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The USDF Instructor Certification: A Painful, Energizing Experience
The USDF Instructor Certification: A Painful, Energizing Experience
2:00 a.m., 3:00 a.m., 5:00 a.m., might as well get up and drink some coffee. That’s how I spent the nights during the instructor testing in North Carolina. It wasn’t the motel bed, or drinking coffee the night before, it was thinking about the group lesson I was going to teach, pondering the lunge lesson, reviewing definitions, or trying to remember what I had read somewhere, and decide whether or not to use it.
When you have your own ways, opinions and creative ideas for teaching lessons, it’s really hard to fold yourself into the tight box required by the instructor program. However, it’s a very useful exercise. When you emerge from that box you find yourself permanently changed!
The testers made it plain that they were open to our individual perspectives, but they wanted to see that we knew the classical theory and could teach it. I’m a creative thinker and I have spent a lot of time on my own learning from my horses. I take a lesson every day from each horse I ride! I believe in horse whispering – that is to say – they whisper, I listen. Then, I try to communicate, using their language.
There are many ways that horses speak and we, as dressage riders, don’t listen. One of my biggest pet peeves is people sitting on their back pockets (buttocks) during the down phase of the posting trot. The horse gets more and more hollow, yet this “sitting up straight” is perceived by most people as classically correct.
So, I knew I was going to teach my students how to post the way I teach it in all my lessons. This was giving me great anxiety since I was quite worried the testers wouldn’t like it. Authors whose teaching is similar to mine like Sally Swift and Mary Wanless weren’t required or even recommended reading for the course, which I took as a pointed commentary about what the program seeks to promote.
Before the testing, I had been researching other masters’ works in search of someone who supported my thoughts. One of my favorite authors turned out to be Gustav Steinbrecht who wrote The Gymnasium of the Horse. You’d never pick up this book if you weren’t forced to – there isn’t one picture in it. Anyway, he frequently put my point-of-view into words. Thus, since this book was required reading for the program, I wanted to be able to quote him, if asked to explain my teaching techniques.
Now, learning to explain what you see when teaching, or what you feel when riding a horse that’s new to you, using classical dressage terminology, is challenging. I found it very difficult because I was in the habit of just seeing it and working to fix it; I wasn’t in the habit of spending a lot of time verbally naming my assessment and plan. But when you have to be up to the verbal interview challenge and you also have different ideas, it’s almost impossible!
So, a big part of the challenge for me came in anxiety that I was going to flunk because I was “different.” The other part came in following the prescribed format. For example, when teaching, first you performed a safety check. Then you watched and assessed the rider while she rode around on her own, and then you would evaluate verbally what you saw using classical dressage terms. For example, I might say, “The horse has three decent gaits, however that canter looks a little lateral in this warm up. I think this is a throughness and roundness issue, and not a serious fault in the horse’s gaits. The rider has balance issues that cause the horse to hollow his back. She also does not activate his hindquarters enough to get the necessary engagement and impulsion for a good canter.” Next you outlined what you were going to do in the next 30 minutes to improve the situation. For example, “I’m going to work to improve the rider’s longitudinal balance so she has a chance of improving this horse. I’m going to use very simple school figures, like circles and loops, so the rider can concentrate on herself. She has some issues with pressing too hard in the stirrup and not using her core muscles which causes her to sit down on her fanny prematurely when she’s posting, and flattens his back in the canter. I’m going to help her fix that.“
After the assessment, you teach the lesson. I taught to my convictions, and I had awesome success with both horses and riders. One rider said, “That’s the best this horse has ever gone for me.” Other students wend into the barn after the lesson and told others how much they learned and how they transformed their horse.
After you complete the lesson, the examiners put you on the spot. They ask such questions as, “What is that horse’s stiff and hollow side? What is ‘connection’? Is that horse ‘through’? Why does that rider sit to the left?” In the group lesson they may ask, “What is the thing all the riders in that group share as a problem? How could you address that in your lesson plan.”
