You know your method has a problem when you tell people they have to “delve into it” to understand it.
a method, by and of itself, should produce results that are easy to understand.
it has nothing to do with tests or whatever - it has to do with understanding what a horse, properly ridden, should look like.
if someone tells you that you need extensive training to understand what the end product should be, that is the reason the “method” is not successful.
i really have no dog in this fight, I just really loathe trainers who spend four years teaching someone how to counter canter wrong and disguise it under the guise of it being part of some system.
The link with the “rescue horse” (FB with pictures of a chestnut paint) was not the same horse as shown in the video. Maybe they’re all rescue horses, but at some point I give the whole rescue-horse schtick a strong case of side-eye.
All the vids I’ve seen of this school look pretty similar. Maybe they’re all hiding their best work at home (I know I leave mine at home when I head to the shows), or maybe there’s a simpler explanation: this is the type of work they do.
Thank you for your comment. I got a little frustrated with the tone of that posters comment. It is not a “wrong” counter canter, it is different. And it is not new. Some of the classisists use it. What I wanted to say was, we used the shallow loop, first in trot, then in canter, to teach the horse to bend and change the bend in his body properly. Normally, when riders ride counter canter they bend their horses to the outside, making it difficult for the horses to keep a good balance and rhythm as it causes the hindquarters to leave the track. Legèreté teaches the bend to the inside (of the arena) which as it turns out is easier for a horse to understand and execute in the beginning. Think about it for a moment. But indeed one really has to delve into this method in order to see that this method of teaching counter canter is effective for some horses as it was for my own. And all the exercises that come before counter canter are preparing the horse to better balance himself, by himself with little help from the rider.
Many of the exercises are different from what we see in the rectangle. At the end of the day I am having a discussion, thats all. You don’t have to agree, just participate as you are doing.
and herein lies the rub! The end results of mainstream dressage training and Legèreté dressage training are different, so of course Legèreté riders like it and non-Legèreté ones don’t.
My question is why there’s more anger over the differences between two styles of dressage than, say, dressage versus jumping training? I guess it’s because both claim to be ‘real’ dressage or whatever, and think the other is tantamount to horse abuse.
As for my experience with Legèreté, I love it. My horses have certainly benefited from me becoming an immensely better rider thanks to several Legèreté trainers.
Then what gives this trainer the right to comment on “some modern trainers and clinicians?”
and if theres only two “licensed” trainers in the US, how could you work with “several?”
never mind the idea idea of being “licensed” by some random organization. Maybe I should start the Lauren method of being a pretty basic adult amateur and start holding exams in it.
I wasn’t talking about the counter canter. I didn’t even see it the first time I watched the video. Just saw it now - that is most definitely not what I am referring to as far as the “half passes.” I’m talking about during the trot work- she does shoulder in and haunches in and then something that looks like a wannabe half pass.
We can agree to disagree about her hands. I’m glad you have found a system that works for you and your horse. I am not arguing that. I’m saying that the rider whose video you posted is not what most people would consider to be worthy of the title of trainer.
MTA: The “half pass” work I’m referring to starts at 3:36 and the other direction at 4:16
I find it interesting that all the people who are “…yawn…bored…” with the walk work don’t see that the work is composed of classic exercises for mobilization of the shoulders and mobilization of the the haunches.
Go back and look at the walk work. You will see turn on the forehand, turn on the haunches, shoulder-in, haunches out, haunches-in walking pirouettes…etc. going into forward walk as transitions within the walk.
The rider in the video is asking the horse to bend and shift its balance forward and back and side to side then to move on. She is asking horse to be in balance as it shifts its movement from the haunches to the shoulders and from side to side all while maintaining contact and balance.
I have no horse in this race as I have never taken any lessons with a “Legerate” trainer…
The exercises and tools taught by the Legerete people are basic training exercises that have long been used in the French and Iberian training traditions.
I have been able to get an “old school” (17-3hh/ 1700 lb) Hanoverian to become light, and have been able to take a horse that ducks behind the bridle to accept contact using these approaches.
She’s not a bad rider but I’d never take instruction from her and certainly wouldn’t pay for it. I can believe that she is good at helping beginners to dressage and riding. I could say more but I don’t feel she deserves heavy handed criticism just because the OP picked the wrong crowd.
