Notes
from Anky van Grunsven and Tineke Bartels Symposium
Disclaimer: This is based on my personal experience and how I felt at the symposium. It is completely my own opinions, and written for my own fun and memory, but I hope you enjoy it. All comments are related to my own horse and his trainer Nicole unless otherwise noted. I don't intend to comment on other riders and horses.
Basics
Aids
Anky
openly declares that she is a lazy rider.
Well, she is definitely followed by a bunch of wanna-be’s!
That should be the best goal; don’t we always say a well-trained
horse should be effortless to ride? Both
Anky and Tineke requested riders to keep it simple; one aid at a time.
I heard them yelling at riders not to use hands and legs together
(actually this is very much classical dressage teaching.)
Touch with the legs is go, and touch with the reins is come back.
A touch is quick and released immediately. If the lighter touch yields no reaction, then use a stronger
one, but it needs to be immediately released too, and always seeking fast
reactions. Also Tineke
instructed: release the reins
a bit before you touch it, so you can keep the aid really light.
Believe
or not, I find Anky’s training principle is actually the same as clicker
training, which makes sense, and is definitely successful in animal training.
Of course the horse has to be exercised to be fit and flexible enough
to do all the movements. However, in terms of teaching the aids for the
movements, it’s all “clicker” principle.
Basically you reward the horse only for exactly what you want no matter
how small the initial result is; you can build on it more and more once it is
clear to the horse about what you like.
Each
horse first learns these two aids: go and come-back, to become really sharp on
them (by receiving rewards for the right response of course), then using the
aids to create various movements and pick out the ones that you want to
reward. What a simple idea!
BTW,
all whips were confiscated at the beginning of Anky’s and Tineke’s
lessons. Anky says you have what God gives you (hands and legs), so you
shouldn’t need the whip. When I
rode Montserrat, my stallion in Germany, my German trainer Joerg was the same
way: “You have legs. Why do you
need a whip?” “Well, my legs don’t listen to my mind very well.” :-b
Also you don’t reward or even drag on, but should immediately stop if the horse offered only something that can’t be corrected or built upon with the two simple aids. Clicker training uses food incentive, and our good dressage horses want to please us for our love, praises and pats. The key of the clicker training is how immediate you reward when the horse performed what you want, even by accident (actually it should be by accident initially.) The clicker can deliver a reward (actually a pre-cursor to a reward) very quickly and precisely at the moment the horse or whatever animal does what you want, so it is a useful tool. I don’t think I’ll carry a clicker any time soon, but it illustrates the principle. Anky always demands that the rider rewards the horse within a fraction of a second by a pat when the horse does it right. She would urge, “Pat him! Pat him! Pat him!” and check, “Did you pat him?”
Of
course, even if we understand the principle of the reward timing, not everyone
knows what or when the horse does it right hence deserves a pat.
Anky helped the riders by telling them when the horse was doing the
right thing for that immediate pat. She
also kept asking the riders whether they could feel, and differentiate what she liked
and what she didn’t like. She
wanted the riders to learn and develop the feel, so they could deliver the
rewards at the right moments on their own.
There is nothing that can beat an expert’s pair of eyes, though.
Even Lisa Wilcox says that she takes 3 lessons a day with her coach
Ernst Hoyos.
Wow, not too many people have that kind of luxury.
With the above two factors – reward timing, knowing what to reward, it’s still not enough because I don’t know how to create the conditions or moments that can be rewarded. Sigh! Dressage is hard! Didn’t I just feel it was simple only few paragraphs ago? This is where Tineke and Anky would tell the riders to use touches of aids, more collection, length of reins, relax legs, leg positions, hand positions, horse’s position, slower tempo or speed, more forwardness, etc. to create the right moments for the riders to reward the horses so they can learn through habituation. For the riders, it’s to learn how to intelligently apply aids to create these desired conditions, and learn the feel.
While you thought that was enough, remember you have to sit on top of the moving horse, and keep your seat independent and effective, properly holding the reins so you can be elastic and feel the horse in the lightest possible contact to allow the horse to have self carriage. OoooK! Now I remember why I like dressage -- It’s such a challenge physically, mentally and emotionally.
