29/04/2025
CHARLESISMS EXPLAINED (part 1)
In honor of Charles de Kunffy and his profound impact on the art of classical riding, I've decided to devote several posts to expanding on some of my favorite "Charlesisms."
These are sayings, that if you've attended a clinic of his or read one of his books, you'd hear quite often and they were and still are always profound.
The first one I'd like to talk about is "The legs energize, the seat modifies, and the reins verify (through yielding)." This is one I've heard him say a million and a half times, but for good reason because it's basically a short summation of our communication system with the horse or in other words, our aiding system.
THE LEGS ENERGIZE
The first part, "the legs energize," is pretty self explanatory. The driving aids of the legs create hind leg energy which propels the horse forward. However, we have to make sure that the energizing of the leg aids do not create a running horse, but rather a horse that engages its hind legs through the driving. In other words, the legs create "impulsion." I will touch on this more in a moment in the part about the seat. The legs also can yield the horse's rib cage and assist in bending, but even this can be thought of as energizing, just in more of a lateral sense. "The legs energize" comes first as without the horse's energy, we have nothing to work with. Once we have an abundance of energy being created by the driving leg, that leads us to.....
THE SEAT MODIFIES
The second part, "the seat modifies," is a bit more nuanced. We can think about our seat as a filter for the horse's energies, which result from the driving leg aids previously mentioned. This brings up the question, what is the seat? The seat is our seat bones and anything above our seat bones. For example our torso is part of our seat. The elbows are also an important part of the seat. It is one coordinated unit. That is why if our elbows are loose, the integrity of our seat is damaged and its effectiveness, diminished .
Getting back to the modification quality of the seat, the seat modifies or funnels the energy of the hind leg into an improved balance. In other words, the seat should funnel the energy up through the withers and not let it fall down into the chest. This is done through ISOMETRIC resistance of the torso, which includes the elbows, and when the horse responds by shifting their weight more to the hind leg and liberating the forehand, harmonization of the rider with the horse's movement must be instantaneous. Essentially, I just described a half halt.
Along with modifying the horse's energy to create a better balance, the seat really should be the main modifier of the horse's stride length. What is the difference in how we ride medium canter and collected canter? It's really in how we modify with our seat. Our seat allows the energy to flow through more in the medium whereas the seat has more holding power with the collected canter. I reiterate, this is not just done with the seat bones, but it is a coordinated effort with the torso.
As you can see, the seat is a VITAL part of the aiding system, so there is good reason why Charles was so adamant about us developing not only adhesive but INTEGRATED seats and why institutions such as the Spanish Riding School lunge their young riders for up to a year or even longer before allowing them to ride independently. Once we are successfully modifying the horse's energies with our seat, that leads us to.....
THE REINS VERIFY (through yielding)
In this Charlesism,"The reins verify (through yielding)" means that when the horse comes upon the correct answers of the hind legs coming to life from our driving leg and allowing that energy to be modified by our seat in whichever form we choose, the reins VERIFY to the horse that they were indeed correct in their responses to our aiding system by yielding or releasing pressure on the reins. This part of the aiding system may indeed be the most important as the horse truly learns from the release of pressure and not from the pressure itself.
Training horses in the most general sense really should be a subtle communication of pressure and release of pressure. If we never release pressure on them, they never actually learn if what they are doing is correct. At the end of the day, horses want to please us, so the prospect of them always having pressure on them can really crush their spirit, so we must look for the pressure releases as often as possible.
In my description of the half halt in the previous section, you will notice there was no mention of reins pulling on the horse. There is isometric resistance from the seat of the rider which leads to PASSIVE resistance in the rein contact. As mentioned before, the moment the horse shifts their balance, we must release the isometric resistance, which includes the passive resistance in the rein contact and immediately become a willing passenger with the horse's new and improved balance.
Never forget this vital part of our aiding system. It's no fun to ride a horse that's heavy and dead in the hand. after all, one of our big goals in the development of our horses is to create self carriage! Do not through away the reins necessarily, but always have a breathing feeling in the contact, so elasticity is maintained as consistently as possible.
That is my first Charlesism to break down. I have several more I want to do, but if you have any favorites, let me know and I'll get them in!!
