Field Trip, Mary Wanless!
Nov. 12th, 2022 10:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickSo my friend Trys and I went to a Mary Wanless clinic (first day of a 3 day thing) to see what that might be like. It was... illuminating.
Mary Wanless is the author of Ride with your mind and a slew of other books. She does clinics and tries to help people be biomechanically better at riding.
I sometimes wonder if I ride "well enough" to be in an 'everyday' clinic setting. Judging from the attendees at this clinic (in Maryland, south of Frederick), the answer to that is a pretty solid yes even with my shitshow equitation and my middle-aged flab.
Clinic format was Two by Two, riders grouped more or less by ability. For each pair of riders, MW would briefly observe both, then coach one for a bit before sending that rider to the far end to work on "independent study" and doing some one-on-one with the second rider. Riders swapped places (independent study vs. close instruction) several times. This wasn't a bad clinic setup and I think most of the riders got something out of the "spend a little time working on your shit at the far end of the ring, then come back and do some more guided practice" thing. I know at least for me it is really hard to do the thing, listen to the clinician, evaluate the thing, evaluate self/aids, etc. Not having to attend to the clinician and having a few minutes to work on my shit "privately" would be really helpful to me.
While most of the clinic attendees were riders I would classify as novice/beginner riders (inability to get/demand a trot, difficulty identifying and maintaining a diagonal, trouble getting a horse to "walk on" with any degree of enthusiasm, etc.), there were a few who were a bit further along. Of interest were particularly Cardigan Lady and Barn Owner, so I'm going to talk about them.
Cardigan Lady was a woman of a certain age, slender (pilates? yoga? some sort of fitness regimen going on there) with ash blonde hair, that "over-fifty" color that means the hair-owner isn't ready to admit that they're seriously going grey. She wore a cardigan (it was cold in the indoor) and was riding a VERY expensive, VERY fancy bay dressage horse. She said her very fancy horse was "Showing 3rd and schooling 4th" which, okay. And then she started to ride. Cardigan Lady had a very nice seat, steady, balanced, good lower leg position, upright without that backwards-tilt you sometimes see in modern dressage riders. Not a whole lot of complaints about rider position, on Cardigan Lady. But her horse... neck was hooky and lacked the muscle on the mane edge and his hind legs trailed behind and no visible ab line. Like, not engaged. Not sit-n-lift. Not doing the thing, not doing THE THING that is the main point of dressage stuffs. Horse was literally $$$ and fully capable of doing this work, very well made, very correctly conformed.
It was weird. MW tried three different explains to try to help Cardigan Lady get horse to freaking engage. By the end of the lesson, Cardigan Lady was getting very faint, teensy shadows of ab line on horse, somewhat inconsistently but better for sure than when she started. My notes were... shocked. Like, if you're "Showing 3rd" you should be able to tell if your horse is engaged or not. How can you lateral if you can't tell whether or not he's engaged? How can you extend/collect without any idea about his engagement? Being able to get the horse gathered up and ready to do the work, that's kind of the first step on the program. By the time you are "showing 3rd" you should be pretty good at the "Is My Horse Engaged?" question... telling if he IS, fixing him if he is NOT, etc.
I was also kind of surprised that MW didn't just... lead with "Hey, your horse isn't engaged and he's not using his abs, like, at all. I am gobsmacked that you have no awareness or feel whatsoever for this. You are kinda missing a great big fundamental skill here, not sure how you got to "Showing 3rd" with this gaping hole in ya'lls skillset, but wowza, let's get this thing on the road to bein' fixed toot sweet." (I am aware it's tout suite.)
But too I am not trying to make my living as a clinician, so there's probably some room for tact and stuff, yeah?
Barn Owner (owns the facility where the clinic was happening) showed up to ride on a black and white stock-bred pinto horse. This was definitely something found in the paint aisle, built kind of chonk, very little spring in the gaits, definitely looked like he'd be more at home among some cows. But, Barn Owner had him trucking along in a very solid and Yes Ma'am! sort of walk and trot, super steady and rhythmic, super predictable, nice head/body position, good overtrack, workmanlike engagement. This was not a flashy moving horse, but he was SUPER rideable for dressage purposes. I felt like this horse was the sort-of-horse most AA riders actually "need" for their dressage purposes.
Anyway, it was an informative and interesting clinic. Not sure I would love three days of it (what the riders had signed up for) but it was neat to audit.
I have November #2 with DLB tomorrow morning, bright and early.
Mary Wanless is the author of Ride with your mind and a slew of other books. She does clinics and tries to help people be biomechanically better at riding.
I sometimes wonder if I ride "well enough" to be in an 'everyday' clinic setting. Judging from the attendees at this clinic (in Maryland, south of Frederick), the answer to that is a pretty solid yes even with my shitshow equitation and my middle-aged flab.
