy for schoolmasters to say “ho hum, yeah, I got that” when you are riding passively and not keeping their attention and interest in the ride. They don’t want to be bored with work any more than you do!
Try a step of leg yield (just a step or 2) when riding all three gaits, a step or two of shoulder-fore or shoulder in at all 3 gaits. Haunches in, haunches out for no more than 2-3 steps - not full haunches-in but a bend in the body. Inside to outside flexion at all three gaits while moving in a straight line. Your rein (and seat) aids are important for all of this to work smoothly and LOOK like it is smooth. Your goal is to look like you are doing nothing and your horse is making no big move, but you feel he’s making an effort in a step or two. The point of this is to “catch” and “perform” any correction that needs to happen, whether some imbalance or a spook.
Always check in with your horse. "Are you listening now? " great. “are you still listening?” Great. “Are you still listening and can we prepare for this next movement”? Great.
3 Likes
Scribbler, I agree: you should change barns. Your barn trainer and their riders are doing it wrong.
2 Likes
It’s a recreational barn and you can have in any trainer you want. I don’t train with these folks, and indeed most people here don’t do dressage at all. It’s a self board club and the only place to keep horses in this municipality, and the level of horse care is excellent. So in staying here I am not supporting any trainers I disagree with. And honestly I don’t think the larger horse community would see this as abuse. Just mediocre lower level dressage.
I have my own trainer who visits. She has a very different approach.
1 Like
Unfortunately, this is all too common in my area. I took two lessons with a trainer last year, on lesson 2, she told me to seesaw my pony’s head down, I did not, and that was the last lesson I took. She has a very large following of high dollar students…
1 Like
Can you show a rider with good contact?
Any of you who have this kind of “hand-riding” trainers common in your area, do you also have better educated trainers available for lessons? I’ve studied classical, the German school and the French school and I incorporate a little of everything in my teaching. That people are still promoting hand-riding in this day and age of ease of access to information is a little disheartening. 
2 Likes
Contact is a lot like poker. You gotta know when to hold, you gotta know when to fold. Contact has to be there, be soft, and following but sometimes quietly asking, occasionally , hopefully seldom, demanding. But there. But never obvious.
3 Likes
Because it is winning…with judges giving pretty high scores.
There are a few, but yes, I find it discouraging that there is so much hand-riding locally and I’ve yet to understand, like you, how it remains so common here. Unless it’s about the speed. My mare was schooling intro at the time of the lesson when asked to seesaw. I was trying out different trainers to supplement my normal trainer’s lessons (once per month as he’s 3 hours drive from me), when I described what we’d been working on, she proclaimed “some trainers are just in a hurry” smuggly and proceeded later in the lesson to advise me to seesaw the reins to get her head down. Unfortunately, this trainer wins a lot and so do her students, so she’s rather popular around here. I lost some friends when I told them I would not be taking another lesson with her.
We have a range of trainers in the area but I don’t think most beginner ammies are in a position to evaluate what they are getting at the start. Until they hit a roadblock with their horses and have to make a change they will stick with whoever they happened to start with. Or stay with the trainer but get a new horse.
I think it is difficult for these riders to see that what they are doing is not optimal when they see videos like the one posted here with an Olympic rider. They learn that’s what dressage is: driving a horse into fixed hands with your seat. I don’t think they have the framework for seeing dressage as subtle or self carriage.
In other words, dressage is understood to be riding from the hands, and the goal is headset from the first ride on a green horse. The rest kind of falls by the wayside. Classical ideas are so foreign to how they ride, it might as well be a different discipline.
One of these trainers also runs a popular schooling show series. So that shapes perception too.
It’s true that more competitive riders evebtually leave our barn, but they might move on in any case to a more focused training barn.
1 Like
