I found the article to have some really great points…but, it seems that not everyone agrees with the article. Thoughts from the COTH community?
I agree with it, 100 %. The system is flawed, badly. It may have been mentioned but I missed it, but, it should also be noted that a decent number of “trainers,” have no business teaching. The worst thing for a client & horse of semi “BNT,” barn is the trickery of “assistant trainers.” The only person this benefits is the head trainer. Just my 2 cents, for now. I can always sweeten the pot later.
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There are some good questions/comments in there…I am not an adult ammy because I get paid to teach at the lower levels. I do however work with some great FEI trainers and had the opportunity to break and train my horse to PSG with one of them. I learned a LOT.
I don’t think you can expect to get much out of a clinic in general, until I trained my horse up the levels a lot of the stuff was over my head and I admitted it. Each horse and rider have their own things to work on and one of my favorite clinics was with Steffen and Shannon Peters years ago. She worked on rider position then he took them back and worked on rider/horse issues.
So I think he is off base with that comment on clinics, we have a lot of great trainers out there who have brought along some nice riders, no need to be a BNT to do that. A clinic is not the answer to anyones prayers! It’s the day in day out work approach with a solid trainer who can help with your basics and teach you how to develop effective aids/position etc.
Dressage is not easy but if you put in the effort it is so rewarding!
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So how would we improve the industry along the lines Steinberg would like?
- Clients and students need to stop paying to be treated badly. Read that again because nothing will change until the way money is spent and earned changes.
I wouldn’t harp on this point, except that it makes my life harder when my ammy brethren set trainers’ expectations such that I can’t find one that will give value for money or take me seriously because I want to learn to ride my own damn horse.
- Dressage instruction traditionally lacks an equitation component.
Coming from Hunter World, I find this surprising. Riding my own appropriately-sensitive dressage thang now, and found some help for my riding, I am convinced that 80% of what goes wrong comes from my equitation; my mare goes exactly as well as I ride her. I suspect some version of this is true for many horse and rider teams.
When I have been trainer/instructor shopping and gone to watch lessons, I have been surprised at how badly those pros allow their students to ride. I am sure it comes from my Hunter upbringing that I notice unharmonious equitation. Often I am surprised at how nicely the patient, lower level horse is going underneath the jarring or unfeeling ride he’s getting. Look, I wasn’t born into dressage, so take this comment with a grain of salt. Perhaps I’m being too harsh and wrong about the need for improved equitation as a basic component of training a horse or moving up the levels competitively. I do think the worst of the equitation sins have been boiled off by the time someone gets to the FEI levels… but there are some screaming exceptions.
Perhaps this lack of attention to equitation comes comes from the fact that most people in the US don’t learn to ride when they take up dressage; they already know how to ride, so there aren’t Dressage Equitation Factories or prestigious competitions the way hunter/jumper world has had for the past half century.
Watching these lessons, I find that when most dressage pros look at a horse and rider pair, most of the observations and directions will be about reshaping the horse’s body or way of going. I appreciate that just there is a lot to take in for the pro who is working within a discipline that focuses on the perfect and constant performance of the horse! But the results is less bandwidth for the rider. Other than correcting large mistakes (“shorten your reins!”), the rider is left to her own devices in terms of producing changes in the horse. So folks can write and read about, say, the anatomy of the half-halt, but what about sitting on a horse and delivering one and feeling it’s effects? The exclusive focus on the horse assumes that the rider is already proficient, her body educated and feeling.
Perhaps this comes from a sport that assumes anyone making up a horse has already been to GP and/or learned to ride on the lunge line and on school horses with chambons or side-reins such that they learned to sit at the get-go. Those European ammies (or cavalry officers) do bring a great equitation foundation with them. And not for nuthin’, but the folks who grew up riding Western show horses have a much better base of equitation than I do for dressage.
- Dressagists below the 90th percentile (both ammies and pros) are not ecumenical and don’t look outside of their disciplinary sandbox in order to see what other horsemen might be doing right.
I once told a DQ friend of mine that I was taking my insecure mare to a cattle clinic, in part so that she and I could work on what it would take for her to trot down to C and a judge’s box just because I said so. To me, this is part of making up a competitive show horse or, heck, a horse I’d ride into war. She said, “Well, I’ll never see a cow at a dressage show, so I don’t need that.” But here’s the thing: She didn’t know anything about what pushing a cow could teach a horse and didn’t want to know. I’m not sure that comes from her ever having done that, rather the other guy was a priori wrong.
