Miguel Tavora, or to give him his full title, Major Miguel Tavora, Master of Equitation, is known world-wide as a brilliant teacher of the higher movements but join me as he works with two youngsters, and you will see that those displays of advanced brilliance are well and truly grounded in a method that starts right from the start.
25-year-old, Kylie Gribble-Burden has had her four-year-old Trakehner, Solar Eclipse, since he was a two-year-old, and for the past six months she has been training with Miguel. So far the pair have only had one competition start, “Miguel is our magic wand, and we plan on getting everything together before we go out…”
In case this is your first taste of Miguel’s training approach, every working session begins with a wonderful exercise to get the horse on the rider’s aids and in good balance. “Kylie, ride the little circle, make your leg longer, take your outside shoulder back, very good, the circle is small and the horse is stepping forward…”
“Now walk along the long side, keep the rein very light, don’t restrain anything, put yourself in the posture where you are telling him you want him lower. Now sitting trot, taller and walk, and trot again, grow taller, make your hands make the action upwards and walk again. Very good, you could really see the hind leg coming under.”
“Now ride a circle, very very light with the rein, use your fingers not your hand, open and close your fingers, now go long, and keep the bend to the inside in the trot and when you go to walk, keep the bend, use your fingers and your back to get the bend. Taller and walk, good, the horse is much rounder and coming in collection – now take him on a rising trot, 20 metres, wakey wakey, before you ride him in shoulder fore down the wall.”
Even with a four-year-old, Miguel is using the lateral exercises to help build the horse’s balance and ability to carry itself.
“Go across the diagonal, bend the horse on the diagonal and then keep the bend and shoulder-in along the wall, start in rising trot to increase the bend, then sit.”
Always the rider is checking to see if the horse is listening and responding:
“We are going to make sure the horse is responding to the inside leg. Ride a little circle in shoulder-in, now go haunches-in and when you feel the horse well around your inside leg, relax it, and make a pirouette.”
Miguel asks Kylie to ride up the centre line in shoulder-in, then go to travers to the wall, hey presto, it’s a half-pass… and the point of this lateral work is not just to gymnasticise the horse but also to allow the rider to control the horse without getting strong: “Always bend the neck a little in the downward transition, don’t let the horse use its neck against you.”
And so the work goes, one exercise flows sweetly from the next, the basis is being laid, a platform from which the more difficult movements will grow, without the horse finding them difficult.
If Kylie is a relative newcomer to the Miguel Tavora School of Equitation, Robbie Soster is an old hand. She has been working with Miguel since she was twelve, and now that work is paying off handsomely as Robbie is starring in the Small Tour with her imported gelding, Razzamatazz. It was good to see that Robbie is making sure she is not going to be stranded with just the one good horse when she produced the stunning mare, Danora. The mare is a wonderful mix of bloodlines, her sire Danone is by De Niro out of a Weltmeyer / Bolero mare, her dam is by the Prince Thatch xx son, Princeton, out of a Calyspso II mare. The result is a wonderful tall, elegant individual with movement and balance. The five-year-old was broken in in Germany and went well at her Hanoverian mare test, but since she arrived here in June last year, has not done a lot. This is her first time in Miguel’s indoor arena.
Robbie is lunging the mare to help her get used to the mirrors and the strange people sitting in front of them, and Miguel is asking her to use the lunge line as she would her reins: “Take one step back, then release, like a half-halt.”
Robbie is on the mare and showing off her lovely walk, but Miguel wants it bigger: “Forward, throw your hands forward and see if she will follow your hands, more forward walk, follow the movement of the walk with your waist, keep your legs close to your horse and use them when your waist moves forward, so you use your legs at the right time. Later in your horse’s training she will respond to the movement of your waist without waiting for your legs because she can associate the two aids of seat or waist and legs.”
But once the mare has stretched her neck, Miguel wants her in a more balanced position and he is using that little circle exercise yet again, but he is not happy with the mare’s shape: “The neck is too low. Bring her up more and give and let go. If she goes down, vibrate the rein and break the contact. You must always be in the right posture, or the exercise is not effective.”
It is the same in the trot, Robbie must keep showing the mare the way to self-carriage: “Forward in trot, slow the tempo, half-halt always upwards, never backwards, give and maintain a light contact. It is the same in trot as it is in walk. I want you to encourage her not to shorten her neck, not to lower it, train her to maintain self-carriage. Now slide down the wall in a little shoulder fore, change the rein and try to keep the same trot, shoulder fore, don’t hold, take and give.”
And now for another of Miguel’s distinctive twists: “Rise on the inside diagonal, put the pressure on the hind leg, now shoulder-in across the diagonal, be careful she doesn’t come on the forehand, up and give. Maintain the giving and push, push, push, and now a downwards transition without changing the horse’s neck. That was 100% good.”
