From: Abbie
Dear Jessica, no one has been able to help me with this question and I hope that you will be able to tell me the answer. I have been riding in a casual way, mostly trailrides and like that, for a long time. Gradually I got to be more interested in good riding and decided to learn dressage and some jumping. I want to be a good rider and get it right.
I took a "package" of ten dressage lessons with someone who said that she taught classical dressage but after reading up on the subject of dressage on your website I realized that she was not telling the truth, everything was about the hands and the reins and controlling the horse's legs with the reins. She used bungee cords to set the horses' heads. She never taught anything about position at all. So I stopped those lessons after the fifth one (and couldn't get my money back) and I took some hunter seat lessons. That was the other instructor who was close to us. She was a better instructor but I really want to focus on dressage. There is only one other dressage instructor that I can get to with an easy drive, and she seems to be just like the first one. I took two lessons with her and that was a disaster. Then I found out about someone who lives near me and gives lessons sometimes, and I have been taking dressage lessons with her for the last three years. But. The problem is that I am not making the kind of progress I want to make! After four years of dressage lessons I should be getting reasonably good at low level stuff, I think. But I know that I am not, because I still can't really follow the horse's head movement, I can't sit the trot, sometimes I can't even sit the canter, and whenever my horse goes from trot to canter or canter to trot, I get thrown around in the saddle. I used to square dance a lot when I was younger and I played tennis when I was a kid so I know that I am pretty well coordinated so it's not that. Also I read where you said that horses trained in dressage should get better-looking, well mine don't (I have three horses now, it's a long story!), they look just the same now and one of them I have been riding since before I started taking lessons. The other two I have owned for one year and two years but they don't look better either. In a way they do, because they were basically rescue horses and now they are healthy and have shiny coats, but they aren't better-looking in their muscling, in fact their muscles grew in the wrong places, mostly under their necks.
It seems like the only way I can make some progress is to keep moving around and finding different instructors. It seems like the first lesson is always great, then the second one isn't so good, then after that it all begins to fall apart. I am still taking lessons with the woman who lives near me. I have also been taking clinics for the last two years, every chance I get. I drive six hours to get to some of these clinics! I stay in a hotel and work hard in the clinic and then go home and things are good for a few days and then they seem to get worse instead of better with my riding. I don't understand this at all. Jessica, please advise me. I know how important it is to learn from a lot of people, and I am putting a lot of money into these clinics, and I take all different kinds, natural horsemanship and dressage and hunter seat and a lot of riding clinics. I am intelligent and college-educated and have nice horses and an outdoor arena to ride in at home. I spend a lot of money on lessons and clinics. I probably go to twenty-five or even thirty clinics a year. I always learn something, then I come home and try to apply what we did at the clinic, and after a day or two it begins to fall apart. So what is it about me that won't let my riding improve? It seems like I get more confused, the more help I get with my riding. I don't understand what I am doing wrong. Is it just impossible for some people to learn to ride well? Am I just hopeless and should I give up? I love horses so much, I don't want to stop, but it seems like the more I do, the worse I do.
Abbie
You're probably familiar with the expression "Don't work harder, work smarter" - that's what I think you need to do. You're doing too much, and you're getting thoroughly confused - all of you! Your body, your mind, your emotions, and your horse are all confused. It's time to back off a little bit, take a much-needed break, and regroup.
It's useful to learn from a lot of people, or at least to expose yourself to the methods and ideas of a lot of people, but this should happen AFTER you have achieved good skills and good understanding. At that point, you'll have a solid foundation, and you'll be proficient within one method or one system. THEN you'll be in a position to wander through the "information mall" by participating in many different clinics. When you have a solid foundation, you can have a clear idea of what you want and where you want to go - AND of what obstacles are in your way and how you can get there anyway. ;-) When you know enough, you'll be able to attend a different clinic every weekend if that's what you like to do, and you won't become confused, because you'll be very selective about what you choose to incorporate into your own riding and training. The problem I think you are having right now is that you don't really HAVE a good foundation in any one system. With all your running from instructor to instructor and from clinic to clinic, you've accumulated a lot of bits and pieces and tips and tricks - but those aren't what you NEED.
You'll do yourself, your horse, and your ambitions a favour if you'll settle on ONE good teacher and learn ONE good system. Then add ONE good clinician - someone whose philosophy and methods are compatible with those of your instructor - with whom you can work several times a year. You need to work with people you can trust, and you need to work with people who will learn to know you and your horse over time. You and your horse both need consistency - every rider and every horse needs that. And that's something you simply cannot get when you go from one instructor to another and one clinician to another so often.