You know who is getting the “treat your ammy well” and “teach ammies how to train their horses well” jobs right? The best folks at this job are the small-time natural horsemanship guys. The folks who do the labor-intensive work of narrating or mediating that conversation between horse and rider/handler for an hour so that the student learns a ton about how to read and react to her horse for the better are giving ammies a very large bang for their buck. I don’t see nearly enough consideration for the internal mental experience of the horse put up as a main topic of discussion in the dressage instruction I have seen.
I have never seen the English, and especially the dressage world give much credence to a big NH guy until Tristan Tucker, an Australian in Europe, came along. That’s too bad, because while he seems to teach well, he’s not substantially different or better than the western horsemen offering the same. But dressagists treat “cowboys” as the person you send your spoiled horse or colt to because you don’t want to take the risk, rather than giving the western horsemen their due.
- Everyone who tries to teach in the “mega church” model-- via one very expensive showcase clinic weekend or by DVD or webinar is putting technology and a cool business model ahead of the task of actually teaching students (horses as well as riders) as they require.
And boy-howdy do they get a bashing here on COTH Or, rather, the traveling (in)famous selling DVDs and systems and equipment (all of which are being misused by their clueless distance-learning students). And are the BNTs who come around for a very expensive showcase weekend doing any better? If you took home the hour of exercises or corrections that a BNT gave you one weekend and you just did that ad nauseum without knowing when to quit or what to do next, wouldn’t you make your horse as dull and unhappy as someone who played some 7 games until they really weren’t fun anymore?
Points three and four go together: The truth of the matter is that teaching riders to ride and teach horses is a bespoke, one-at-a-time thing. There is no way around the fact that it takes the time and money spent with instructor, rider and horse in the ring together, often, to help people improve. It is no more the case that NH, categorically, has nothing to offer a dressage rider than that an Olympian BNT Show (in which you are not welcome to ride) does. While I think it’s great that Jeremy takes his colleagues to task for doing a bit of robbing their clients. I would write, as an amateur, consumer and someone who only wants to buy useful instruction, that we need to pay only for what serves us.
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@mvp I wish I could print this out and pass it around. I agree 1000%.
I am so frustrated that just in the 10 years as a true adult amateur (I did not ride horses as a kid), that I have struggled to really find a true “instructor”. Honestly, I learned more on the ground about how a horse is supposed to move from a judge than I learned or understood from the driver’s seat. That is a damn shame. No rider should get on a horse without even knowing the basics of what they should be looking to achieve.
No one should be emulating these people they see on the big, fancy horses. Why? Because I could write a book, but those horses are WORLDS AWAY from what the avg ammy has, number one, and the avg ammy could never ride them.
As a firearms trainer, I learned something unique about adults. They don’t want to learn the same as children. Why? Experience in life. It ruins people’s ideas and perceptions of things.
If you take a minute to realize that if adults didn’t know crap about medals or awards and just learned to ride the horses so they were riding well, the sport would be insanely different.
Everyone needs to start sitting on the ground with a good judge, IMO.
Then the longe line with a true quiet schoolmaster.
Then the round pen.
Then the arena.
But, see? There are levels. Levels of learning that most adults don’t want to take the time to learn.
Humans’ nature is all about the quickest way to get things done. Let that sink in and you will understand so much more about “adult amateurs”.
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MVP you are so correct!
In my very limited AA career I’ve only done 2 clinics with BNT’s and sadly they were both a waste of my time and money. One hardly gave any instruction but spent her time talking with my instructor catching up on old times. The other had no use for “off” breed horses and wouldn’t waste her time giving any instruction but just make comments about the breed, so that was it for me.
I agree about the 100% about the equitation comment. I also came from a H/J background, lessons would be about your riding and very little to do with the horse. In dressage its just the opposite. I’m so glad for those years because it made me a better rider and gave me the skills I needed to make my horse better.
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I think it is quite hard to generalize about adult amateurs (or most things, really.) Everyone learns differently, I suspect many of us have different goals and ambitions and god knows we all have different horses and pocketbooks.
But the thing that really stood out to me in the article was the notion of respect. Or rather, the lack of respect that many (not all) trainers/clinicians have for the adult amateur customer - and the impact that has on the sport.
