It is a problem if “amateur” means crappy rider (and to be simultaneously disdained and financially milked). Back in yestercentury and also (mainly) in Hunter World, there was the “good amateur,”-- a third category. She did spend some money, but she was also an older, usually life-long rider who was quite competent. She would buy nice horses, but also could ride her own relatively green ones and she showed in things like the Regular Working Hunters and definitely in the AO divisions when she had the horse.
In dressage world, I don’t remember quite the same “industrialized” amateur vs. pro divide. The dressage ladies I saw (in NorCal) did their own riding and training, but took clinics from a good pro who traveled around and would be in their neck of the woods, say, every other month.
FWIW, I don’t think the “trainer trains/rider rides” and those kinds of full care programs that move the HO to the sidelines has served clients well. It is a form of “industrial revolution” that stared in hunter world and has moved out to dressage land. It’s lamentable.
One problem I have noticed recently is that many people start riding with one person and stay with that person for the majority of their riding career. My childhood instructor admitted when she had nothing left to teach me. My equitation coach was open that she wouldn’t be the best fit for my move into the jumpers. My jumper trainer knew when she was out of her depths when I wanted to dabble in dressage.
The best trainers want you to learn from other trainers. They are ok with you trailering out to get some new experiences. They aren’t self-conscious and they don’t shut down your desire to learn.
I also think a lot of people don’t want to take the time to learn outside of lessons. Time is a precious commodity as an adult but watching other lessons is free. Watching videos on youtube is free. Watching your trainer ride their youngsters and competition horses is free. This is so so valuable and something I feel lots stop doing when they reach adulthood.
So so true. I was your typical eq teen for 3 years in a largish, regionally competitive program. We certainly didn’t learn to “sit pretty”. We were put on rank, new to the program lesson ponies and our lessons consisted of making these ponies go well and making it look nice. If you reduce that down, sure, you can call it “learning to sit pretty” when in actuality, we focused on correct, effective equitation. To me that means feeling the horse under you, anticipating actions and correcting quietly and calmly before an undesirable behavior happens. We rode schoolmasters to understand how something felt when it was done correctly. Then we applied that all on our equitation mounts.
At the end of the day, the goal is certainly to look like you are just sitting pretty. Correct equitation puts you in the position to understand what is going on underneath you and react before the average bystander can even tell something is happening. To the untrained eye, it looks like not much is happening. To those who have BTDT, you know how much is going on.
We don’t need to perpetuate it amongst ourselves though, do we? Because honestly, we’re the one’s doing it to ourselves (I’m to blame too). We could simply evolve to where our lexicon means good when referring to “amateur rider”.
Somebody already might have said this, but one thing I noticed when I went from dressage to hunters was the ease with which people accepted criticism. Someone would get done with a lesson or a round & say, “I need to quit doing that weird thing with my back–how should I fix it” or whatever. No tears, no drama, no sad face. It was as if the hunter system had shown people how to accept coaching, without seeing it as an attack on themselves or their horses.
But probably the difference had more to do with the quality of instruction than with the sport. I don’t know.
It surely shouldn’t. But I think more often the term amateur = “mark.”
I come from a very similar background to the one that @mvp mentioned. I was a lesson kid from a non horsey family who was a barn rat/WS for a bunch of different H/J trainers, then a polo groom (because that paid a lot better and let me, at 16 or so, buy a horse of my own and pay my board.) I’ve done the vet assisting thing, the BM thing, the grooming thing… all the great practical experiences you can get as a kid/young adult who wanted the riding instruction and exposure to horsemanship that I otherwise could not afford. One thing it taught me was that riding was a $$$ game.
Now I am a not-young amateur and having spent the better part of the last 3 decades of my life building a career that supports my horse habit, I am finally able afford all the stuff that my teenaged self used to dream about. Having been on the staff side of things, I know how to be a good customer; I may not ride the best but I am fairly competent, pay my bills on time, have some really nice, appropriate horses and the wherewithal to do something with them.
I have supported my trainers’ opportunities to train and show, paid for clinic opportunities, etc. I am a teachable student and do the homework. In return I expect that there will be reasonable communication, effective instruction and some professional regard for my business. It’s actually fairly shocking how difficult that is to find, and from talking to other amateurs, I know that this is unfortunately not a unique experience. Having also had some really great training situations, I also know how mutually beneficial and FUN those arrangements can be, and let’s face it, given how freaking expensive this sport is… I don’t think it is unreasonable to expect that it is, actually, going to involve some fun!
