Jeremy Steinberg – more words of wisdom

Rebecca Ashton interviewed jeremy and took the photos

Last time we featured an interview with Jeremy it went viral. Dressage fans all over the world reacted (mostly positively) to the American coach’s frank assessment of some of the world’s leading riders and the current state of dressage. Not surprisingly, Rebecca Ashton asked Jeremy for a follow up…

The last interview went a bit crazy. You seemed to hit a nerve. Did you view that as a good or bad thing? 

“I don’t know, I just got a lot of hate mail! Emails personally attacking me. I just thought it was odd because it really is just my opinion and I was really amazed how many people cared one way or the other about what my opinion was. I think the biggest thing my end of it was that I was a little bit put off by the negative aspect that came back on it. I never claimed that I do it better than anyone else or that I ride better. I work hard at riding but I think I’m a totally average rider. I just feel like the way that I think about it is perhaps different from the average person out there in the dressage world.”

“I think it’s frustrating when you see something or view it in a certain way and don’t agree with it or you don’t think it’s in the right direction, or you’re saying something that you hope will bring up more discussion as to the whys and the hows, it’s almost instant that you’re labelled a pariah because you’re not going with the flow. The argument or discussion has always been there about right versus wrong or trends. I don’t think it’s a different argument now, but everything travels so fast these days, partly I think because of the social media aspect and live streaming on FEI TV or Youtube, 24 hours later. I think we’re doing so much idolising today because we’re encouraged to do so. That’s what sells tickets and that’s what the FEI needs and wants. They want the stadium sold out, the stands filled, we have to keep the IOC happy with all this inclusion, and you’re trying to get all this fanfare going on behind it, so we’re really getting people to get into this mindset that it’s amazing, and it’s amazing, and it’s amazing… So if you stop to say something that maybe goes against that grain, it seems to create a very combative nature in people.”

“Like I said, I’m not claiming I could get on any of those horses and ride them better, and I sure wouldn’t take away from any of the training, I just think somewhere we still need to keep an open mind about being able to look at even the best, and say something’s not right, or it doesn’t sit right. And it doesn’t matter if it’s some old master that nobody’s allowed to say anything about, if you can’t say how you feel or what’s going on, it’s a problem.”

Talking of old masters, here’s a scenario: you have a time machine, you’re allowed a single return trip. You can train with one person, who would it be?

“In the last interview, I said a lot about how much I appreciated Dietrich (von Hopffgarten, Jeremy’s late trainer) and all he did, and I really feel he was a stand out, but it was also how I connected with him. I got one email that said something like, ‘I can’t believe you called Klaus Balkenhol just a good coach.’ I’m thinking that’s not exactly what I said. I said he was a real morale boost. I didn’t ride with him that much, but for me doing the work I was doing, and coming into it at that age on a national stage and working with a coach like that, he was really a father figure. He was really an exceptional person to have in that position for someone like me.”

Mary Houghton and DP Formidable work on half steps with Jeremy at a recent clinic

“It’s not the same though. With Dietrich it was from when I was a young teenager so the lessons had a very different meaning than just going in front of Klaus Balkenhol and having Klaus say do this and this. There was a lot of skill set that was already there, that Klaus was just putting to work and then helping to build up the week before a horse show. I didn’t say he wasn’t an exceptional horseman, it was just for me at the time, it wasn’t the same lesson. He did exactly what he needed to do at least for me, at that moment, at that time.”

“I still miss Dietrich a lot and I was saying to someone the other day, it would be amazing to ride with him again now ten years after his death, and show him the evolution of my own riding, and how it has changed, and what I’m thinking. I think I could use the skill set he was trying to give me so much more proficiently than I could back then.”

“In terms of your question, I don’t know, you could look at any of the masters. However I believe the help you get from any one of those people is only as good as the relationship you have with that person. Like George Wahl had a Christine Stuckelberger and he produced this rider to be top at that time. He had a lot of people come and go through his stable. I never met him, I don’t know, but he didn’t have a factory of Olympic riders. It would be like Uwe Schultenbaumer who had Isabell Werth absolutely spot on, and when she did leave Schaultenbaumer, it did seem that things got quiet for her for a few years, before she found a whole different groove. I know other people who went and rode with an Uwe Schultenbaumer and learnt things, but I’m sure it wasn’t the same relationship. I think it’s a real individual thing at that point. You could run to any of those other people because so-and-so does, and you get there and you have a completely different experience, because you don’t connect with them or you don’t relate to them in that way.”

You mentioned in an article I read about creating this Bohemia of friends and clients with a communal vision, who still ride for the love of it, and unselfishly all becoming artists together. Maybe it jumped out me because I love Absinthe and Prague! Is that a real thing for you, or a bit abstract or virtual?