My impression is that classic French dressage is fundamentally different from classic German dressage from the basics to the philosophy. The two schools barely seem to speak the same language.
There is no “ideal and universal” dressage with the training pyramid the equivalent of Moses’s tablets of stone; that is a principle in German dressage. French dressage comes from a very different place and mindset and culture. Since they start from such different basic principles and philosophies, it is almost impossible to synthesize them, and horses trained by the French methods don’t look like horses trained in the German method.
The idea that all dressage horses should look like German horses because German dressage is the only “real” dressage look seems to me to discount centuries of non-German horse work.
I believe that it is only in the last fifty years or so that German dressage became so dominant.
I have had this discussion with Portuguese, Spanish and French trainers. The general opinion is that the Iberian/Frenchtradition differs from the German because fundamentally they started with a different type of horse.
And yes, the German marketing machine post-WWII managed to take over competition dressage that pre-WW-II had been won by Sweden, France, Switzerland. So that is what the current “eye” is used to seeing.
One Spanish rider, from the Real Escuela in Jerez, said the Americans can only conceptualize dressage in the context of a competition movement.
With regards to the video of the Legerete trainer, this rider is “training” a very normal/average horse. This is in contrast to the video with Ingrid Klimke that shows off Damon Hill, her internationally competitive stallion.
Here is a publicly published video of a horse that has had major issues with getting his changes especially behind. Mr. Karl is having her do an exercise at the canter with the bend to the contrary side of the lead . Read the commentary she wrote then watch the video. https://m.facebook.com/story.php?sto…91417177589389
Again you can totally disagree, and coming from a Germanic dressage background, you will, I am not saying this is better, I am simply generating discussion. Thx
The comment about the rider from Jerez made me go dig up my photos from the school in Jerez. When I was there, I found that, like anywhere, there are good moments, bad moments, and I didnt notice any Legerete techniques if that’s what the implication was? Great moments were easily identified as great, without having to think what school of training they followed.
here are some moments I took myself while watching their warmup.
Thx so much for you comment Viney and yes totally agree…
Ok this discussion is starting to get i interesting now thx in part to your post as well as Pluvinels.
The old classists in German dressage, think von Neindorf, Schultheis, even Klimke (dad), among others, practised a dressage using many of the exercises found in classical French dressage from Dupary de Clam to Baucher to l’Hotte to Decarpentry.
Many of these exercises have completely disappeared in the dressage lessons of today.
Dressage in Germany began gradually changing after the first world war. For example we saw excellence trainers like Lt-colonel Gerhardt and his confreres performing a dressage light yet a little more compressed. Things evolved even further. Then we began seeing a very different path in the eighties and early nineties with the advent of training methods such as rollkur and the like.
Légèreté is a very different method than what we find in the rectangle of today. However it has some valuable, IMO, exercises that even competitors can gleen and put to work to improve the balance, solve issues or encourage lightness in their horses.
It is a mistake to think that it labels itself as the be all and end all.
It doesn’t. As in all methods, some followers are egotistical in expressing thier opinions of its benefits.
Me, not. But boy do I use its principles to better my particular horse with his past issues.
Thank you for your comment teamfire. Indeed, the horses in your photos are a little compressed for my liking. However the Jerez school brings in many different clinicians most coming from a competition background where this position is totally acceptable.
It really is too different schools of thought. But at the end of the day, all I’m saying is; the competition style of riding and instruction was not working for my big heavy, on the forehand WB. Légèreté has. Thats it!
Thanks for your comment Soloudinhere. She is not randomly commenting on modern trainers in general, only those who use less that kind methods. There are many, for example, in my area english and western who run horses ragged in a round pen before working then yet another 2 hours. Or those who use rollkur in the western world where it is really popular. Etc…
Légèreté is not a random method. It has been around since the early 2000’s. It came to the US in 2013. No it is not the Landgestüt Warendorf. But it is a legitimate and recognized method in Europe.
And herein lies the biggest difference; movement. The big expressive movement makes everything look more spectacular and pleasing to the eye. So true, whereas most in the Légèreté school here in the US, have regular horses.
