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I’m looking for a polite way to explain how this April’s USDF National
Dressage Symposium was "different." Having attended every
one since the inaugural symposium in 1992 and ten of the eleven
National Instructors’ Seminars in the years immediately preceding
them, I figure I should be allowed to make comparisons.
Each year my primary duty at the Symposium is to begin the
edit process of what becomes the videotaped record of the event.
The past few years I’ve also been recruited to write some "nuts
and bolts" articles about the Symposium leader’s training theories.
In Isabell Werth’s case, this year’s featured speaker, I have dutifully
outlined her trademark and controversial "Round and Deep"
method of suppling horses. That article will appear in a forthcoming
USDF Connection.
Here, though, are some more general observations that I didn’t
think belonged in a "house" publication.
The 2001 Scottsdale, AZ, Symposium was organized differently
than past ones. Ms. Werth presented no set of goals to be accomplished
level by level; no outline of specific skills to be mastered; no
set of recipes for performing individual movements. Nor did she
seem to address her remarks to the 600 or so people in attendance.
Instead, she taught a series of private lessons which we were permitted
to observe. In the process, we were able to observe the perspective
which one of the world’s most successful competition riders brings
to her work and see what she feels is important. It turns out that
the great majority of her advice is textbook classical, a surprise
given the way her methods are talked about in many circles.
In brief, Ms. Werth’s training priorities are:
- Make the horses supple and through. (This is her Round
and Deep phase.)
- Make them reach to the hand from behind.
- Add impulsion.
- Shift the horses’ balance towards collection, and whenever they
offer resistance, go back to #1 until it dissipates.
Despite her willingness to put the poll much lower than most texts
advise, she was absolutely insistent that the horse’s head not be
fiddled into place, see-sawed, or hand ridden there. She seemed
stridently sincere in this regard, not just mouthing the words for
the camera, in counseling:
- strong driving aids in a shoulder-fore position to make the
horse "say yes" and yield through the poll and jaw;
- a very prominent reliance on the inside leg to outside hand
connection; and
- that the horse be made to reach over the topline TOWARDS the
bit, never being ridden from the front to the rear.
She made frequent reference to keeping the horse straight (by the
dressage definition) and in lateral balance, never letting him escape
through a drifting or popping outside shoulder.
Ms. Werth, it appeared, takes many of her own skills for granted.
In training, she always knows as precisely where she is as does
an experienced captain on a well charted sea. She also assumes that
all the riders are as familiar with every figure, movement, and
exercise as she is and that they can click into any of them whenever
the horse indicates he is ready to try something new. She would
ask for a flying change from a young horse if in that moment the
canter was balanced enough, or even from a Second Level horse some
piaffe-like steps if the horse offered to shorten and stay in rhythm.
She demonstrated her intuitive feel for how much pressure a given
horse could take. And she was quick to scold a rider for exceeding
that threshold, especially if their fault lay in unsympathetic or
disturbing hands. Whenever a horse displayed insecurity about the
rider or in her system, she would go back to her basics, spending
many minutes in the walk on a twenty meter circle, reinforcing her
previously listed priorities.
What you got from watching and reading between the lines was fascinating,
and I think the finished videos will be able to present plenty of
useful information which she dispensed. Unfortunately, as a real-time
experience, the symposium left much to be desired. Since Ms. Werth’s
focus was on her work with each horse, and not on a systematic explication
to the audience, we saw the same lesson many times in a row. And
never before has a USDF Symposium been led by such an abysmal teacher.
A badgering shrieker, she made me want to turn off her mike for
long periods of time. She was nearly a caricature of the "If
you don’t understand the first time, I’ll repeat it louder, and
then LOUDER" school of instruction.
It’s my hope that novice riders in the audience won’t conclude,
"Ah ha, so this is how it’s supposed to be done!" Explanation,
quantification of demands, putting statements in context, reconciling
apparent contradictions, using imagery, staying cool when the rider’s
grasp was less than the instructor’s, and even bothering to learn
her pupil’s names were among the ideas that eluded Ms. Werth throughout
the weekend.
My guess is that she found an unfathomable gulf between her
own riding feel and the riding feel of the lesser mortals she was
stuck with teaching. She seemed to have an equally great unfamiliarity
with the concept of limiting one’s goals based on the horse’s limitations.
We might surmise that in her version of reality, the horses she
trains don’t have limitations in the conventional sense. Yes, perhaps
one’s passage is a little less cadenced or another’s hocks aren’t
quite strong enough to support a "9" pirouette every time.
But these are not the problems that regular people have -- like
My Horse Really Doesn’t Want to Do This; or Shouldn’t Be Asked to
Do This; or Loses his Cookies When Asked to Do This.
As I said, there were many things to be learned from Ms. Werth,
and some riders do need an anti-complacency, get off your butt,
re-direction from time to time. And in her defense, she’s a Rider
and makes no particular claims about her skill or interest in teaching.
While she had no apologies for the watchers for ignoring them, it
does point to the difference between those who can ride and train
and those who can explain what they’re doing too. Having an Isabell
Werth-type figure to lead the Symposium was an interesting experiment,
but not likely an experiment that will be repeated anytime soon.
Her style left a void, I fear, for many watchers who rightfully
would wonder how, when, and where to apply what they saw. The information
was good, but as presented, it needed to be accompanied by a warning
label like on the TV sportscar ads: "Professional driver on
closed course; do not try these stunts at home!"
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Underlying
Relationships - Kyra's ABC's From the May 1999 issue