Tineke’s
preview
Tineke
gave a preview lesson to Nicole and Rubino on Friday before the Symposium to
get a feel of Rubino’s behavior and what Nicole and he would be capable of
doing in the lessons.
I wasn’t there, but saw the video and listened to the eyewitness’
account.
Tineke appeared to be quite impressed by the pair as they performed whatever
she requested nicely and easily. She
consistently asked Nicole to keep Rubino straight before starting any
movements, and straightness appeared to be her top requirement as same comment
was heard with other riders. After
the preview lesson, she asked Nicole, “Does he do anything bad?”
We guess she wanted to know before they go in front of the crowd. An easy and definitive answer from Nicole: “No!”
At
dinner, Tineke and Anky came by to chat with Willy; they discussed about
Rubino in Dutch. Our friend Gera
translated for us, and said that they complimented how good a horse Rubino
was. Willy has called him a “complete
FEI horse” because all his basic gaits are good and pure, and he excels at
collected movements like canter pirouette and has already shown his ability in
piaff and passage at his young age.
We were totally excited to hear these words from these top horse people
in the world.
Tineke’s
Lesson
Half
Pass
Knowing how important it is to keep Rubino straight for Tineke, Nicole was prepared for it. We still heard Tineke mentioned the word “straight”, but Nicole certainly made it a top priority in the lesson. Rubino looked super relaxed, elastic and very uphill. All the changes were straight and expressive, and Tineke seemed to be quite pleased. She lectured to the audience about the importance of having a good seat. She asked Nicole to stop and pose in front of the audience to demonstrate what a good seat should be. Tineke asked how long she had been riding, and Nicole replied "A couple of years." Tineke said, "Well, you must have worked hard in these couple of years. Your seat is very good!" All who knows Nicole just laughed out loud. Later, Nicole explained that she thought Tineke meant how long at this level. Tineke described how the rider should sit in the saddle, but I'm sure most serious dressage riders have heard the similar speech about feeling like a string pulled though the head to the ceiling, and the way you sit, if the horse disappears under you, you will just land on your feet and standing on the ground, etc.
Tineke had Nicole practice lateral work.
She was really strict about doing every step correctly; she alerted Nicole a
couple of times that she was losing the bend and the 3-track of the shoulder in
at the last few strides toward the end of the long side. I think she wanted
the bend to be carried into and through the corner without straightening out
first. They schooled half passes at canter and trot
with shoulder in first. She
stressed having the shoulder leading, and also keeping a nice curvy bend.
She wanted to have a lot more lateral bending than we were used to.
In order to do that, the horse’s neck needs to be relaxed and can’t
be too short to create a smooth curve with his body.
Working
Pirouette
The
next exercise was working pirouette. It
is interesting that she actually didn’t school the horse to do tiny
on-the-spot pirouette, but varied the sizes, mostly fairly large. She demanded the horse to wait for the rider, so he could
maintain more upright instead of leaning in (body slanting/leaning in if you
look straight to the forehead of the horse).
When Rubino decided that he would just do the pirouette on his own, she
asked Nicole to ride him forward and out of the working pirouette.
Basically, to get him go off on a tangent from the circle.
She also asked Nicole to sit to the outside a bit, so Rubino would wait
because he would need to balance with the rider instead of just leaning in for
a quick spin. When he stayed more
upright and balanced, the hind legs naturally came under (instead of stepping
to the inside to prevent a fall due to the lean), and the picture was just lovely.
They ended the lesson with everyone clapping for the beautiful result.
Anky’s
lesson
Tempi
Changes
Anky didn’t want nice flying changes. She wanted them brilliant! Nicole learned from Tineke to keep every change very straight, but after a series of incredibly straight changes, Anky surprisingly said she didn’t like them at all. It turned out she wanted some excitement in the change. Instead of straight, smooth and basically a blah, she wanted the horse to be very expressive. Tineke only asked single changes in her lesson, and Rubino was actually quite expressive, but he looked a bit tired in Anky’s lesson and the changes looked "very quiet".
The
way Anky asked Nicole to not to worry about counting the tempis, but to make
the horse “forward, but slow down.” Huh?
Very confusing. I replayed the video, and you can hear her say “Forward.
Slow down.” for every other step of the canter.
