12/18/2024
This is EXACTLY what modern dressage needs!!!! I'm so fortunate and grateful to be at a barn where I can learn this and teach it to students and horses!
Slow Down
For decades, human athletes have understood the benefits of slowing down. The complex orchestration of muscles, fascia, closed kinematic and kinetic chains, involved in gaits and performances is easier to coordinate slowly. Our equestrian linear concepts of forwardness and balance are simplistic and false. Scott Grafton (Physical Intelligence) discusses ordinary people trying to walk on a balancing beam versus ballet dancers. The ballet dancers perform better because their education has developed muscle synergies that are not specific to the problem of walking on a balancing beam but allow them better balance control. Just stay still for a few seconds on a balancing beam. You will make numerous and minute muscle adjustments, maintaining the forces above your center of mass. You will remain in balance as long as your physique controls minute shifts. You will be off balance as soon as the shifts become larger movements. You might give yourself an illusion of balance running through the beam. You will be off balance and crash at the end, but if the video is edited to show only the run, you will show the same illusion of balance as a horse rushed on the forehand, leaning heavily on the bit.
Now, go back on the balancing beam and walk slowly. You will not be able to control your balance on the first day. For each leg moving forward, your whole physique will have to complete minute and numerous adjustments as does the horse walking slowly in balance. Indeed, it is more difficult than rushing through the beam with a hand supporting you, but your mind and physical intelligence will identify and develop muscle synergies and fascia work, improving your balance. The horse needs to do this when performing in balance while carrying a rider. For each leg movement, the back muscles need to center the forces above the center of mass. This education demands that we create an atmosphere that gives confidence to the horse to explore further. The horse must feel respected, encouraged to explore, and given the time to process. Concentrating the forces above the center of mass is complex and involves the whole physique. The education is easier if the horse performs slowly and we work at the level of minute shifts that we channel between our upper thighs. The second we bend the horse’s neck or shift our body weight back to front or from one seat bone over the other, we alter the horse’s mastery of balance.
We can go fast and inject or slow and educate. Teaching the horse to master balance does a lot more than balance control. Mastering balance reduces the intensity of the forces stressing the lower front legs and cervical and thoracic vertebrae at impact. We can lead the horse to better hoof placement as we do by controlling our back on the balancing beam. Better joints’ placement at impact includes knee and hip joints. At a slower frequency, our physical intelligence can reach mastery of forces that our consciousness cannot master. Tai chi and other martial arts further the capacities of the human physique. The science of slow motion furthers the capacities of the horse’s physique.
Dressage boot camps will urge you to go fast because a boot camp aims to numb critical thinkers and make them obey stupid orders. When dressage returns to its original function, which is to educate and coordinate the horse’s physique for the athletic demand of the performance, the horse’s mental processing is the primary asset. The horse needs to process questions and have the time to explore solutions. Our understanding of the horse’s body function and the performance’s athletic demands allows us to assist and eventually redirect the horse’s processing.
Jean Luc