And personally, I think that is spot freaking on. Amateurs, grass roots, pick a label- are the underpinning of this sport, and frankly we are the foundation of most trainers’ businesses. It can be a bit shocking though to see the lack of regard or respect that many professionals have for their clients.
There are, of course, many wonderful programs that support AA clients, taking into account the realities of AA lives that include things like jobs, family responsibilities and so on in addition to riding ambition. I’ve been very fortunate to have been part of programs like that, and very much valued those opportunities. But there are at least as many that treat AAs as ATM machines who are begrudgingly tolerated. The ones where riders are sold horses that suit the trainer (and the trainer’s ambition) rather than the skill and goals of the rider, or where the trainer says all sorts of nice encouraging things to the rider/client while disparaging them behind their back. Been at a few of those programs as well.
I suspect that the challenge is partly a business model problem. “Everyone knows” that boarding is a break even proposition or even a loss leader; it’s also a 24/7/365 job that involves a lot of plain old hard work and struggle that can be somewhat invisible to the customers who benefit from it. I think that likely breeds some resentment, and understandably so I suppose. Then the client rolls up in the nice late model sports car, all decked out in the latest matchy matchy for their lesson - and all the work that that client did to make the $$$ required for all that on top of their board and training bills is also invisible - and that likely breeds resentment too. Definitely a challenge for all concerned and I will be curious to hear others’ thoughts on the subject.
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I guess what surprised me (mainly where I was in a small market on the West Coast and less of where I am now in a more horsey area in the Southeast) is how hard it was to find a dressage instructor that wanted to teach someone like me to make up a dressage horse. BTW, what else could you possibly be doing in this job since even finished horses have require a rider that is skilled enough to ride them?
And, Jesus, after a lifetime of “doing it wrong” because I didn’t have enough money to pay for enough help, I thought I had done it right:
I bought a horse I could ride who was sound enough, correct-moving enough, forward-thinking yet sane, and cheap enough that had a big pile of money left over for lessons.
I had a modest goal for this horse: A bronze medal and then whatever work beyond that this mare and I could do before she got to the end of her ability or soundness or desire. Then I’d buy better, spend better and go farther.
I was/am a competent, hard-working rider who can take direction on horseback, actually change herself and her horse, and who doesn’t go brain-dead at shows.
And what I found were pros who really enjoyed teaching me at home and at coaching me at horse shows. That’s what you get with a BTDT ammy.
I didn’t get to the point where I boarded my horse in their barn and paid for their full training program. Because as that BTDT ammy, those weren’t services that I needed. And so I could never get their attention for consistent lessons at home. They wanted to lease me one that was farther along so they could teach me on that one while I paid them to train mine. They just wanted to train mine.
Again, I don’t think I was going to be a bad, frustrating or embarrassing student for a pro. I was clear that this was my dressage “starter horse” and that I’d spend more on a better horse when I knew enough and rode well enough to warrant spend more on a horse with more talent that could go farther. I could have become that customer that was more fun and more lucrative for a pro, but that is a relationship that needs to be cultivated.
But in that smaller market, it was hard to find a pro who wanted to earn my money and business one lesson at a time. It’s actually easier to find that here where I am now in a place with more pros and more competent pros. I’m not sure why that is.
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My thought, which I’ve had and pontificated about here for a decade or so is that board needs to be raised so that it is profitable. Horse care and infrastructure if a valuable commodity. Make folks pay for that, rather than underpaying for the horse care and over-paying for lessons and horse shows.
I think a business can go on for a long and shitty time where someone resents the person who butters their bread. But I think it’s ultimately untenable. In fact, I think it’s economically irrational to let customers “mis-pay” parts of a multi-product business, i.e, lose money on board but over-charge for luxuries like daycare at horse shows, or insist that no client come to your program unless you made a commission (at least) on the horse they buy. Why not just keep prices more closely correlated to costs?
If I were a pro who was also running the boarding part of my business, I would feel a great sense of relief if I knew my day-to-day costs were being covered whether or not I could get to X horse shows per month or sell Y dollars worth or horses per year. The latter things are uncertain and luxury goods, so they are not predictable lines of cash flow.
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Very interesting perspective in the article. And agree with MVP above on many points. Some random thoughts from my ammy experiences.
