LEARNING DRESSAGE – CROSSING THRESHOLDS OF UNDERSTANDING

LEARNING DRESSAGE – CROSSING THRESHOLDS OF UNDERSTANDING

How people learn is a fascinating thing and it is believed that as we gain experience and practice skills we construct a scaffold of neural circuits in our brain that is forever expanding and changing as our knowledge and skills grow. As part of my job as a university lecturer I research into human learning but nothing has intrigued me more than how I personally have learnt to ride and train dressage horses and I thought I would describe 2 concepts that have had a massive impact to my overall understanding of horses and dressage. These concepts are what I consider good examples of what are known in the geeky world of people that research into learning as “threshold concepts”. Threshold concepts are really fascinating because they are normally really difficult to learn for various reasons. Some threshold concepts are just really complex to get your head around but others simply exist as things you just never saw as relevant or obvious to take any notice of and it is this last category that I would put these concepts I am about to discuss. The other intriguing thing about threshold concepts is that once you pass through the “threshold” of learning them they totally change your perspective and open up a totally new dimension of understanding in the discipline you are learning about and as you exist on the other side of the threshold you can’t believe why you found it so difficult or irrelevant in the first place! Threshold concepts are powerful things to learn and everyone experiences them through life, people describe them as “light bulb moments”, “when the penny dropped” and so on as they are enlightening and perception altering! Anyway, I thought I would write of 2 key threshold concepts that I have experienced in my learning about horses and dressage that completely opened up a whole new level of understanding and how I found them in places I least expected.

The first threshold concept I crossed I describe as “how to teach horses” and the second: “how to ride and sit well on a horse”. To be successful at dressage you need to be skilled in both because if you don’t understand the mind of a horse or you can’t minimise the pressure you are applying to your horse or create imbalance in the horse the end result will be a flawed performance.

THRESHOLD CONCEPT #1: HOW to TEACH HORSES

If you had told me five years ago that I would learn more about dressage from reining horse trainers I would have labelled you nuts. In fact I never bothered to pay much attention to anyone riding in a western saddle because it wasn’t dressage and only dressage riders knew anything about dressage. As unusual as it sounds I can put my hand on my heart and say that reining horse trainers have helped me learn more about HOW to training dressage horses than any dressage coach, book, video, presentation etc. That’s not to say I haven’t got other things from these resources but I personally never got the explicit nuts and bolts of HOW to teach a horse and HOW to communicate to the horse with clarity from dressage that I got by delving into the world of the reining horse. What I personally tended to pick up from dressage instruction was WHAT I wanted to see and feel (more engagement, more lift of the shoulders, more up with the poll, more swing through the back, nose slightly in front of the vertical etc.) and WHY I needed these qualities (to shift the horse off the forehand, improve collection etc.) and these are all really important things to know. The reason I believe reining helped me get my head around the HOW to teach is that the goal of reining stated in the sports rule book is to demonstrate the “willingly guided horse” that does relatively simply manoeuvrers (when compared to a grand prix dressage test) at great speed with minimal control. The first time I attempted to ride a reining pattern on a reining horse was hilarious and even though I had ridden to a relatively good level in dressage I couldn’t even ride the fast canter circles on a reining horse! I couldn’t ride them as I couldn’t do it without the control that contract provides you in dressage. My circles were hardly circles and I had to do a lot of slow loping to get the hang of it! I understood then why training in reining is more explicit and detailed in HOW to communicate with the horse in comparison to dressage because in dressage we have this leverage of contact that allows us to physically manipulate and lock the horse into a frame, shape and line with our reins and legs without necessarily having the horse truly understand. This is not possible on the reining horse as its ridden on a loose rein so you just don’t have the leverage of direct connection with the horse with contact to keep the horse in a frame, in shape and on a certain line, the reining horse really has to understand and be committed to its job to perform it well.

