Will Faeber's Method?

[goldenstirrup]

For those of you who are familiar with Will Faeber’s training techniques, why do you like or dislike them? Have they worked for you and your horse?

In his videos of ArtToRide on YouTube, he seems to make sense, teaching a horse to relax and work over their back so they can build muscle and learn to carry themselves by shortening and lengthening the frame without loosing consistency. I have also heard that his methods are controversial.

I don’t want to waste months trying out his method only to get nowhere with a young horse, so I’d like to know what other people think. Would I be better off using the dressage training scale? TIA

[Equibrit]

His competitive record; http://www.centerlinescores.com/Rider/Details/31189

[Scribbler]

I also work in a system that emphasizes stretching to the bit. At one point I watched several WF videos with interest. From what I saw he didn’t have a lot of tools in his kit for getting this done other than riding endlessly on a loose rein. And he couldn’t usually get the horse to open at the pole. He was reschooling horses messed up in bad versions of dressage but they tended to stay rolled under and behind the bit even when they went low and the voice over on the video said they had an open poll.

Disappointing.

Btw when you are watching videos trust your own eyes over the voiceover every time!

[NSC_Los_Angeles]

I find his stuff has limited utility, but his technique has been helpful for 1. helping a green rider understand contact with the outside rein by creating a comfortable, simple way for she and her horse to connect over the back at the walk, and 2. the grazing position at the walk was very useful for rehabbing a horse with SI trauma, though as the person above commented you have to take great care to make sure the poll opens and I don’t think Faerber really talks about that.

For a young horse, if the horse is sound and simply in need of training, I would not give any consideration to Faerber’s stuff whatsoever, in fact I’d be a bit concerned to ride a young horse on a floppy rein as he does, I’d rather have that young horse connected in a genuine stretch so s/he doesn’t loose balance and stumble.

[caper]

Those are dreadful scores. That speaks volumes.

[ToN_Farm]

@caper

Those are dreadful scores. That speaks volumes.

They are not ‘dreadful’.
I’m going to come to this guys defense here. Those scores were from 1995 and anyone that has been
around for a while knows that things were different then in the scoring. Believe it or not, there was a time when a 60% was a good score.

Also, there are MANY instructors out there teaching that have not even shown 3rd level. There are people right on this foum that probably ride with trainers that have no show credentials or low level credentials. Are all of you training with someone that has good FEI scores?

I don’t think much of this guy’s work, but I haven’t seen him do anything abusive and he just may be able to
help some newbie that has a horse going around with his head in the air.

Does it make you all feel good when you ridicule someone’s show scores? Think about how you would feel.

[Scribbler]

It really depends what a trainer is claiming to offer. If he is advertising that he’ll get his students winning at Grand Prix, yes you’d want someone with an active showing life. But I think WF positions himself as a young horse starter and retrainer problem solver for all disciplines and if he has a knack for that his show scores don’t matter.

[NJRider]

Ahhhh…the late '90’s was when he was suspended/reprimanded by the USEF for abuse. This was way back when you got the Equestrian magazine in the mail and it was listed in the back. He was not far from our area and ever so briefly considered by our club for a clinic.

[Foxtail]

There is some merit in asking a horse to stretch so low. Namely that when the neck is below a certain point, the nuchal ligament takes over supporting the back instead of muscle, and the back is raised “mechanically,” so to speak. The back is actually designed to be supported like that while grazing, so it’s a very low effort way of bringing the back up, something the horse can maintain for a long time without getting tired.

I believe Anja Beran talks about the merits of training like this, especially for horses with weak backs and horses with poor prior training. However the caveats to this method are that the rider has to ride a fine, fine line between the horse going forward enough to remain in a horizontal balance (which is really quite hard to do with the neck so low), and not so forward that the horse dumps itself on its forehand. The other stipulation is that the neck must come up by degrees as the horse gets stronger. Working with the neck so low is not a long term solution. It is simply a way to teach a spoiled horse to begin to stretch properly into the contact while removing the variable of also asking for correct muscular work, or to begin to strengthen the back of a horse with significant conformational defects.

This method takes a hell of a lot of tact, and it’s never the end goal; the neck needs to come up properly as soon as the horse is able. From what I’ve seen of Faeber’s work, that’s where it goes completely off the rails.

