Thank you! I do enjoy that group as well but agree that it’s very basic. But I do love how it’s free to all and nice to moderators seem. I’m not a part of Celeste’s group as of yet though.
I was drawn back to this thread as I was reading a blog post about someone who joined her FB group, mentioning that Celeste was clear that her work was trademarked so they can’t discuss any of it.
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I was drawn back to this thread as I was reading a blog post about someone who joined her FB group, mentioning that Celeste was clear that her work was trademarked so they can’t discuss any of it.
I’m glad you revived it because I was overdue for a little dose of outrage 
It’s a shame because I’m sure there is a level of validity to these biomechanics-based programs. It just makes it hard to take it seriously with all the grifters out there.
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What blog post reviewed it?
Grifter indeed…
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Is that common? It seems odd to me.
You can’t talk about it? How can that ever be enforced?
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LOL.
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There’s a blog post about it here.
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I’m in the group, and I’ve seen some guidance from Celeste about sharing her materials, but I think the blog poster has it a little too simplified. I’m not a lawyer, but my interpretation wasn’t that you can’t talk about it (because like another person said, how can that be enforced? That’s ridiculous on its face), but that trainers in the group can’t advertise or promote that they are using her method unless they’ve been certified by her. That’s pretty standard and fair, I think. Because there are a lot of trainers in the group, I think it was smart of her to post it.
But, because I am not a lawyer, I think it’s not clear to me (or other non-lawyers in the group) how much we should be sharing, even if we’re not claiming as trainers to use the BTMM. So I think folks err on the side of conservatism and don’t share much as a result 
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It’s the absolute hallmark of the Klassikal folks.
I haven’t seen a single photo from one of these clinics (lumping the general category together, not this clinician specifically) where a student is doing even third level. It’s generally intro and training level riders reinventing training level contact and doing lateral work at the walk. Spirithorse for example honestly believes his shuffling around at the slow jig is upper level dressage. The clinician usually doesn’t have a single rated dressage score, much less any decent ones at FEI level.
I tried out a legerete clinic once and the first thing the clinician did was take away any ability on my part to actually ride. First I had to get off entirely and move the bit around in the horses mouth from there so she could show me this revolutionary new way to pull on the rein. By the time I was allowed back on the horse, she unbuckled my reins because they weren’t physically long enough for me to hold my hands as high and as far apart as she wanted. I sh*t you not she hand me cantering a 20m circle in two point with my hands both above and further apart than my shoulders like I was singing along to the Village People. Oh ok, just ride like a 6’ tall flying squirrel in mid glide, you got it.
She tried to get me to attend one of the legerete clinics she went to to learn this mastery and they were over nine hundred dollars. $900+!! (To her credit, she has since quit legerete, moved south, and is clearly taking lessons from somebody decent now because her riding has visibly improved.)
As for body work gurus, I have had ye olde body work master sagely explain to me that I was riding all my horses wrong and they were all unbalanced. She took the liberty of assessing my personal horse in his stall without permission to come to this conclusion.
“Oh really?” I asked her. “My personal horse has exactly the same muscle problems as the horses I am training for other people?”
“Yes,” she solemnly explained. “The muscles don’t lie.”
Oh, well did the muscles perchance also explain that my personal horse is retired and I don’t ride him any more? You can tell that all the horses are ridden incorrectly but are unable to tell the difference between 5 horses in full work and the 1 that is retired? Wow, I guess the muscles sure left some information out!"
Needless to say this massage therapist couldn’t ride one side of first level but you know how it is. The muscles don’t lie. 
And then the western horsemanship master who astutely read my client’s horse and determined he “wasn’t ready to be in this environment” and recommended she do -you guessed it!- work at the walk. AYFKM this horse literally horseshowed in this very arena two weeks ago, jumped around, found eight, got his lead changes and a ribbon.
Are we noticing the common denominator here? It’s that the clinician/body worker has a limited understanding of how to actually ride themselves, so they bring all the horses and riders down to their level. Revolutionizing the world one walk circle at a time!
Meanwhile, these online materials which I’m sure are the usual unreadable pages and pages of mumbo jumbo with diagrams featuring 55 lines drawn on each horse plus diagrams of the foot falls etc etc we all know the drill are $150, and an actual clinic with a clinician that has an international record is $200.
Of course, I just tried to help fill an Anne Gribbons clinic that my wonderful vet bends over backwards to try and bring Anne to town once a year and it had to be cancelled because not enough people wanted to spend the whopping sum of $325 to ride with someone who was formerly the coach of the US Dressage team.
