09/04/2022
I’ve been teaching a gal who is having some sort of existential crisis about her horsemanship.
After one ordinary lesson, she was bent over and out of breath. She asked me to think about her situation, for a bit, then respond on Keystone. Generously, she wanted to help other riders.
So. Let’s talk about ’riding roughly’... or, if you prefer, riding with a lack of polish.
Many of us, of a certain age, began riding before there were ‘horse whisperers’, so to speak. There were no gurus, beyond the monthly arrival of The Western Horseman in the mail box, to take the side of the horses. Riding lessons were for city kids riding out of urban stables. They certainly were not available to the likes of us.
We were self-taught, more or less, trying to emulate the grainy photos we saw in the magazines. Good results were often a case of good luck over good management… and while I believe there were fewer overall wrecks and accidents in the old days, due to the forgiving nature of stoic family-type horses, I doubt we were presenting a prettier picture, overall.
I, too, grew up in an environment where I could ride anywhere I wanted, unaccompanied by any adult, so long as I was riding ba****ck. I can still sit a hard-running horse without a saddle, should the need arise. I remember how long it took me to keep my stirrups once I began riding with a saddle and because it was the 1960s and 70s, “Heels down, with your toes visible beyond your knees!" I was told.
So, I learned a lot about brace.
We knew nothing about keeping our hands low ‘n’ slow. We knew nothing about getting a soft feel. We knew nothing about riding with our legs. The only good thing about this, few of us were riding horses who knew any of these things, either. Just look at old pictures of sliding stops in reining classes. Even the big name trainers had those front ends off the ground, the horses’ heads in the air, their mouths agape.
If we were fortunate enough to find a riding program somewhere along the way, one that taught the subtleties of correct riding, we were given some of the tools to attempt change. It is so much harder to alter a lifelong habit, than it is to learn anything anew! Riding is no different.
Added to this, if we never once had the opportunity to ride a beautifully schooled, correct horse, we don’t know how riding is supposed to feel.
But back to my conversation with this adult student. She is suddenly aware of the fact that she’s “riding roughly”, which are her words, not mine. She knows that her hands are too fast. She knows that she has limited control over her legs and the aids she is trying to give. She is struggling with isolating individual body parts.
She has never, until middle age, had an actual riding lesson with a qualified teacher. She has never once in her life, ridden a ‘finished’ horse. She doesn’t understand the time-honoured lingo of ‘going large’, ‘reversing on the diagonal’, ‘riding a 20m circle’, ‘going into her corners’, asking for the 'half halt'…
She is fifty-something years old and is just now realizing that she doesn’t know what she longs to know. She is starting to crave riding into lightness, rather than tugging. Drawing one leg back into the rocking canter, rather than the ol' kiss ‘n’ kick.
I smiled and if not for social distancing, I’d have given her a great big hug. Because realizing that we are lacking sophistication and subtlety in our riding is the first step toward achieving it.
For the remainder of our summer lessons, we simply swapped horses. She rode my schooled horse to get an understanding of what she was missing, while I rode her horse, to give it an idea about responding to classically quiet aids.
Both horse and rider are still learning that an inside leg and a little tweak of the fingers are an excellent substitute for pulling on the reins, as though one is starting a chainsaw. Both are learning that corners and transitions, sustained speed and balance, are the end game of what was once just ‘staying on and steering’.
Both are learning that they are no longer satisfied with 'riding rough'.
I reminded her that this gig is a lot like playing the piano. Some people are content, all their lives, with hammering out Chopsticks… while others long to make beautiful music.
We will all start somewhere; we will all end somewhere. The journey, itself, is up to us.
📷 Iain McLean.