[Kolsch]

I too have read other, reputable accounts of taking the horse that low for an extended period of time to develop a very weak back. And if I read it correctly, it even mentions that a period of OTF low is to be expected in the beginning and to wait it out. Then of course, everything is brought back up again. Technically, I’d hazard a guess that any horse that “needs” to be ridden that way is probably still going to have a hard time coming back up correctly, and I wouldn’t be quite so quick to fault the rider.
But, I’ve never done it myself because thats exactly what scares the crap out of me. I just can’t imagine them ever wanting to come up again and that confusion would ensue.

[Scribbler]

@NJRider

Ahhhh…the late '90’s was when he was suspended/reprimanded by the USEF for abuse. This was way back when you got the Equestrian magazine in the mail and it was listed in the back. He was not far from our area and ever so briefly considered by our club for a clinic.

Well let’s hope then that he has gone on a different journey in the last 20 years and learned a different way of being in the world. Perhaps his frustrations with the limits of what he was doing with show horses led him to figure out how to solve some problems. I’m being generous here of course it’s a red flag, but I’d want to know the details of the original charge and see his work in person before I d make up my mind based on that.

But as I said I don’t think he really had the horses stretch with an open poll so I feel like he has only has part of the picture. And equally important how does he ride when it is time to lift the head?

[Glyphica]

But does he ever ride ANY horses up? Sure, I can see why some horses may need this low riding for a while, but all the videos I see of him riding or teaching, the horses are always snuffing the dirt.

Does anyone know any details about the abuse charge?

[NSC_Los_Angeles]

I’d like to hear about the abuse charge too. The porn is fine, I won’t judge someone for their weird peccadilloes but the abuse part is something I’d like to hear more about.

[GoneAway]

I was going to avoid commenting, but then thought this might be useful to others.

I ran across the WF/Art2Ride stuff on this forum a couple years ago. At the time, I was working with my new OTTB gelding who needed to work more over the back and overall just loosen up. So I watched a few videos, subscribed to the channel, even submitted a video for critique at one point. Yeah, I bought into it. Didn’t do homework or know about the abuse charge. Also, I didn’t learn anything from his input that I didn’t already know. Come to think of it, I can’t recall a single piece of information he provided that was particularly useful, or that he hadn’t already repeated in someone else’s critique.

I come from a hunter background, but grew up with a fundamental knowledge and practical application of basic dressage, and used periodic stretching to help reschool and rehab many a poorly started horse, with good results. It was something I used to a point (and then bring the horse up), never before had I considered using it to the extent that WF preaches. Bottom line, my horse turned out fine, but spending months focusing on stretching probably didn’t get us any further along than a more conventional training model. My gelding seems to enjoy the stretching, and we still use it every ride as a break and to change the length of his outline. I think a lot of his development and the strong back he has is in part because some of that stretching contributed to a solid foundation. But so did the hill work, the long hacks, the ground pole exercises, the gridwork, a well-fitted saddle…

Bottom line: don’t give this man your money. This is his “method” at work:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83jYtsPHFxI

Another COTHer pointed that out to me back in the day, and this video says a lot. If someone can explain why WF’s shoulder blades are almost touching the horse’s back I’d love to know.

Stretching is good. It has its time and place, and usefulness. It is a valuable tool and a stepping stone, but not the end goal. I don’t subscribe to some of the theories I’ve seen on this forum that a horse has to be 2nd/3rd level in order to properly and usefully stretch. I’ve seen it work wonders on horses of all ages, shapes, and levels of training. But WF’s problem appears to be that it’s his one tool in his toolbox. I looked on that YouTube channel yesterday and some folks from a couple years ago are now “associate trainers” and still doing the same stuff with the same horses. WF offers some passionate discussion about the state of dressage and tells people THIS is the one thing that will fix it. And they buy it. And then they do endless loops in the arena with their horse’s nose in their dirt, and end up going nowhere anyway. It’s just taking advantage of people who don’t know any better.

[goldenstirrup]

Thank you all for helping me not fall into his trap! I now see that he has had some of these horses in rehab for 5+ years and hasn’t gotten any further than long and low.

[Plainfield]

Fraud, fraud, fraud. One trick pony. Kicked out of Del Mar Horsepark, Valenti Estate, etc etc etc. for abuse. Very disliked in this area, so has to take his schtick on the road. The horses never progress, they never go up, watch the vids of the horses after years of this. Temper and impatience loading a young horse resulted in death of horse. Many witnesses. Blamed the horse, of course. The video of Miracle jumping is really awful IMO. SoCal has a huge number of ex clients who fell for the “I am the virtual Son of Nuno and I am the answer to All Of The Problems In Modern Dressage Training” schtick and their horses went lame or the people finally figured out that he was full of crap. He also misrepresents the actual backgrounds of the “wrecked by current methods” horses…he makes every horse sound like it was at deaths door till he came along and saved it. This is just baloney, one of his many confabulations. He tends to attract people who don’t know the industry, don’t know how easy it is to check peoples bona fides. And just watch the vids of his riding and students. Pogo sticks, hands all over the map, behind the motion. Not to mention he is an obnoxious personality, rude, loud, offensive, creepy sex talk and innuendo. No thanks.