I think she wanted the horse to think forward, but use collection to
bring the tempo slower, and direct the energy more up than quick.
Rubino looked a bit tired, so he didn’t rock back as much as how he
cantered yesterday. Without the weight coming back more to the back, it would
not be easy to slow down yet have power from behind, you simply don’t get
the effect of loading the spring to shoot forward.
After
a couple of attempts, Anky decided to use medium canter in between changes,
and that stirred up some emotion, and the changes became more expressive
though the straightness was all out the door.
Anky said that she didn’t mind that for now.
I noticed that the changes that she said was good and what she liked,
had a slight hesitation when both front legs were at the highest point they
would reach. kind of holding or suspending in the air before
coming down, showing a lyrical rhythm and making
a really nice picture. Finally,
she commented the changes were getting better, and she seemed to be pleased
with the improvements.
Piaff
Observation
from the piaff lesson seems to match what I read before (yeh, yeh, I know
dressage on paper is not the same as on the horseback,
but I always go with logical rationale even though not all horses or riders
are rational :-) -- Doing piaff from walk gives the
acceleration effect of pushing the wither up while hind legs step under (like
accelerating a motorcycle.) Slowing down the trot to piaff is harder as
decelerating usually causes the frontend to dip down naturally (like braking
your motorcycle), which already needs extra effort to get it trained out by
doing a lot of upward transition immediately after downward (or almost
downward) transition to teach the horse to brake with his hind legs squatting
down and ready to jump forward and go again.
Anky
demanded that the piaff steps to be up and down under the horse, with no
forward swing of the hind legs which makes the horse to move forward
inevitably. She wanted Nicole to
reward the two steps of up and down immediately to make sure Rubino could
understand that was what she wanted instead of going for more, but wrong
steps. She also asked Nicole to
prepare the collected walk really well with very slow, small and deliberate
steps, and Rubino needed to be very sharp with the leg aids for the upward.
Once the walk was collected, and the upward transition would be
controlled by the collection, Rubi would offer 2-3 steps with no or very
minimum forward steps, and Anky asked Nicole to reward immediately.
At times, Rubino would swing his left hind leg more forward, and Anky
immediately asked Nicole to stop as that would be too much forward movement to
be called Piaff.
Passage
Passage
seemed to require the extended trot to be quite mature in order for the rider
to redirect the power and impulsion upward by touching the bit to collect.
Anky repeated many times that passage was not a slow trot.
Nicole and Rubi performed quite a few sets of trot extension to
passage. A few times Anky said
Nicole slowed down too much when asking the passage, and sent them immediately
forward. You could see pretty
clearly when the horse was slowed down (motor cycle braking) instead of getting the energy collected
to go up, he wouldn’t passage, but just trot slowly. Then, Nicole had to
push him to passage, which of course was caught by Anky, and she would remind
Nicole not to push. “The horse
is too big for a rider to push,” she reminded everyone.
Right! We are lazy riders!
The horse needs to listen to the leg touching, and that should be the
only cue. It was at the end of
the lesson, so Rubi was quite out of gas, but there were 3, 4 sets of passage
that Anky called out as good. Again,
she emphasized that just let him do 4-5 steps at a time to make sure it’s
passage instead of letting him do slow trot for any length of time.
If no good passage steps come out from collection from the strong trot,
immediately she asked for forward trot again.
Anky insisted on ending on a good set of passage steps, and then long
reins stretching round and forward. Nicole
and Rubino got a lot of applauses in the lesson whenever Anky seemed to be
pleased with the results that they demonstrated.
It is so great to have a crowd that appreciated the efforts.
Deep
and round stretching
As
for Anky’s stretching technique, I don’t mind so much as long as the
stretch is at the poll, and the position can be brought back up easily.
However, I don’t like it if it creates a “broken” C3 vertebrae
look. The C3 bend or so called
swan neck is actually an evasion and very hard to correct.
All the horses at the clinic seemed to be able to stretch and go behind
the vertical very easily, but they also can be brought back to the competition
frame without any problem. I had
a car accident two years ago, and had a disk bulge in the neck, so I can
attest having someone help me stretch my neck really makes it feel much better
even though my head would be in totally weird positions when the neck is being
stretched.