“The technique of rising with a diagonal means when you rise, you put pressure on the other diagonal, the one on the ground. On the circle we put pressure on the inside foreleg and outside hind leg assisting the inside hind leg which already has extra weight because of the fact that the horse inclines his body to the inside like a motor bike as a result of centrifugal force. By not loading the inside hind leg, we encourage the horse to bend and engage his hind leg.”
But Miguel is stressing that the hand give is a small gesture: “When you take the hands forward and lengthen the trot, you move your hands one or two centimetres forward, you must be ready to collect.”
The work is always interspersed with periods of relaxion: “Walk, take a little break, but still active, more walk, take the risk, it is only when you take the risk that you can find out how far you can go.”
It is the same with the half-halts: “Let go after the half-halt, open the door, do as many as you want but open the door. Maintain the rhythm with your waist, keep the music going. That is perfect, very good outline.”
Again Miguel has spotted something he doesn’t like: “She tries to make the shoulder-in too small an angle, she needs to go away from your leg. Make some four track shoulder-in to the wall.”
There is another walk break, then another lesson to be learnt.
“Now put her on the bit again. We are going to make very soft work on the lateral aids. Go on a left circle in counter shoulder-in, then right shoulder-in to the wall then make a couple of steps sideways to the wall, use the natural tendency of the horse to go to the wall to make it easier because this is new for her.”
Robbie tries this a couple of times, and, as if by magic, some super baby half-pass.
“Good, pat, long reins, let her go, come over here and we will talk.”
“What I didn’t like is the lack of self-carriage that the mare sometimes shows. You let her make herself shorter, at this stage it is not a problem if you have her in a longer frame”.
Time for some canter, but first that little circle to get her on the aids: “This exercise is ideal to make her accept your legs without running off.”
“Half-halt and canter, take and give, take and give, sit taller, put her shoulders in front of her hindquarters and make her straight, hands forward, break the contact, take again, take again, half-halt upwards and release, go again on the 20 metre circle and use your voice to make the transition to trot but be sure to make the transition engaged.”
It is a lovely transition, and Miguel is always quick with praise:
“That was very good, the neck was exactly in place. Long reins, give, pat, thank you.”
The last time we saw Robbie working with Miguel it was with Razzamattazz, Robbie’s FEI horse – it was interesting this time to see Robbie work with a very talented but green youngster:
“We imported her to Australia about a year ago. We bought her as a foal at the Hanoverian foal auction on a THM trip. We had her raised over there, and she was prepared for the Mare Test. When Dave [McKinnon, Robbie’s partner] and I went over there, I had a ride on her – she’d had about ten rides at that stage – and we thought she might be good enough to bring to Australia. Then she did the Mare Test with good scores, and we bit the bullet and brought her out – which was a bit scary. But we are very glad we did it now, I think she is going to be really good. She is really sensible, she’s good to train. You can push her a bit and she doesn’t mind, she doesn’t get worried about it.”
“We’ve been moving house, and it’s all been a bit busy, and clients’ horses have taken the priority in the past six months, so she really hasn’t had the work she should have, but it has probably been quite good for her to just be a horse and relax and mature a bit. Hopefully now she feels a little better – stronger – in herself. In Germany she was stabled all the time. Mum and I try to get them in the paddock as much as we can. Being in the paddock, out with other horses, has been really good for her.”
I find it interesting that Miguel puts so much emphasis on bringing the horse into balance, putting the horse in self-carriage, and today we saw that he starts asking for that even when they are babies…
“So many people, all they want to do is bring their heads down, which with most young horses just gets them dropping on their forehand. Everything that Miguel has us doing automatically puts them in that natural self-carriage – it makes it so much easier to teach them where they are supposed to be later on. It helps their hind legs come under, everything fits together better than some of the other systems.”
And they are never being supported by you…
“No, you don’t have to hold them up, they automatically learn that is where they are supposed to be. They learn to listen to your seat rather than your hand having to say ‘stop’. They are in self-carriage so you can give them a proper half-halt with your seat and your leg, and they understand that. You don’t have to work hard yourself, they learn to carry you and develop strength in their back like they are supposed to. I haven’t had many young horses with Miguel before, but it is really, really good to start from scratch and be working directly on self-carriage.”
Miguel has the air of a trainer who has those two essential ingredients; talented riders and talented horses…
“They are two totally different horses. The Trakehner in the past had more movement than his body, in his genes was a very big trot and a very big canter but his body was not developed enough to cope with this movement. I find very often that you find horses with the body of a Volkswagen and the engine of a Ferrari – and of course they fall apart. You have to give time to the body to relax and develop, and when that happens you can match the impulsion with the balance and everything falls together.”
And the last word from Miguel…
“Robbie’s mare looks nice, I don’t see any problems of conformation or temperament or movement. She was obviously well handled in Germany – she was a little jammed and short in the neck but it is not a big deal, as you can see, move your hands forward and she follows. She is very athletic, very strong, very flexible for a young Warmblood, and she is very well put together. Horses are never very easy but she is going to be quite easy to work with.”