It's hard to get a good start if there aren't any good instructors in your area, because in the early years you really do need both quality time AND quantity time. A really good instructor will do you more good than any number of clinics, but if you can't find a good instructor, you'll be better off working several times a year with one really good clinician. Taking lessons with one, two, or several not-so-good instructors will just create confusion, and taking many clinics throughout the year with many different instructors will create even MORE confusion... but you already know that. ;-)
Don't worry that you'll miss something this way - you won't. Take the time to learn ONE thing really well, so that it can be the foundation for all the rest of your learning. THEN learn something else - and so on. This is the only way to get what you want. If you were setting out to learn tennis or ballet or ice-skating, you'd want to find ONE instructor and learn the basics of ONE sport thoroughly before you began to branch out - you wouldn't take tennis for two weeks and then sign up for a week of ballet and then take ice-skating lessons on the weekend. Or - let's make it even more narrow than that: If you decided that you wanted to learn to dance, you would have to begin with the ONE form you liked best, learn it thoroughly, and THEN begin to explore other possibilities. Take two people of equal physical and mental abilities, and have one of them get a thorough foundation in ballet, and then move on to modern dance, jazz, tap, or ballroom dancing - that one will find each new challenge interesting and relatively simple. That's what a solid foundation will do for you. Trying to "do it all" at once just doesn't work, no matter how enthusiastic you are. The person who takes a ballet lesson here, a jazz lesson there, tap on alternating Saturdays, and a ballroom dancing class on the second Thursday of each month, and who changes instructors constantly, is only going to end up confused and unable to do much of anything. Worse, that person will soon become frustrated, and may eventually begin to feel hopeless and stupid and untalented, and perhaps conclude that learning to dance is just too difficult...
If you're not a dancer, think of riding in terms of a language - which it is. If you want to learn another language, an intensive course is a good idea, total immersion is best, and you won't really KNOW the language until you can understand it and read it and write it and carry on a conversation in it. If you want to learn several languages, learn them one at a time, mastering each one before you move on to the next. Otherwise, you'll get nowhere, even if you try very hard. You can't become fluent in French and German simultaneously by learning a handful of French nouns and a handful of German verbs and trying to string them together as sentences. Not only will YOU be confused, you won't make sense to anyone else... THIS is what's going on with you and your horse. The two of you should be learning the same language together, but instead you're getting a German verb here, a French noun there, perhaps a few Italian prepositions... It doesn't add up to a clear language that you'll ever be able to read or understand or speak fluently, and it won't allow you to make sentences or even phrases that make sense to your horse.
So choose ONE good system, find a good teacher, and learn it thoroughly and well. This does NOT mean that you'll be locked into a single system forever. Once you've mastered the first one, you can begin to investigate other systems. Over the years, you can continue to do this, and you'll be able to identify and claim useful, compatible bits and pieces of other systems. As the years go by and you continue to learn, your interests may change, your preferred style of riding may change, you may be led in some different directions - it's even possible that you may end up adopting an entirely different system. But if you begin by learning ONE complete, sensible, logical, progressive system, and learning it from someone who can give you consistent information and help you progress over time, you'll find it very easy to learn another system - and you'll also find it easy to identify and adopt the best and most useful things that you learn along the way. The way to develop your own method of working with horses is to begin with a solid foundation and gradually develop the ability to analyze other systems, take what's good, appropriate, AND COMPATIBLE, and integrate those things into your own system. But this takes time - and works ONLY if you have a solid foundation.
Based on what you've said, I tend to think that you will know when you've found the right system and the right instructor. If classical riding is your choice, congratulations - you're taking on the most complex and artistic form of riding, but also, in my opinion, the one that is ultimately the most rewarding. Find a classical instructor or a regular clinician - some very focused, dedicated riders do very well with professional help only four or five times a year. Be sure that this is someone with whom you can work happily, and who always puts the horse first (hint: any true classical instructor WILL do this - it's a fundamental part of the classical tradition!). Trust your judgement, trust your own good sense, and trust your horses and your eye. Your observation that your horses aren't getting better-looking is a very good one. You're right - if they were being properly trained and worked, they WOULD be getting better-looking. Never stop observing your horses and monitoring their development. We humans can often be confused or distracted by grandiose claims or fancy equipment, but our horses cannot be fooled. By paying attention to their development over time (appearance, movement, and attitude), we can KNOW whether our work is correct.
You're already working quite hard enough! Relax a little and work SMARTER instead. ;-) Pick a system and a teacher, and make THAT your focus for at least the next few years. Your riding, your understanding, and your horses will all benefit from the change. It may also save some money. A clinic every weekend, or even every month, doesn't make a lot of sense unless they're all being offered by the same (good) clinician who can offer both quality and continuity. A clinic every other month would make much more sense - and you may find that with the right local instructor, you don't need more than a few clinics a year. I think you'll find that better, more consistent lessons will decrease your confusion instead of increasing it, and allow you to relax and enjoy the learning process. That's important. After all, we do it for fun!
Jessica
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