Also
I find horse stretching with head low and neck very round, the wither seems to
bounce up like a bow being pushed from both ends (hind legs pushing and the
bridle elastically gathering the energy), and that is definitely
something you want to have to create the uphill movement.
The skill is to bring the head back to competition frame and still keep
that wither lift.
However, I wonder how one gets a horse that goes in front of vertical (not even on the bit) to go down and round in the first place!? I was so excited shooting video and watching, I forgot to ask my share of stupid questions. I know we always cheat by flexing the horse left and right, but Nicole got yelled at when she did only a little bit of that in Anky's lesson. Anky really called it out that she didn’t like it. "It's really bad to do this left and right flexing. You must do it from both reins," she said. but I don’t know why. Is it because that she didn’t like the horse being pulled left and right, or she didn’t like the horse being flexed laterally, even only one direction, to get the head to go down. I heard that swing the horse's head left and right quickly can give the horse a headache (dizziness. I know I would get one. :-), and also too much left and right makes the horse unstable at the base of the neck when moving, so the power from behind cannot go through to the bit. Anyway, still the same question: what is the technique to get the horse so round and behind the vertical? It's not strength for sure as Anky is a lazy rider :-), but how?
Fun
stuff
California, Cold? Nah!
Even
though this is California, it is still the winter. It was quite cold sitting there watching the lessons.
I am sure all the riders were nice and toasty on their horses, but the
rest of us were freezing, including Anky.
(OK, you don't freeze at 50 degrees, but it felt like it for Californians.) She
said many times that she was cold, and she could stay home to be cold, not in
California. Anyway, we brought out horse cooler, even blankets to cover
ourselves while watching the lessons the first day.
The
second day, I had an appointment in the morning, so I didn’t arrive at the
symposium until 1 PM, and to my surprise, everyone was sitting outside, and
the lessons were 15 minutes behind schedule.
It turned out everyone decided the new footing in the indoor ring was
too deep, and also it was too cold in there, so the symposium was moved
outside spontaneously. It was a
collaborative effort from the auditors. People
grabbed the dressage ring poles and stands and off they went.
It was sunny with blue sky and people casually sitting around on the outdoor benches, picnic tables, or some folding chairs very close around the dressage court that they built. It was a really fun and intimate atmosphere. People could walk around behind the people who were sitting down, and still watch the lessons. It was indeed much better than the indoor. This is how to enjoy a California winter!
Can you trot any worse than this?
As an
non-native English speaker, I know how I can mangle the language. In
Stephanie's lesson with Anky. Anky said to her, "Trot worse."
Puzzled looks on people's faces. Anky asked a few more
times,
"Can you trot any worse than this?" I am sure people
were thinking, "Gee, did she do such a bad job, so Anky had to flame
her?" I first through Anky wanted to demonstrate how to improve a
trot from not so good trot, but soon realized Anky wanted Stephanie not to
exhibit the extravagant medium trot from Jasper, but just do a normal working
trot for some exercises. Stephanie later said that she was
thinking hard on what a bad trot should be and how to get Jasper to do it. :-)
Willy! Willy! Willy!
The loudspeakers in the indoor ring apparently were not set up properly; the riders couldn't hear any instruction from some angles. When Willy Arts rode his magnificent Prince in Tineke's lesson, Tineke tried several times to get him to do something, but he couldn't hear it. Tineke ended up have to call him several times: "Willy!" Pause. No reaction. "Willy!" Pause. No reaction. "Willy!" It happened a few times, and the audience was giggling. Hey! That sounds like when I ride this horse that belongs to a friend. He is a Hanoverian gelding by Wolkenstein II. He is a pretty horse and a good mover, but he probably has EADD (Equine Attention Deficit Disorder :-). Fortunately he knows his name, Willy, so whenever he is not responding to aids any more, or ears pricked for something else, I can just call his name, and he will turn one ear to me, and pay attention again. Riding him is like every 5-10 minutes, you'll hear me call "Willy!... Willy!... Willy!"
Photos:
Nicole
and Rubino with Anky at the end of lesson
Tired
Rubino doing a cute Rocher (George Williams’ amazing GP mare) impression:
Video: http://www.1derful.com/Video
Enjoy!