Oakley Diaries - 27: April 2016 Thoughts

My dad used to say that anyone who cannot explain what they are doing so well that anyone can understand really doesn't know what they are doing.

No. That is wrong.

There are a great many people who know very well what they are about, yet who cannot explain anything very well at all. Knowing what you are doing and being able to explain it are two entirely different skill sets. Being able to teach is a skill that does not come from merely being able to do something well, and there are a lot of very good riders, with years of experience, who have written books and essays that are pretty much useless for a novice rider, or even an intermediate rider and only make sense when someone reaches a certain skill level, at which point you don't need them, except, perhaps, as an interesting read. I've recently culled some books from my library and consigned them to the paper recycling bin.

The problem with these various books is not that they were wrong, per se, but they were useless and I do not need useless books cluttering up my shelves. They were useless because, as discussions of riding and horse skills, novices cannot learn from them: the discussion is too subtle and there is no practical explanation in them about how to accomplish anything. I know, I've tried to learn from these books, I've tried to put their advice into practice and for the most part ended up frustrated with a confused horse. (I wish that Hermione Granger or Harry Potter could cast a spell to make such books and essays invisible until one is capable of understanding them... oh, well...) It is all well and good to talk about cycles of energy flowing and 'holding the energy in the hands' and about half-halts to re-balance the horse, but now that I finally understand what they are talking about... I don't need it: I already know what they're talking about. But I sure as [expletive (deleted)] did NOT learn anything from these essays and books about exactly how to do a half-halt or how to 'gather energy in my hands' because in none of them is there any practical description of how to accomplish these feats. In practical terms, I needed writers who describe exactly what motions are involved in terms that I could put into practice. The majority don't do that. Moreover, many of the books have all sorts of exercises, but there is little obvious progression from one exercise to the next. Maybe I'm different, but apparently when I learn something, I like to learn bit by bit, to start out with some very simple things and build incrementally, gradually adding in and putting more things together, until the gross become graceful and subtle. Eventually, I found someone to teach me all this, step by step, with clear, straightforward explanations and many, many lessons, each building on the previous lesson, and at my own pace, so I could assimilate the information and make sure Oakley understood it, too, before moving onto the next video.

I spent a year watching videos and learning how to train horses and gradually training my horse. My own riding improved noticeably and quite dramatically. Not only did I re-train my horse to behave and to listen and respect me, I learned how to make any horse respect me. I now know how horses think, how they see the world and I can communicate effectively with them and have developed my seat, my posture, and my ability to give clear, precise aids at exactly the right time. All learned one bit at a time, using a precise sequence of lessons. It turns out, I learn best that way. I get the impression a lot of people do, maybe others pick things up differently, but that is how I work.

I have just spent the last year gradually working through an excellent book 101 Jumping Exercises that is perfect for my style of learning. The first exercises are merely trot-poles on the ground, but Oakley used to balk at even those. Nonetheless, the simplicity of the first exercises belie their difficulty and I kept doing those simple exercises until I got them right, then moved on. I learned my jumping position by going over trot poles that did not require any actual jumping effort. Then we went over slightly raised poles. Then over cavalletti set low, that requires only a little more effort to step over. Meanwhile, I learned to ride over them as if they were not there. Oakley learned to step over them quietly, without a fuss. I've come to understand what the phrase 'dressage with obstacles' really means: it means I ride up to obstacles keeping my seat and body in exactly the same position as if there were no obstacle at all and move with the horse only as we go over and only as needed. Especially do not look down at the obstacle, any more than I would look down while doing a circle or change of pace during a dressage test.

One does not need to look down. If I look down, I lose sight of everything else, I become unbalanced in the saddle and the horse stops to focus on whatever I'm now focused on. When I look down at the obstacle, Oakley looks at the obstacle and he (actually most horses) immediately wonder why I'm looking so intently and maybe there is some danger there. My head bobs forward and down, throwing my weight onto his forelegs, encouraging him to stop, because we're off-balance. But I when I look up and ahead, at a point ahead I can be aware of everything in my peripheral vision, especially what is on the ground in front of me, in exactly the way Sally Swift describes as 'soft eyes' the ability to look at some point on the far end of the arena while also seeing everything else that is in the arena. What she calls 'hard eyes' is looking very intently at that point, so intently that a tunnel-vision happens and everything else drops from view. What she calls 'soft-eyes' means that I am still looking at a single point or distant object, but not exclusively focused on that object. Around my peripheral view, I see other riders, obstacles and, most importantly, I can see the jump we're going over, so I can time my rise out of the saddle without thinking about it. That was a vital lesson to assimilate, and a lesson that I had to learn in small, incremental steps. And there are a lot of small points that need to be assimilated, rather than learned and memorized.  

