From: Ellen
Dear Jessica, this question has been puzzling me for years, and I read something that made me want to ask it at last. From reading HORSE SENSE and watching you teach (I had the honor of participating in one of your Instructor's Clinics a few years ago) I think that you might know the answer.
Why is it that nobody seems to care about "basics"? Okay, I realize that this is an exaggeration, but it isn't really a very big exaggeration. I used to travel quite a lot when I worked for a big pharmaceutical company, and I always tried to audit clinics wherever I went, so I think I have a pretty complete picture, this isn't just based on what happens in MY town. At the barn where my horse lives, and at shows (local AND national), and at clinics, I keep seeing riders and horses that obviously don't have any real grounding in the "basics".
By this I mean, that the horses are tense, they don't really bend or flex, they are stiff! Even though a lot of them have their heads back behind the vertical! And the riders are awful. They hunch, they hang off one side of the horse, their hands are either too low or they bounce all over the place, and most of them don't even close their fingers. And they are stiff, too. What is happening here??????? Are American teachers that bad? I mean, it's not just in dressage, I see riders JUMPING when they don't even know how to keep their balance in walk-trot transitions, and it's down right frightening.
I think the clinics are the worst, because either the clinician totally blows off all the basic skills and just "helps" the rider with little details that don't even matter, like where their chin is or how bent their horse's neck is, on riders and horses that are totally unbalanced and crooked. I'm not a full-time instructor, but I know enough to look at a horse and rider and start with the most serious problems, not the most trivial ones. When a horse comes in with its bridle adjusted so crooked that half the bit is up one side of its face, and the clinician just says "lift your thumbnail on that side" instead of pointing out the real problem, there has to be something wrong here.
It's not all clinicians who do that, but here's the other thing that really bugs me a lot -- I worked with my own instructor to bring a really good clinician to our area. We got the riding club and the local dressage GMO to help sponsor the clinic, and it was great, EVERYBODY who rode in it got helped more than they ever got helped at home in a year of lessons. I thought that all those riders would be begging us to bring that clinician back -- we had her for two days, and I figured next time it would need to be FOUR days. Well, was I ever surprised when I started calling people and only two of them wanted to ride again (with me and my instructor, that would be four total, not enough for a clinic). I asked "WHY??" and they all gave me pretty much the same reason: they didn't want a clinician to focus on "basic stuff" (like balanced and rhythm and calm-straight-forward, and how to sit, and how to follow the horse's mouth, and all that kind of thing). In other words, the worse they needed that "basic stuff", the less they wanted it!! It's like they think they can just put the frosting (upper level movements) on the cake (basics) when they don't even have a cake, they just want frosting!!!
I'm frustrated and confused and angry. All the time I was travelling, I was planning and looking forward to when I would have my own horses, my own barn, teach some lessons, work with my instructor, and we'd bring in great clinicians every few months. Now it looks as though that last part can't happen, because people are just plain crazy. So what I want to know is, how do YOU manage to go all over the place and teach, because I know that you are a stickler for good basics? What do you do that convinces these riders that they really need to learn to ride, and how do you get them to work at it? I could just cry. They've suggested two other clinicians that they'd like to ride with, and they are both totally bogus jerks who cater to DQ egos and don't teach worth spit.
Sorry for the long rant, but I really need answers or at least to know that someone understands this!
Ellen
Now, in answer to your question, all I can do is tell you that I see the same thing exactly, and that I don't really know the answer either. I've got plenty of sympathy though! ;-)
Reiner Klimke may have hit it on the head when he said that there are a lot of people who don't want to LEARN TO RIDE, they just want to be RIDERS. For these people, clinics that teach riding and training aren't interesting; they want someone to come in, use large words, and teach them some tricks that don't involve "boring" processes like working on balance, learning the aids, etc. From the clinician's point of view, there's no worse nightmare than a group of riders who can't ride their horses on the aids, can't sit in balance, don't even know what their horses are doing under them, but make it clear that they have NO interest in learning basics, because they want to work on flying changes or collected gaits or piaffe!
I don't know who your clinician was, but if it's any comfort, I've heard the same thing after Klimke clinics, after Balkenhol clinics, and after deKunffy clinics -- riders complaining that "we never got to the movements, he kept me working on basics!" And I've heard good clinicians, after clinics, wondering out loud why the riders didn't do their work on basics at home, so that they would be PREPARED when they came to clinics?
This probably won't comfort you either, but it happens to me too. I'm not immune either! I taught a one-day clinic recently that was lots of fun, because all of the riders were the small, "core" group of a large dressage club. Most of the club members aren't very interested in learning to ride -- as Klimke says, they just "want to be RIDERS." The sort of clinic they would like is the kind of clinic I won't teach. ;-) But there's a small "core" group of riders in that club who DO want to learn, who are willing to work hard, who focus on their horses, who help and encourage one another, and who make it a pleasure to teach. I don't normally even TEACH one-day clinics, other than Instructor's Clinics, because I can't afford to do it -- one or two day's travel each way for one day of teaching is an economic nightmare; two one-day clinics in a week would mean working and travelling for a total of at least six days, and being paid for ONE day's work. :-( But in this case, I'm going to keep working with this little group every few months, because they deserve it.
Maybe you can find someone to do the same thing for your four riders, or maybe you can manage to find another few serious riders in your area -- or maybe you can arrange for a two- or three-day intensive clinic for JUST your core group, two or three or four times a year. It's amazing how much you can learn in that sort of situation, and the two- or three-days format would make it a lot more likely that you'd be able to bring in the sort of clinician you want, and keep that person coming back on a regular basis. Believe me, the clinicians get tired of seeing that too -- but if we're lucky, there are enough of the "real" riders to keep us coming back.
I think it's a little like music lessons -- my mother is a fabulous piano teacher, so I know a little about it. Piano teachers see the same things -- people who don't want to learn about scales or intervals or chords or rhythms or how to read music, and who get very annoyed when the teachers insist on teaching those things when they just came to "have you show me how to play this song." Those teachers get frustrated too, and they have the same experience that the riding clinicians have: there's always a small core group of people who care about quality, want to learn it right, and want to work, and then there are a lot of other people... and for a good teacher, that little core group is what makes the effort worthwhile.
So all I can tell you is to hang in there, and look as hard as you can for like-minded riders. Some of the others may "convert" when they realize how well you are doing, how you seem to be making steady progress (when they're NOT), and how much fun you are having while you do it. ;-)
Jessica
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