Now that I’ve been home teaching for a few months since completing the program I have to evaluate it as extremely successful for me. It gave me new objectivity, new understanding of a “good” lesson, and new organization. It gave me a historical basis for many of my opinions. It also gave me more understanding of where we are going wrong in this world of dressage and what my role is, as a teacher and rider who loves the sport and is committed to its improvement.
Where Is Throughness?
By Julie Penshorn, USDF Certified Instructor
Being part of a dressage community is like being a citizen of a country. If you’re passionate about its welfare you must express your dissent from the views of its leaders if you believe the truth lies elsewhere. As a recent successful candidate in the USDF Instructor Certification program, I would like to revisit some historical teachings, though they may contradict what is often taught today, in order to enhance this art I love so much.
My experience in the certification program was that the examiners, Lilo Fore and Deb Bowman, while being sticklers for correct terminology and understanding of theory, were also very open to learning. When they saw a good lesson, they knew it. After my almost daunting experience at the Pre-cert, I studied hard to improve my theoretical base and to be able to recite easily the definition of connection, throughness, and practically every other dressage term! This study was invaluable and in itself made the program worth all the wear and tear. Though I was a dissenter often on my journey through the program, I’ve come to believe it has a great deal of educational merit.
By focusing on correct terminology and recitation of theory, the instructor program is valuable. However, we need to execute and teach what we are talking about!
I’m dismayed to say that at the shows I attended this year, in Region 4 and Region 8, there were very few horses that demonstrated a good connection, defined as “no blockage, break, or slack in the circuit that joins horse and rider. . .,” in the USDF Directory’s glossary. And they certainly weren’t through, “. . . the rider’s aids/influences go freely through to all parts of the horse, from back to front and front to back. . .” This was evidenced by numerous horses who looked like their croups were the highest point, and who demonstrated this condition with collected trots that were false and passagy, extensions in which the hind legs did not come under the horse nearly as much as they came behind the horse, hindquarters that did not bend, and halts on the center line in which the horse backed up, etc., etc..
The focus on throughness at every step of the training pyramid, and, of course, in the instructor program, has to mean that USDF sanctioned programs embrace throughness as critical. So now I have to wonder, “Where is thoroughness in practice?” Why, if thoroughness is so important, is it so rare? It was revealing that in the 2007 dressage tests the second level stretching circle at collected canter was dropped. I read that was because no one was doing it well. In my opinion, that’s exactly why we should have kept it! It’s a wonderful test of throughness. If it’s too hard for a second level horse, perhaps it should have gone into a third level test.
So, it seems to me, we don’t include throughness in our practice nearly as much as we do in our vocabulary. Here are some reasons why:
1. We don’t instill forward desire in our horses at every stage of training because we are continually stilting their forward movement. We’d rather begin with what we think is collection instead of getting true working gaits where the horse reaches for the bit, opens up the lower portion of his neck and the withers into the front half of his back, bends his hindquarters, and covers ground. Consequently, a frequently seen version of collection relies on the reins for balance. And since we just eliminated the test for that poor practice at second level (by taking out the stretching circle at the canter), it’s likely to get much worse.
2. If the horse does start to actually move, we are out of our comfort zone so we GRIP! Body parts that grip or clench such as calves, thighs, hands, forearms, shoulders or any combination or part of the above, essentially stop a horse’s hind legs. The most insidious, overlooked and even misunderstood body part is the thigh. It has to be used correctly and judiciously in half halts. But it can’t push the rider out of the saddle and become the dominant aid over the seat and the calf. Gustav Steinbrecht, for example, in his 1885 book The Gymnasium of the Horse says the rider must intentionally open his thighs and knees. “That is, he must move his legs away from the horse, so that no pressure from these limbs, albeit their natural weight, will interfere (p. 34–35). Yes, the calves require the thighs to be effective, but letting go a bit with the thighs will often invite more throughness.