“No it is real. My business is all teaching. It’s really kind of selfish now. I work and teach and run around the world, so I can have my two horses to ride and I enjoy the process with them. I’m getting to a point in life, this is the path I see myself on, this is what I want to do, I’m really happy doing it, and I’m so happy with my work. I know it works, the people I teach are happy, their horses are great.”

“I gave that interview and people went crazy about it in a positive way too. I got a lot of business out of it. My email and phone haven’t buzzed like that in years! It’s usually steady, quiet, business coming in. I know I’m pretty outspoken, but I like they fact that I can be and I can say what I want, and it will definitely keep a certain core group of people far away from me, but it does attract a certain group of people. I was amazed with that article, how many people came out, or sent me an email, or were commenting on the forums. I just think with the travelling and teaching I do, I already have this group of people that feels like that little Bohemia of people, that are like-minded and some of them own better horses, and some of them have way higher aspirations, and a lot of them have no aspirations, but to ride really well. A lot of them don’t want to go to the Olympics, but they can teach a horse to do everything up to Grand Prix.”

“When I was working with the young rider team in the States, I realised I wasn’t onboard for the long run, when I started to see a new trend. It was more give a man a fish, rather than teach a man to fish. I’d rather take all these kids in the USA and teach them how to train, rather than teach them how to show the horse they have. There’s a time and place for that too, and I’m happy to do that when the time’s right and the place is right, but I want a group of people around me, I want to raise these kids, or my friends and students, to be able to sit in the arena and help me with my horse. I want to be able to go to any of my clients at the barn and ask if they can tell me if my flying changes are clean, or let me know what you think of the frame, because they get so much information from me and are on the same page. They may not have the skill-set to tell how to make the manipulation, but I know that the information that they’re going to give me is so broad, and well based and well studied. In that sense when I work with friends like that, I feel I can really trust them, because they have the same mindset, which then in turn creates a community who has that mindset.”

Jeremy adjusts the tack on Helen Lawson’s Floryda at a recent clinic

You enjoy teaching children?

“I like teaching all of them. I loved working with the kids because kids are pretty pliable. I think the kids are so often, in the US especially, just so over faced. You’ve got to do Young Riders or Juniors or Under 25 Grand Prix and they get a crummy horse that can just barely do it, and the pressure from the parents or the trainer is so much because that’s the thing to do. They don’t sit well, they’re crooked, they don’t understand concepts, the horses are against the hand. Then you sit and have a discussion with them, and you take their stirrups away, and you get them softer and you talk them through it. They are so aware of what’s going on, and so grateful for the help that’s filling the gaps for them. I think it’s a lot different when you’re dealing with older people, because they’re mentally and physically less pliable even though they still want to do it and are still trying. There was always something about the kids. They just learn things so fast.”

What make a good student and a good coach?

“I think a good student, it’s so much about listening and giving over to the process and then applying it at home, practising and doing the repetitions. That was one of the things about working in New Zealand with the high performance squad. You couldn’t get them to buy into the idea that you’ve got to just trust me, and give over and follow and do it. The minute it started to be a struggle, partly I think because it’s a small country there’s not a lot of help, but they’d instantly look outside for help, whatever they could get. That way you never generate a system. I’m not a believer in any help is better than no help. It never works. The idea that you can pick and choose, that you can take lessons and clinics from all these different people and pick and choose the information that you apply, it doesn’t work. It’s like creating a new religion, and going to the Bible and the Koran and the Torah, and thinking, I’m just going to take out verses that suit me and put them together and try to create something out of nothing. There’s lots of proven riding systems. Edward Gal has a lot of Grand Prix horses, but I don’t agree with how he rides. It’s not my style, I don’t like it, but I get it. There’s some methodology to it, whether he can completely explain it 100% and he’s going to have 400 students as he gets older that can do it, I don’t know. But obviously there’s some system there.”

“So any of these people that you’re going to pick up or go to, you need to think well, they better have a system, and you better commit to it. There was one person coming to New Zealand when I first went, and the riders would say, well we don’t like a lot of what that trainer teaches, but we like this part and we’re just going to take this out of the lessons. It doesn’t work like that, because the information that they’re giving you is based on this linear process where they can take you from point A to destination X with a trained horse in the end. So if you’re just going to take one piece of their information and leave, there’s no guarantee that it’s gong to work.”

“I don’t care if my students ride with other people, in the sense I’m not going to be upset of missing out on business. I’ve got more students wanting lessons than I can give lessons to, but I look at it, and I think you have to follow this linear path, because if I give you this path, I know that this recipe will create this result in the end. Whether or not we can get your horse to Grand Prix is a different story, but I do know, if you follow this recipe, you can create a horse that feels like this, or works like this, or is balanced like this. So if you take my recipe and change parts and come back to me and say it’s not working, that’s not fair.”