So thanks to reining I crossed my first major threshold of understanding and learnt how to make horses responsive to aids or cues. I learnt that it was the release of pressure that horses learn from, not the application of the pressure. That was an amazing revelation. Straight after I heard that I raced out saddled up my “hard mouthed” horse, got on and picked up one rein to “test” my horse’s understanding of the lateral flexion response and discovered he had none, my horse just kept his head straight until I had to put quite a bit of pressure on that rein to make him flex. I was horrified because that just revealed that at the age of 8 he actually had no idea what the bit in his mouth was saying he had just endured me pulling him and physically making him turn and flex. I remember being blown away that after just 30 minutes of sitting there flexing him and releasing the pressure and dropping the rein contact each time he gave to pressure (so dropping the rein contact was me saying “yes” that is the correct response) I TAUGHT him the lateral rein responses and as a result I no longer had a “hard mouthed” horse because I didn’t really have a “hard mouthed” horse, I just had a horse that was uneducated about the bit and I had been clueless how to teach him….in fact I was clueless to the fact he didn’t even understand with my level of awareness existing only as frustration that he was so heavy in my hands! The poor horse just lent into the bit pressure and I would always eventually let go and therefore just reinforced the leaning.

The other key “how to” thing I learnt from reining was to escalate my cues in training a response and be consistent in their application so that the horse LEARNS to go off light cues. I have learnt even more from reining horse trainers (especially a great Australian horse trainer called Warwick Schiller) from ground work and its role in dressage training to dealing with problem behaviours and I will write about this more in the future but the insight that this threshold concept of “how to teach horses” had a profound positive impact on my dressage horses. The amount of pressure they had to endure when being ridden was dramatically reduced, their focus on me increased as they discovered they could control the pressure applied to them by responding to cues and they physically changed shape as their resistance from being physically hauled on disappeared and my dressage performances improved.

The other cool thing that lead on from this is that it gave me a practical insight and understanding of how to apply pressure in training which in turn helped me be able to appreciate and get my head around the science of behaviour which has really helped improve my understanding of horse behaviour generally.

THRESHOLD CONCEPT #2: HOW to RIDE & SIT ON A HORSE

Earlier this year I had a lovely friend point out to me that all my horses had the same minor stiffness through their left shoulder than their right shoulder and then pointed out the obvious that I was the common denominator between all of them so it must be something I was doing! I had been so focused on clear application of cues and pressure that I had not considered the impact I was having just sitting on their backs so I have embarked on a real focus on my riding position and core strength. I was interested to hear in a video I watched recently featuring Catherine Haddad-Staller, US dressage rider who has spent much of her career in Germany, that early in her career when she ventured to Germany and trained with the great Willi Schultheis she spent the first 2 years just learning how to sit well on dressage horses before being introduced to how to train them. So here I crossed the second threshold of learning and for the past few months I have been working with the lovely Katrin Kuenstler. Katrin is from Germany but lucky for me is one of my neighbours and has a unique skills set as she has been a professional dancer and is now a dressage coach and pilates instructor. She has a tremendous eye for how you are holding your body and a great way of helping you become aware of your body and how to strengthen it. So I have been hitting the excercise mat and doing pilates twice a week to strengthen my core muscles as well as having a lesson each week were we purely focus on my riding position. Pilates has helped me discover that I had a weak core (even though I rode a number of horses per day and considered myself quite fit), and that I was really one sided in terms of strength and flexibility. Even though I “looked fine” when I rode I discovered I was sitting predominantly on one seat bone (my left), gripped with my left knee, dropped my right shoulder and tended to sit on my tail bone and lean ever so slightly back. Needless to say it was no wonder my horses were stiff through their left shoulder coping with me hanging on to them on that side! Over the months I have developed a lot of awareness of my body when I am riding, I am getting stronger in my core and I can sit stiller, more balanced and therefore much quieter on a horse. Importantly, it is helping me hold a connection with them that is getting more and more consistent in all paces, instead of on-off-on-off when I use to get impacted by the horses movement. Therefore, the overall pressure that the horse has to cope with is less and therefore reduces the stress applied to the horse when training.

So in a nutshell learning how to teach horses has helped me understand how to apply pressure to a horse in a way that is consistent and therefore predictable to the horse and the communication is clearer and the horse has more clarity. While learning to sit well on a horse helps you reduce the pressure you apply directly and indirectly as you ride. The two concepts combined have been pivotal in eliminating a lot of stress from my horse’s lives plus eliminating a lot of frustration from mine and I look forward to what new perspective the next threshold I cross will bring!