3. We don’t see it good and bad. We have a good instructors’ education program and a good judges’ education program. How come our professionals are not correcting when they should? I believe it’s because we are taught with the intellect, and we must see it with the intuition. The differences are barely measureable, but very significant. Additionally, our teachers and even our judges are giving good scores to our numerous high quality horses whose innate qualities are so good they look good even when they are not as through as they could/should be! Often the only way for a teacher/judge/trainer to know that the work is flawed is to sit on the horse and feel it, or to watch a better rider on the horse so they know what it should/could look like. Many times that isn’t possible, as in judging, and when it is, as in teaching, we hate to demoralize the student so we often say “good” when it’s not. I appreciated one of my students saying to me the other day, when I had said, “good” to her during a lesson: “It’s not good! He’s behind my leg and not through.” But if the student hadn’t felt what she was aiming for in previous lessons where she learned the feel by sitting on the horse right after I had ridden him, she never would have known that it wasn’t good. The examiners at the USDF testing said over and over, “Don’t say good when it’s not good.” If we, as the teachers, don’t know what we’re looking for, or lower our standards, we are causing problems, not fixing them. At my barn we often work with our advanced riders in a collaborative format where at least one of my assistant teachers watches while I ride a student’s horse. The assistant then understands the look and the “feel” of that ride. Then, that instructor helps me to help the student get that feel in her ride. I credit that practice with my improved my and my teachers’ ability to see, and students’ improved ability to feel.
4. We now have many dressage saddles that encourage a version of a crotch seat and keep our legs too straight. This may be fashionable, but it’s simply not effective. You can’t use your seatbones when you’re not on them. And you must be on the middle and the backs of them, while very clearly on your inner thighs, not the back of them.
5. The riders can’t imagine how if feels to go forward with a horse whose back is right-side-up and swinging. Just because you’ve ridden in Germany doesn’t mean you know anything about the feel of a correct back! Riding horses trained by working students who are just 20 years old (the norm for what you may ride if you take a visit overseas) is probably not going to be a good education for you. You must get on a horse that’s been working correctly and has been warmed up by a master. Then you feel it and you try to keep it. You’ll know a master because that person’s horse steps well under the body with the hind legs, and in extensions the hind legs seem electric. They are active and again, well under the body. The transitions are uphill. The horse demonstrates schwung. And the master did all that with very little in the reins.
6. Often horses have sore muscles that aren’t cured with their hock or stifle injections, and simply require deep muscle massage and chiropractic. By working on your horse’s muscles yourself you will unearth a multitude of tense areas. Take your time. Let him talk to you. Get to know your horse. A horse whose back drops away from your touch or your brush needs help! Have a good horse chiropractor out. Try acupuncture, shock therapy for the back. Use cavaletti rigorously and insist he bend the hind legs and lift the middle back. These things will pay off when you get on and he’s more symmetrical and more through.
7. We are impatient. We rush our horses. When we give them time to develop and we make a commitment to forward riding in all gaits at all times, they will develop a topline that is full, rounded and strong. Then they can think about collection. A horse with flat, sallow back muscles can’t collect correctly. It’s not possible.
Suggestions:
- Don’t use your dressage saddle’s thigh blocks to grip! Ride in a jumping saddle occasionally to develop your seat and especially your ability to balance and not grip with the thighs to stay on the horse. Work on your collected trot with this saddle sometimes. Have a teacher/friend lunge you and do leg rotations like you are riding a bicycle while being lunged in all gaits. Steinbrecht’s Gymnasium of the Horse is really indispensable reading on this topic. He says, “. . . The correct, open seat, however, is a fine aid which requires perfect balance since the rider has no support left other than his seat bones and stirrups. For that reason, this open seat has an extraordinary effect: the horse, not hampered by any hard contact with the rider, whose finely balance body weight is reduced by about half, will feel almost as if in a state of freedom, and will therefore work with such lightness and enjoyment as if left to play in the paddock at will. . . . Riders who carry themselves stiffly and with rigidly closed knees will never get to know this greatest of equestrian joys” (p. 34–35).