You just described me/where I come from. And you summed a part of learning how to take a riding lesson that I learned in Hunter World better than I did.
I finally found a great pro to help me because she can and does speak to how I’m using my body. I ask an instructor how to change my body if what I do in order to change the horse doesn’t work. I ride well enough, and my horse has been considered green enough, that I was left to my own devices a lot. I don’t think these instructors were taking my money and not bothering to give a useful riding lesson. Rather, they were doing that standard, rather collegial thing in dressage where the two people see and feel the horse and he’s the object of their changes and discussion. I’m very pleased with being the subject of the pro’s scrutiny along with my horse.
In defense of some trainers who don’t explicitly tell you what to do with your body, there are those who ask you to do things which fix body issues.
I’ve ridden with Alex Gerding probably close to 50 times, and he is absolutely brilliant for getting the rider correct without making it clear that’s what he is doing until the result is there. He also fixes lead changes with lateral work at a walk or other exercises which show he has a level of genius most of us don’t. For me, I was still having nerve damage problems on my left side, and especially on my super bendy, too big for me guy, Alex would have me do exercises like half pass until I started to lose my inside legs then leg yield the other way then back to half pass. Many other exercises helped my position as well. When a rider had a specific problem keeping them from being able to improve with an exercise he would address their position independently, but position fixes via exercises were quote common. Debbie McDonald gave a symposium here, and I saw her using many of the same techniques. For those of us who can turn ourselves into pretzels this is VERY helpful. Of course, Alex could only help me that way due to the instruction my trainer gave me to help my position prior to that.
Being teachable on horseback requires a certain humility. Humility is found in most children, then less and less in adults, since egos get in the way and surface politeness among adults creeps in to keep everyone (i.e. one’s clients) “happy.”
There was a notorious exercise my first riding instructor used on all of us: she placed a 4x6" sheet of paper between our knees and saddles, on each side. Then we had to do RISING TROT WITHOUT STIRRUPS. Whoever lost their sheets of paper had to end the lesson and cool down. The rider who was last on his/her horse could choose his/her mount for the next lesson. All of this on school horses. We had so much fun. Our legs were on fire from the soreness… for days. And while we feared our instructor’s harsh criticism — she was ruthless, old-school, eagle-eyed, totally blunt— we adored her, too. To get praised by her for something meant the world.
The clients I have seen and worked for with their super expensive imported horses would be offended by that kind of instruction. Age and egos are in the way. They are even offended by riding in a full arena. For their lessons they assume the entire arena will be theirs. Whatever happened to 10 riders schooling their horses all at once and knowing the rules of right of way in the arena? All of that has to be learned and practiced… and for that we need flexible egos and firm instructors who know what they are doing.
Children are also inexperienced, immature, and easily manipulated. Is the average adult client failing at being teachable because he or she is egomaniacal, or is the average adult client failing at being teachable because he or she has well defined personal and professional boundaries, and those boundaries are being transgressed by instructors whose sense of professionalism does not line up with the expectations of the adult amateur who makes a living in the broader world?
I took a single lesson with an instructor my friend was working with a few years back. If I had taken the attitude she had with me on any of the clients at my job, my boss would have handed my tuchus to me on a platter. Of course we were both frustrated during the lesson. She couldn’t deal with a student not prostrating themselves in front of her, and I had the gall to expect to be treated with professional dignity.
You must be young or someone who never rode with the old cavalry guys that came out of the military after WWII. They were not “rude”…they were just very blunt.
I was helping a friend with some problems on a difficult horse. Her sisten-in-law came to watch. A few days later my friend reported back that her SIL had commented to her how she would not let anyone talk to her like I spoke to my friend. All I was doing was telling her what the horse was doing, what I suggested to fix and where she needed to change something.
With all that, I have also seen some BNT / BNR instructors who are arrogant SOB’s from whom I would never take a lesson. But that was obvious just talking to them…I didn’t have to spend money on a lesson.
Another time, I also took a lesson from an instructor highly recommended by an international rider as someone he took lessons with. This trainer was rude to the barn staff as I walked my horse in from the trailer. That should have been a hint. He was rude to my horse, showed no empathy when the horse was trying to do a movement. When he asked if he could ride my stallion to show me something, I said no. I paid up and left. It was expensive, I got nothing from it.