“It’s not fair to take a chef’s recipe, change it and then complain to the chef that it doesn’t taste good. But you can take it, work it from beginning to end, and say mine doesn’t taste as good, feel as good as yours and we both look at it together and say, ok, where did the breakdown come in? Hopefully though you’re tasting and testing along the way, so that doesn’t actually happen. With that mindset, you have to subscribe to a real philosophy of life and riding. Look at it the best riders in the world. They are those who give over to one major influence or mentor in their life. They get a lot of other information as well, because they study and read, and take other lessons, and get other help, but they get other help that adds to the flavor, but doesn’t change the recipe so to speak.”

“You can look at all of them; Anky, did she take a lot of lessons with someone else after she found a system that worked for her? Charlotte Dujardin’s the same way. They have every single day, the same thing. Do they fight? I’m sure Carl and Charlotte fight, and Christine Stuckelberger screamed at George Wahl the same way I’ve heard Anky and Sjef yell at each other, but you look back and see they’re good riders in the end, because they gave over to the system, whether you like the system or not as an outsider. I think that’s what makes a good student.”

“As far as what makes a good teacher, I think it’s the same thing. You have to have methodology that works, not just that you believe in. It’s one thing to talk the talk, but never produce anything, but it’s a different thing to talk the talk and produce it. It doesn’t mean that what you produce has to be this world class, world beating horse, but it does have to be correct to the idea, or if it’s not correct, understood and able to be talked about and verbalised as to why the recipe didn’t work, or what changes needed to be made.”

“I can look back at all of my horses and think, we made exceptions on all of them, for various reasons on various things. The ones I owned myself, I feel are the ones I produced the best. The other ones I appreciated and I loved, but I don’t stand behind because owners often put a lot of pressure on me to produce certain things, or ride in certain places. I’m not producing absolutely perfect results, but I can produce the end product, and I can tell you which shortcuts were made and why and how; how the methodology was bent or structured around that scenario specifically, but the exact same methodology applied the whole way, even with detours on that road.” 

Jeremy explains things to Helen Lawson and Floryda at a recent clinic

“I think you actually have to separate teachers and coaches. There are coaches out there who can talk you through a test, or tell you what to do in a lesson, and then you get to the end of the lesson and your horse feels great, but you don’t know why or how you produced it. Then there are teachers, which is my lot and feeling with the work. You might feel like you’re getting a little bit of a lecture some days, and you might feel like you’re just sitting on a 20 metre circle, but what you walk away with is the ability for the next month or two when I’m away, to absolutely problem solve and understand the direction we’re headed in.”

“So there is a really different structure you look at; are you a coach, or a teacher, or a little bit of both? They’re two very different roles; pure education versus structuring a test for squeaking extra points out of it. There’s day-to-day training that’s based purely on getting the horses to Grand Prix; my destination is Grand Prix, not to get the horse show in three weeks. So, wherever I’m at in three weeks is wherever I’m at, it’s not going to manipulate the next three weeks of work. Sometimes it’s good for the horses to have some time out, and not have so much pressure. But then sometimes you think, you’ve just wasted the entire summer not doing tempis, because you were worried about getting a bad score in the competition, so you didn’t train them, which is fine, but it does change your training a bit.”

I sit in on a lot of clinics. You often hear trainers really driving home a specific point, like contact or rhythm? Do you tend to have a thing you focus on or just stick with the training scale or something totally different?

“No. I hear that all the time where people come to my clinics and they get to the end of the day, and they say it was such a fun day because I worked on something different with every horse. A lot of people say, some clinics they go to, they just paid some ridiculous amount to either ride or evaluate and with all ten horses over the whole three days, it was the same thing over and over again. A lot of people buy into that, you know it’s all basics, and we just can’t get enough basics, but I just think, that’s a lazy coach. That’s applying the exact same formulaic workout, not methodology but formulaic workout. I know some people every lesson, they coach you through shoulder in or half pass or work on whatever level the horse is at, and once they’ve done all those movements, they start tapping or picking at the next set of movements that are going to come into play, instead of looking at it like an entire lifestyle that this horse needs to work and live under, for strength and athleticism and hopefully beauty and grace in the end because they work better for it.”

“At a show or a clinic you hear, and see pretty quickly, a real thought process or lack of thought process, or short term or long term thought process. I think the long term thought process is so important to have, and not everybody has long term, aside from let’s get there in the end. You have to ride today looking at what’s further down the road, because you’re going to be riding every day thinking, which is the lesser evil? At least if you’re doing it right, you’re looking at a lot more lesser evils, because that’s horse training. You don’t get them to do it right the first time, so you have to think, why is this better than that, and keep constantly problem solving so you stay on course for that. But if you’re on the long term course, you’ll be able to allow some things, but others are just not negotiable, because you know what it will grow into.”

To read Jeremy’s first explosive interview visit: http://www.horsemagazine.com/thm/2016/01/jeremy-steinberg-telling-it-like-it-is/

 This article first appeared in the July 2016 issue of THM.