There is no Master Horseman designation, conferred by anybody. Its made up, like most of what else he says.
Stretching is good. Relaxing and engaging the back is good.

I defy anyone to find a video of Nuno riding in the A2R manner, or espousing this ‘work’.

He has a band, Cathouse Thursday. His 'recording studio" is Topless Records. Hes just a creep. If his horse work had some redeeming factor that would be one thing; there are a lot of creeps in the horse industry >;-> But hes not a good enough horse person to mitigate the creep factor IMO.

If you want Classical, go to Legerete or similar. WF is so far from anything remotely classical it is not even funny.

[HicksteadFan]

I will be the odd woman out here and give my glowing review of Will and Art2Ride. I have a TB mare that I rode hunter/jumper for about 5 years before I learned of Art2Ride. I took me quite a while to figure it out; longer since I was away from my horse at school for 8 months of the year. But lunging and riding like this has done wonders for both my horse and I. From working in the stretch she has developed some great topline muscles, better than I see on most hunters and dressage horses. She doesn’t look like a body builder like Olympic horses because you do need to bring the horse up where it actually uses muscle rather than the position of its neck and hind legs; and we’re still working on that. However she has a nice triangular neck (compared to rectangular) with no dip in front of the withers and muscle all along her spine. Her butt is not as good because of poor back conformation. If you were just to look at her butt 3 years ago you would have thought she was starving because of the bone sticking out. Now it is nearly round. And this is mostly just from working in the stretch.

The way I understand it from Art2Ride and several other sources is that with the neck low, the nuchal ligament (runs from the back of the skull to back of the wither vertebrae) tightens and lifts the withers and front half of the back by pulling forwards. You ask the horse to step under itself with the hind legs which mechanically tilts the pelvis back to lift the rest of the back. This is why horses trained in rolkur often have nicely developed front ends and poorly developed hind ends. The front half of their back is in fact round but the back half is not because they only take tiny steps with the hind legs and they may not be taught to reach under.

To clear up some questions about raising the head: The horse ends up so light and sensitive to the bit that you simply raise your hands and shorten the reins appropriately. If the horse tries to lower its head again don’t let it. The horse learns quickly just to stretch into the amount of rein you give it. Like working on a stretchy trot circle in a dressage test. As you let the reins out, the horse takes up the slack by stretching down. When you shorten the reins the horse should still stretch into contact but the head is higher and the reins much shorter. I easily go back and forth between the stretch and working frame as I (and my horse depending on how she’s working) please. We have the same quality of contact either way. “The weight of the rein” as Will says.

I had never felt a round back before using this method (I know, sad considering all the horses I rode). This isn’t the only method I use but I do love it and will use it with all the horses I train. The horse actually learns on its own on the lunge (just a halter/cavesson and lunge line needed) if you give it time and reward at the right time. I think it gives a great foundation for no matter what discipline the horse is going to be used for. It is very easy for the horse and handler/rider to learn. And the horse does like it since less muscle is needed to start. So that’s my two cents. Hope it was helpful or at least somewhat interesting.

[Escada]

You may want to check out my post asking about him. There is some info in the responses that you might want to read.

[Kolsch]

From the very last chapter in “The Principles of Riding” 4. Training Horses with Bad Conformation and Difficult Temperament

"Bad Neck
An incorrectly muscled neck can be reshaped through long-term, specialized training. Sometimes the correct use of various auxiliary reins (side reins, running reins) can be helpful.
A badly set head will leave very little room between jaw bone and neck muscle. Under no circumstances must the rider try to put such a horse on the bit, but must first ride him in a long and low outline, until a better position of the lower neck muscle is achieved."

​​​​Italics mine. Isn’t that what’s being discussed here?

[luvmyhackney]

It definitely has its place in building up horses back and getting them relaxed. I’ve used a similar program on multiple horses that have a low back/lordosis problem. Their back came up multiple inches and made them much stronger.

It’s not the end goal but you gotta build the muscle to give them the ability to lift the back with a rider.