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When one steps into the dressage pond, we often don’t know what we don’t know about the training/learning process. So it hinders the ability to figure out the best training option. How/why is trainer A different from trainer B? What best suits my needs? Other than my time and budget - how do I know what I need? No one seems to try and differentiate themselves. They dont necessarily know their own strengths or weaknesses.
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This “industry” does not function as a traditional industry: in areas where the demand is low, you can still buy a decent car - maybe not as many brands, but you know what that car is. Much of the US is a low demand market for dressage training, and thus the ammy is limited in selection. Thus sometimes one pays for something because it is all that is there.
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Most trainers don’t want to share clients with others or recommend clinicians; I think it is part insecurity and part just not thinking. My very first trainer was great with lower level adult clients. Encouraging, willing to work on position, big fan of schooling shows in that area, and she was moderately priced. At some point - early 2nd level, she told me I should ride with another area trainer (trainer B) who did monthly clinics as she could help me with some things. Wow. Current trainer (trainer C) has a couple bigger names that he works with periodically and has recommended perhaps I try them out. Another Wow.
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Another eye opener - Not every one can TEACH riders. Took me a fairly long time to figure it out but: Trainer B above was very good at training the horse. She has taken probably a dozen to GP and is a lovely rider. Reality is that she sucks at teaching the adult how to ride a half halt, how to get themselves more centered and independent in the saddle, how to fix that list to the left that I acquired after sitting at a desk for 15 years. When I found trainer C a whole new world opened before my eyes.
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Everyone learns differently - we all know that. I personally have not done many one-off weekend clinics that have been of value. So its not where I spend my time or $. I do benefit from repetition and reminding until I can truly feel something and understand how I got it. Training to me is partially a relationship situation and not sure that any clinician can reach that stage in 2 days.
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Yep. You would think that some of us BTDT ammies - now with nice horses and the means to buy a lot of lessons/training etc - would be an attractive proposition as customers. But I think the situation you describe is common; they want you to lease something (or buy something) further along while they train the one you already have, instead of training you ON the one you have so you can learn more about bringing that one along. Or they want to hand you to the assistant or whatever.
I do think it can be very difficult to find someone who wants to train an amateur at home, regardless. It’s less convenient to have to drive around to different places, for sure. But I don’t know that it would be substantially different if you boarded, particularly if the board situation is a money loser. (And I think most pros are afraid that if they charged what they really “needed” for board they’d be at too much of a competitive disadvantage compared to cheaper places. The whole “work that is invisible” problem applies unfortunately.)
I really don’t know how much of an appetite there is to cultivate the kind of fun/lucrative client that you (and I) can be. I mean, I have retired my starter dressage fellow and now have two pretty nice purpose bred dressage horses that are working at third level. I am nobody’s idea of a superstar but I am a competent rider with a nice facility and the means to train and show and so on. The one I’ve had for 5 years now I brought up from a 4 year old and have done all the showing on has an average of around 67-68% and plenty of scores in the 70s at the A shows, so we’re not going to embarrass anybody. The other one hasn’t shown yet (darn this COVID thing) but I took him to FL to train this winter and he was terrific. You’d think we’d represent the kind of clients in high demand. Go figure.
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This doesn’t make any sense. Dressage is 100% about the horse. It is about training and gymnasticizing the horse’s body to the best of its ability. Focusing on the rider and perfecting the height of your post and the perfect position of your hands does nothing to teach you how the horse should feel and how to develop the timing/feel that your particular horse needs.
People will argue me on this point, but “focusing on position” is a waste of time because it takes you away from the hard stuff and allows you to waste time working on the easy stuff. You can sit straight all you want, but if you can’t feel the moment that you need to ask for a change or the second before the horse is going to get a little low and needs a balancing half halt, or when you have too much angle in the shoulder-in, it doesn’t matter how perfect your position is. However, those other things are hard to learn so it’s easy to be the “amateur friendly” trainer who says “we’ll just work on your position” when you’re still riding totally ineffectively because they are two separate but related things.
I ride with a BNT who is an excellent producer of horses. He has a million different ways to show the horse exactly what you want and get it from them in a positive way. He does harp on me to not cheat and to sit the trot more, but he has never wasted time niggling about my position unless the position influences the movement and I need to do a little more or a little less or something a little differently.