Hmmmm. Children are also open-minded, while many adults have firm expectations — of themselves and others — that get in the way of simply learning humbly. That’s why pro sports are started at young ages, and that’s why all forms of athleticism are, if possible, begun early. And if one starts late (as in, say, ballet) one still needs to accept how classical techniques have been and are being taught. Ego needs to take a backseat to open-mindedness.
That said, I’m against rudeness in every regard but believe that politeness (to keep clients happy) doesn’t work well in teaching dressage, which is a systematic training of rider and horse that requires straightforward language. For many US adult beginners the straightforward language comes across as blunt, and blunt equals rude in their eyes.
Equestrian culture has not been shaped for the better by continuing to ape at “military values.” The smart officers who transitioned to teaching civilians learned to drop those pretenses very quickly. To quote Littauer:
I do not think we were very good teachers during the first two or three; it was hard in the beginning both to forget the old indoctrination and to adjust ourselves to the needs of civilian amateurs. From the very first, however, we were blessed with success…[O]f course, the fact that we were willing to discard fond memories of our army days and to try hard to adapt our teaching to the very different conditions of life here, and to think independently about riding, helped to create a lively atmosphere in the school.
My other sport is one where screwing up can and will immediately put you and those around you in life or death situations, and though there is often a seriousness and a straightforwardness in training, there is also a level of civility and professionalism that many riding instructors don’t possess. We’re now two generations out from the old cavalry guys, and I can tell you that my experiences with their students have shown time and time again that separating straightforwardness from rudeness is too difficult a task for most instructors to accomplish. And that continuing to justify that behavior by couching it as a fundamental value of the sport is at best holding the sport back, and at worst contributing to its decline.
The most effective instructor I ever had studied at a teacher’s college before returning to horses. If you can’t, from that sentence alone, figure out why she was the most effective instructor I have ever had, then you’re contributing to the kinds of conservatism that are failing horses and riders.
And just as a postscript, I have worked with an incredible number of veterans, active duty servicemen and women, and police officers, who have served across the globe, in the course of my time in the shooting sports. No, they’re generally not rude. But of course, the nature of the shooting sports seems to impart a level of professionalism not often found in other arenas. Perhaps I’ve just been spoiled.
Well, i’m not young, and i don’t mind blunt. i totally appreciate direct. But I don’t like to be lorded-over. I will give deference if and when it is earned. Until that time, i will treat you as an equal and expect the same. Unless you are a child. i will have a really hard time treating someone 40 years younger as an equal.
I’ve found a new coach. The last one omg… Didn’t even bother to meet her. My farrier was here Thursday and i learned from him that this ‘coach’ / ‘trainer’ is in her 20s! Twenties!!! I’m afraid that’s a hard no for me.
(Her inexperience already evidenced itself when she reviewed the videos of the mustang mare i sent her and declared her to be crippled and would need a vet’s exam/clearance before she would take her into ‘her program’. (i made a post about that called “Dressage prospect: Bunny hops”)
Also, do coaches make it a habit to hop on your horse and show you what they mean? I would say: “No.” now, maybe someday i would…but not until (or IF) trust with me is established…and with me, that’s not easy and takes a long time. They can show me on their own horse.
when i was a kid taking riding lessons with my sister(double rein saddlebreds and morgans that we leased) there was this one guy…little mustachioed shrill and MEAN as a snake riding instructor…named: Mr Dace. My mother was always deferential …no, obsequious! to him. Her behavior toward the guy always baffled me. I didn’t see why she was so nice?! Don’t remember his qualifications but he had a trophy room/office filled with photos and loot (we had to go into to get book/and tack instruction on really cold cold days). There was one day my mom had him come over for afternoon cakes…she brought out the good china and silver and treated him like royalty. In my whole life, i’ve swayed the opposite direction with horse trainers. pendulum swinging the other way etc.
LOL, well I’m 70 so just about everybody is younger than I am. My current coach/trainer/instructor is probably in her late 20’s, younger than my kids, and we get along well. I met her when we were both volunteers at a local show. She seems to like my off breed mare and cheer my slow progress. At least I don’t think she gets up of a morning and says to her DH, “OMG I’ve got to go to Carol’s today”
My absolute worst experience was with a clinician about my age. I won’t hold youth against someone, if they don’t hold my age against me.
The difference between teachability in jumpers and dressage is this.
If your position is wrong over fences you will fall on your head and may die.
If your position is wrong in dressage your horse may be a bit heavy or BTV but that may have little effect on your scores. You are much less likely to
”‹end up being carried into an ambulance on backboard.