- Allow yourself to raise your heel! A rigidly pushed down foot, with the knee braced in the thigh block, is not conducive for the development of a free, expressive, and through horse! Steinbrecht agrees as he says, “The foot in the stirrup, with the heel raised, is an indispensable aid here. It must serve to support legs that are kept almost floating in order to facilitate balance and help the lower legs in their necessary lively activity of driving forward. . . He will, in this manner, give his horse gaits that make it appear to be moving on springs. To feel and understand such a horse is a rider’s greatest pleasure; he will never forget this feeling and ordinary gaits will seem dull and spent to him (Steinbrecht, p. 34–35). Steinbrecht also states, that in order to sit in a perfect equitation position, you must be riding a perfectly trained horse. He believes you must modify your position along the way in order to achieve this eventual perfection.
- To encourage your horse to tone his back and warm up the correct muscles from the start of your session, your warm-up should be a deep round stretching walk followed by a high-quality posting trot. Posting should be in perfect balance with the horse. You don’t “sit” down, you lower yourself with consciously toned core muscles. You should be in front of the vertical, in most cases, in order to bring your “seat into coincidence with the horse’s center of gravity. Since this center of gravity is initially situated more or less far forward, the rider should position himself likewise with a forward slant. . .” (Steinbrecht, p. 68). This method of posting allows the back of the horse complete freedom and comfort. More often student riders look like they are crashing down on a sofa ready to watch the Super Bowl and eat bonbons! To test your balance and see if you can become more upright, or if you’re too upright, just stay up in the post for two or more beats. Experiment with changing your posting diagonal by going up, up, down, instead of down, down, up. This very revealing exercise will help your horse’s back become a taught suspension bridge pulled firm and up by belly muscles, engaged hind legs, and a stretched neck. It won’t sag down.
- Move the hind legs! Use your whip! It’s not a crime and it’s essential. Karl Mikolka talks about the circle of aids as originating with the whip which brings the horse onto the leg which brings the horse into the bit, from whence the action of the rein goes through the rider’s seat and back to the horse’s hind legs. If you increase your squeezing with your calves beyond a certain point, it becomes gripping. That is most effective for stopping! If you imagine your body parts as correlating with like areas on the horse, you can see your calves correspond to his legs. Keep them active, not dead and gripping. Your back, like the horses back, should be firm, not soggy, and elastic, not limp. It should be supported by your belly muscles, as the horse must do. There must be a throughness in your own body as you draw yourself to your full height without excess tension and a strong connection from your seat bones to your sternum (see Balance in Movement by Suzanne von Dietze and Pilates for the Dressage Rider by Janice Dulak).
- Wait with the hands. Don’t get impatient. Keep your reins short and soft and your hands low with a sense of give to them. Better yet, push them into the neck or into the pommel so you’re sure not to retract them. Your intension must be to push the horse to the bit, not pull the bit to the horse. Don’t rush the “desired contact . . . wait in a quiet position for the moment until the horse takes the bit on its own as a result of the driving aids and the resulting stretching of his neck.” (Steinbrecht, p. 68). Raising the hands to the desired equitation position and the best position to control the outside shoulder should not be your only position. You must also be able to be balanced with low hands that encourage stretching the topline. In a ride on an upper level horse, your sense should be all about throughness and stretching – all the time – even in collection.
- And last, but not least, don’t push with your seat in a thrusting motion! This is typical of riders with too straight a leg and too arched a back. Your driving seat must be a stable entity. It must not move! Your back must be very straight, and still. The whip/leg must bring the horse forward. If you use your thrusting seat to create impulsion, you usually slide over the top of the hollow-backed horse, instead of bringing him with you. His back drops, instead of lifts, and what you get is an even more complete lack of throughness!