He has very little patience for people who sit real pretty but the horse is behind the leg or not reaching enough or is chucking a hip to the outside. He’s right, because that does matter a lot more in the overall development of the horse and rider.
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I think you have underestimated the sophistication of all that counts as “equitation.”
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I wholeheartedly disagree with these sentiments. Time is never wasted working on the basics in horse or rider. For the horse, quality and gymnasticing comes from working on the basics over and over - doing every transition properly, finding the right rhythm, picking apart the proper bend etc. The upper level movements are all based on the basics. Changes not working - go fix your canter. Piaffe/Passage not working, go fix the throughness and the response to your half halts and the quickness of the hind.
For the rider, you can’t feel properly if you can’t sit halfway properly. When you can’t sit with a modicum of proper alignment, or carry your hands independently of your body, you have to resort to larger, harsher aids because you won’t have the finesse to influence the horse subtly. And how on earth can you feel the proper balance if you are not balanced yourself, or hanging on with a death grip because you never bothered to work on your position.
In any case - in regards to the Steinberg article, I agree with him. I also think that we have such a culture of arm chair critics looking to pick apart any flaw, that people are afraid to make mistakes and to learn, and they certainly don’t want to open up their clients or themselves to that sort of criticism. It’s easy to forget that the act of learning means that there will be imperfect moments - you have to try something new or exaggerate something or you may accidentally pull too hard or whatever. People should not have to be afraid of the learning process and BNTs shouldn’t have to be afraid to say the wrong thing.
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Jeremy is spot on. It is very difficult to find a good trainer for the amateur rider. Someone just starting does not know what they don’t know and so it is a matter of luck and trial and error in the US. In other countries beginners learn basics in group lessons on school horses and have to pass a test before they can enter a show.
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I disagree with the statements here about “position”.
One of the biggest lessons I learned from my dressage instructor (who competed successfully at GP) was:" If the horse isn’t doing it (whatever “it” is) right check your position.Are you straight? Are you balanced? Are your legs in the right position? Are your hands in the right position?" 9 time out of 10, once I checked my position, the horse started doing “it” right.
This instructor also believed in making the most of the horse you have. She told me honestly that my horse would never get above a 7 on gaits, and would always have difficulty with medium (or extended) trot. None the less she helped me train her to competing successfully at second level, and schooling all the third level movements. But she really didn’t care about my show RESULTS, or whether I actually showed or not. Only about whether we were improving.
I am sure there are plenty of trainers like the ones described in the article. But there certainly are instructors who care more about teaching/training results than showing results.
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I think riding effectively requires an effective position. A good instructor teaches that. BTW, Jeremy Steinberg totally teaches people to have effective positions. As it happens, an effective position looks pretty damned elegant, too.
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I have seen ammies’ equitation get worse through dressage lessons.
They learn to balance on the reins, lean back, kick at every stride. By and large they and their horses plateau.
My own coach is a stickler for equitation, and everything she insists on actually affects the horse under you. I had an ahah moment last year when I found that if I engaged my core I could get a reliable square trot halt out of schoolmaster mare and if I had a relaxed core she fell out in the halt.
Leg seat and hand position does affect the horse dramatically and good equitation lessons are not about nitpicking externals but rather working on the basics.
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That’s a really important “eye opener” you pointed out. It’s one Steinberg points out and discusses as well: What ammies need in trainers are, first and foremost, teachers rather than those who teach as a matter of unfortunate necessity. He’s a good and, it would appear, happy teacher. He also knows how he’d like to be a consumer of instruction (see his short discussion of his experience with his cello teacher).
I’m fussy about this because I used to teach at the college level (and won some prizes at it; I didn’t suck). You could find lots of profs at those R-1 universities where I worked rolling their eyes at having to teach. But being on both sides of a syllabus (and having taught horses for a decade before I ever taught my first undergrad anything), I learned a lot about better and worse teaching talent. Truly, some people who are not conscious of how they learned are not very good at it, so I can imagine they’d find the job a PITA.
But everyone paying for instruction deserves someone who is good at teaching (as well as the subject or process or skill he/she is teaching) and who doesn’t resent the job.
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AMEN!! Position DOES count for a lot, just ask a trained horse that’s popping changes all over the place on you. It is NOT sitting pretty, it’s the small movements that you may not see but it’s there!
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