Clinic format was Two by Two, riders grouped more or less by ability. For each pair of riders, MW would briefly observe both, then coach one for a bit before sending that rider to the far end to work on "independent study" and doing some one-on-one with the second rider. Riders swapped places (independent study vs. close instruction) several times. This wasn't a bad clinic setup and I think most of the riders got something out of the "spend a little time working on your shit at the far end of the ring, then come back and do some more guided practice" thing. I know at least for me it is really hard to do the thing, listen to the clinician, evaluate the thing, evaluate self/aids, etc. Not having to attend to the clinician and having a few minutes to work on my shit "privately" would be really helpful to me.
While most of the clinic attendees were riders I would classify as novice/beginner riders (inability to get/demand a trot, difficulty identifying and maintaining a diagonal, trouble getting a horse to "walk on" with any degree of enthusiasm, etc.), there were a few who were a bit further along. Of interest were particularly Cardigan Lady and Barn Owner, so I'm going to talk about them.
Cardigan Lady was a woman of a certain age, slender (pilates? yoga? some sort of fitness regimen going on there) with ash blonde hair, that "over-fifty" color that means the hair-owner isn't ready to admit that they're seriously going grey. She wore a cardigan (it was cold in the indoor) and was riding a VERY expensive, VERY fancy bay dressage horse. She said her very fancy horse was "Showing 3rd and schooling 4th" which, okay. And then she started to ride. Cardigan Lady had a very nice seat, steady, balanced, good lower leg position, upright without that backwards-tilt you sometimes see in modern dressage riders. Not a whole lot of complaints about rider position, on Cardigan Lady. But her horse... neck was hooky and lacked the muscle on the mane edge and his hind legs trailed behind and no visible ab line. Like, not engaged. Not sit-n-lift. Not doing the thing, not doing THE THING that is the main point of dressage stuffs. Horse was literally $$$ and fully capable of doing this work, very well made, very correctly conformed.
It was weird. MW tried three different explains to try to help Cardigan Lady get horse to freaking engage. By the end of the lesson, Cardigan Lady was getting very faint, teensy shadows of ab line on horse, somewhat inconsistently but better for sure than when she started. My notes were... shocked. Like, if you're "Showing 3rd" you should be able to tell if your horse is engaged or not. How can you lateral if you can't tell whether or not he's engaged? How can you extend/collect without any idea about his engagement? Being able to get the horse gathered up and ready to do the work, that's kind of the first step on the program. By the time you are "showing 3rd" you should be pretty good at the "Is My Horse Engaged?" question... telling if he IS, fixing him if he is NOT, etc.
I was also kind of surprised that MW didn't just... lead with "Hey, your horse isn't engaged and he's not using his abs, like, at all. I am gobsmacked that you have no awareness or feel whatsoever for this. You are kinda missing a great big fundamental skill here, not sure how you got to "Showing 3rd" with this gaping hole in ya'lls skillset, but wowza, let's get this thing on the road to bein' fixed toot sweet." (I am aware it's tout suite.)
But too I am not trying to make my living as a clinician, so there's probably some room for tact and stuff, yeah?
Barn Owner (owns the facility where the clinic was happening) showed up to ride on a black and white stock-bred pinto horse. This was definitely something found in the paint aisle, built kind of chonk, very little spring in the gaits, definitely looked like he'd be more at home among some cows. But, Barn Owner had him trucking along in a very solid and Yes Ma'am! sort of walk and trot, super steady and rhythmic, super predictable, nice head/body position, good overtrack, workmanlike engagement. This was not a flashy moving horse, but he was SUPER rideable for dressage purposes. I felt like this horse was the sort-of-horse most AA riders actually "need" for their dressage purposes.
Anyway, it was an informative and interesting clinic. Not sure I would love three days of it (what the riders had signed up for) but it was neat to audit.
I have November #2 with DLB tomorrow morning, bright and early.
no subject
Date: 2022-11-19 03:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-11-19 06:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-06-23 05:57 pm (UTC)It seems very common for many people to buy an expensive, handsome horse with impressive gaits and then just sit prettily on it and do nothing with it, because the horse has learned to just hold its head in what seems to be the correct position, but otherwise doesn't do any kind of work, no back, no hind legs.
At least Cardigan Lady's horse sounds like it's overall quite nice and has simply learned to not do any work as the rider doesn't ask it of him.
And you'd bet your ass that that lady with that pretty horse with the big gait will often place higher at a competition than the well-ridden pinto, at least that's how it often happens here. Those horses bedazzle the judges and so they tend to ignore some obvious flaws in how the horse is actually ridden.
Though sometimes that effect can be quite interesting. Last week, I accompanied a friend on her second jumping competition with her new horse. One of the horses competing was incredibly pretty. Dark brown, well-muscled neck, nicely engaged, looked super impressive when it entered the ring. But it refused the first jump two times and when it finally did jump, it looked quite untrained (perhaps it was; it was a starter class) and the rider seemed happy that she'd gotten over all the obstacles at all. Perhaps this actually is a dressage horse and hasn't done much jumping - it definitely looked like the winner of every dressage competition. XD