It's one thing to read excellent essays that describe, say, 23 things to keep in mind while jumping, but good luck trying to mentally review that list before a jump. I could not tick off 5 points before I'd be over the jump with my horse, never mind all the rest of the list of things that I'm supposed to remember. I tried that and the results, while spectacular, are not the results intended: I turned towards the jump and started mentally checking things off: legs on, check, lightly in the saddle, check, hands relaxed, and pressed down on the withers, check, look up... AAAAAGH! I'm already at the jump but I'm not ready. The accelerating canter suddenly became a last-moment hard-front stop with a light buck and I found myself doing a full somersault over his head, to land gracefully on my feet on the far side of the jump. I got applause and I was apparently as graceful as a Cavalia acrobat, but it's also something I never actually want to do again. Ever. I'm also very glad no one had their cameras out at that exact moment, too.

So I went back to the  exercises from 101 Jumping Exercises and began to repeat all the lessons. This time, rather than just do a lesson and next time do the next lesson, I spent time on each one, to learn and try to think about the point of that particular exercise, until I finally began to integrate them, one at a time, into a sequence of positions that flows from one to the next. I did the first exercise over an over until I could do it without thinking about it. Then moved to the next exercise and so on. As I said, my learning style is to get good at one thing, then add in some wrinkle and work on integrating that new part into what I can already do until I can work all parts without thinking and then add in another factor and so on. I have learned to integrate new lessons and build gradually on what I already know, rather than try to put everything together all at once. Gradually, we've been building up, and it has been effective.

Just this past week, we went over a course of jumps, x-rails, and small oxers -- albeit still small, only 80 cm or so -- but with nary a hesitation. Several things have happened, he has been exposed to lots of jumps and I have learned how to ride him over the jumps. I now understand that going over a jump starts long before the approach and doesn't finish until long after we've hit the ground on the far side of the last jump. I've learned how to plan, before I pick up the reins, every step, every phase, from the moment I squeeze my legs to ask him to start forward to the moment we come to a final stop, having gone over every obstacle we set out to go over. We'll start a canter at B, go around the corner to C, then come up the Arena over the jump near E, then at the canter turn left, come down to a trot between A and F and come to a halt at B again. I've already decided this before I squeeze my legs to start because now I don't find myself unsure of what to do next. I've learned to ride exactly the same way whether we are going in between empty uprights or over trot poles, and have built my strength to be quiet and solid in the saddle. That is a big factor in encouraging Oakley to go over obstacles: my seat is quiet and I have suddenly become much more confident in the saddle.

Now, I spent a few months riding without stirrups a couple of years back. I thought my legs had become quite strong after that and, yes, they were. But recently, my legs seem to acquire yet another level of strength that even the earlier practice did not give me. Suddenly I find my legs are steady, held lightly in the correct position without wavering, without feeling tired even after a couple of hours. At the trot, my ankles remain quiet, no longer flapping about like a pair of boots on strings. Obviously I'm gripping the saddle much better, and I'm now two parts working together: the solid, quiet, immovable seat part and the relaxed, flowing, balanced torso on top. It is not that I wasn't balanced before, nor that I didn't know what the correct position should feel like, again, thanks to Sally Swift's description, but rather I had to build up the muscle tone to hold that position for hours at a stretch. So now my riding has generally improved again, and with it, my horse, and the other horses I ride, are becoming much more relaxed and smooth in their movements.

I learned how to do a proper turn in dressage, so I can go around corners without dying or losing impulsion or cutting the corner or losing balance or any other issue that comes up. I cannot recall anyone having explained it to me before now, certainly not in terms that I can put together. Ingrid Klimke gave a seminar in which she showed how to go around a corner nice and tight, but with impulsion and balance.

In essence, about 2 beats before the turn, first do a quick half-halt, followed by two steps of shoulder-in, then secondly allow the horse to move around the turn.

Shoulder-in has, of course, about 6 or 7 points to consider, such as a slight shift of weight, turn the torso and look along the line, draw the inside hand back into an indirect rein of opposition behind the withers (which happens naturally when the shoulders turn with the torso) and leg aids.

The turn around the corner happens when the inside hand changes to a direct rein, the outside hand becomes an indirect rein to support the shoulder and the legs shift emphasis, &c. Another half-dozen points to remember, but all of this is integrated into two flowing successive movements.

So the whole turn has a dozen points to perform, but this is all integrated into two smooth phases in about 6 steps, far to fast to think of all the points as a checklist. Thus I no longer think about all this in terms of individual bits, but rather feel two smooth motions. At this point, if I were to try to think of the individual parts, I'd be around the corner and halfway down the long side before I finished enumerating all the parts that go into the first movement. Same thing with jumping, and, as I'm learning, same thing with all the other movements we're exploring, viz., leg-yields, half-passes, pirouettes, turns on the forehand, turns on the haunches, and many more. I cannot recall any teacher since my dad taught me to drive who taught anything part by part, so that I am totally comfortable with each step before adding in a new wrinkle, until I started working through the video training and working with my current teachers.

The most important lesson these past few years has been to develop an explicit description of my learning style. If I'm going to learn, I now know right away whether I'm going to be able to learn from any given teacher. The biggest improvement in the past few months has been muscle tone and thus my ability in the saddle.

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Comment by Jackie Cochran on April 25, 2016 at 8:39am

Excellent post BJ! 

I sincerely hope every rider in the world reads it because they NEED to read your post.

 

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