$325 to have the former coach of the US dressage time fly into your town and teach you an in person lesson? “My horse and I aren’t ready for that.” Oh ok, so your plan is to progress to the point you can someday take lessons by not taking any lessons. Got it.
$200 to have another clinician with an international resume (just not the actual Olympics) fly in and teach? “Hmmmmm that’s really a bit pricey.”
But $300 for someone with a pretty website to instruct you in body work via Skype (come on!!) and then have you do some mounted circles, well now that people will open their wallets for.
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I’ve seen it time and time again where (usually) middle-aged women become disillusioned by the fact that their confidence builder-type small horse is not flying up the levels with its less-than-stellar rider. Most often it’s because their trainer has them puttering around on the rail telling them the horse is on the forehand. And then they go to a clinic and the horse is on the forehand. No one wants to tell them their horse is built like a ramp but everybody’s allowed to say that the horse is on the forehand.
Then, a magical online trainer says they have the tools to get the horse off the forehand! They’re told constantly that being on the forehand is the problem, so if they can just get the horse off the forehand, they’ll be doing pirouettes and tempis in no time! Except that don’t forget it takes years and years for a horse to build up enough muscle to bring its poll above the withers. This lady is probably doing less harm than Will Faeber, but it’s the same scammy, scummy idea.
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It’s like Fight Club.
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OMG, I’m dead. 
I once audited a Legerete clinic (BTW, more expensive that auditing Hilda Gurney) and got bored and left after three rides. It wasn’t that bad, but it was like, the local trainer and a couple of her younger students getting lessons from the guru, and a bunch of older middle-aged ladies in the peanut gallery applauding and swooning over the clinician’s French accent.
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Quite honestly the ability to ride 2nd or 3rd level correctly means the rider needs to be at least as brave and confident to ride a given amount of equine energy and power as someone cantering a 3’ course. You need at least that much oomph in your canter to even come to the table.
If a rider would quake at the thought of doing a two point handgallop down the long side, nothing above 1st level is in the cards and never will be, regardless of how the horse is built.
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Based on what I have seen after you attend a Celeste lesson you realize that you have been riding wrong and making the muscles wrong and so you have to go back to in hand or walk work to fix that. This walk work can take months. According to the teaching, getting good scores at 3rd doesn’t mean the riding us correct.
I haven’t seen anyone at a finished stage of say back to 3rd with better scores so not sure if people never get to that point or what. But this is all based on the blogs as the training is all secret.
Clearly some people are showing 2nd or 3rd and are stuck because they have holes so maybe all these riders have training holes and have to bump all the way down to walking for months?
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I agree, but the magikal biomechanics people tend to prey on nervous middle aged women and their horses with little resources or whose resources haven’t told them what they want to hear. If they have resources and money, they buy a “better” horse who often ends up being ridden by the trainer.
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I think that is a big reason why many people who are fearful, whether they admit it or not, take refuge in programs that promote in-hand and walk work and become over-zealous and dismissive of programs that emphasize forward and impulsion. I fully believe that walk and in-hand are very valuable, but can be really limiting too, if one gets tunnel vision and their world contracts to only that. I jump a bit primarily just to force myself to put on my big girl britches (and it’s good for the horses too).
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For me it’s the jumping that really puts “forward” at the front of the list. It’s easy to traipse around on a slogging canter if it’s just on the flat, and if you’re riding alone there’s no one there to tell you that grass grows faster than you’re going.
Come to a 2’6" or better fence with that crap canter and the horse is either going to say “no” or it’s going to feel like absolute dog-poo. Suddenly, you MUST go forward in order for it to go well.
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There’s nothing that a timid middle aged amateur who is busy doing the Training
Level Olympics or perfecting the Klassikal Walk Work loves to shit on more than the hunters, but that easy, relaxed, rhythmical and going canter that is nailed to a metronome on a light contact with no pulling or grabbing or clinging on for dear life, and from which one could casually lope over a 3’6" oxer, is quite simply beyond the reach of the Permanently Training Level set.
If you’ve (general you) been doing Training Level for 40 years, this may be the time to consider for a moment taking an actual lesson, at a pace faster than walk, from somebody with an actual resume.
#justasuggestion
#ymmv
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https://www.instagram.com/reel/CjREhQlg-mD/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y= I ran across this on Instagram today. I’m not sure if the link will work or not here.
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He’s exhausted from shifting his weight back and forth? More likely he’s bored and frustrated while you… poke him in the armpit??
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