Reason dressage equitation for its own sake creates as many problems as it solves:
“The unchanging, so-called prescribed seat to which many instructors stubbornly adhere is the reason that the art has such a bad reputation. It prevents the student from becoming independent on his horse since, with such a seat, he will lack the necessary feeling to be able to correctly evaluate his horse’s carriage and movement. The rider who has been schooled in such a seat will present, after a long struggle, not a thoroughly schooled horse – that is, a horse whose natural talents have not only been channeled and made subservient by dressage training but have also been developed by suitable exercises – but a wooden machine which, although working mechanically, is devoid of all elasticity and freshness in its way of going. Such horses are certainly not likely to produce enthusiasm for the art because their dull, mechanical way of going fatigues the rider and wears the horse out before its time. For that reason, many riders feel safer and more comfortable on a horse with good conformation that moves in its natural carriage, than on a confused, so-called dressage horse that has been robbed of all its vitality. (Steinbrecht, p. 39).
Old Fashioned Rider
The other day someone called me “old school.” That comment was largely prompted because I use an ancient Passier saddle with no thigh blocks, and I expressed my dissatisfaction with the “modern” saddles that, in my opinion, severely limit the freedom of the leg.
I began my dressage career riding in an old Crosby jumping saddle, trying to do first and second level work on a 15’2” hand Morgan/TB/Quarter cross named Venture. I struggled and struggled to get my leg back under me when riding in that saddle – it never occurred to me that I needed a new saddle – it wasn’t in the budget anyway. One day when watching Elizabeth Madlener it struck me that she always had her leg so beautifully back under her, though her toes were pointed down to reach very long stirrups. I tried lengthening my stirrups so I could hardly reach them, and low and behold, my leg went back!
As a teacher, I’ve seen time-and-time-again that beginning riders can not get their legs back and their heels down at the same time, so I’ve taken to teaching legs back first. There are several reasons a teacher is compelled to do this:
- Many riders are big and heavy in today’s world. Letting them crash down on a school horse’s back is not okay.
- No beginning rider has any muscles to “hold” themselves in a balanced position. It’s the job of a teacher to help them find a way to balance themselves on their stirrups until they develop some muscle (often it takes a year for even a bit of muscle to develop with a once-a-week rider).
Riding is developmental. A rider doesn’t learn everything the first day, week, month, year. They must be taught in a logical progression. First I help them develop their balance, then we work on rein and leg aids and the use of the stomach/diaphragm/back to influence the horse. The phrase “heels down” only enters my vocabulary when I teach jumping and occasionally when the rider has other balance problems that necessitates this change.
Since I believe developing a deep heel is critical (when the time is right), all riders jump a little so they get the idea of the required balance for jumping. Jumping for dressage riders helps me teach so many things. However, putting the heels down causes flexion in the wrong places and ruins the use of the stomach/back for most riders when it’s done with the long dressage stirrups. It causes some of the ugliest pulling on the reins and resulting in some of the worst dressage riding imaginable. Heels down with flexing the backs of their thighs, and/or excessive inner thighs and buttocks tension destroys the harmonious relationship one seeks to develop with the back of the horse, since it translates to harshness on the horse’s back and a chronic driving seat that sends hyper or fragile-backed horses nuts. That’s why, in my developmental progression, it takes about 15 to 30 years before the rider is able to put heels down while riding dressage.
If we weren’t teaching impatient, economy-minded Americans we might keep them on the lunge for a year, but realistically, they are going to be riding in a group very soon.
I’ve always had people I admire, and I’ve taken clinics or regular lessons from some of the best, but often I’ve been outside of the mainstream in my riding. I think that’s because I defer to my horses more than another trainer for the answer to riding questions I have. I listen to the thoroughbred who says “get off my back,” and Arab who says, “Give me confidence,” and the warmblood who says, “Don’t bully me, treat me fairly and explain clearly.” I also have to listen to the lazy horses who say, “I’d rather be eating hay, what can you do to motivate me?”
My answer is, “Use my own brain and intuition to understand what my horse is whispering.” I may be old school, but my horses’ backs are happy, and they are through and they are beautiful. Is this old-fashioned?