How to Take a Riding Lesson and Get Your Money’s Worth

By Paul Belasik

Paul Belasik is one of the most effective and articulate defenders of the classical principles, and horse-friendly dressage. Paul is the author of seven books looking at the correct principles and methods of riding. We are privileged to feature this new article – one that should be compulsory reading to anyone who ever takes a dressage lesson… We thank him for the photos of him teaching at his home.

 Due diligence

 You will have to ask; is the instructor qualified? Have they produced horses at the level you are seeking?  Have they produced riders at that level? Have they demonstrated an academic or theoretical knowledge of the craft? Do they have a familiarity with historic texts? It will be a waste of everyone’s time if your instructor is trying to reinvent the wheel.

 Good instruction will need to be a blend of theoretical knowledge and practical experience/exercises. To paraphrase William Steinkraus, a scholar and Gold Medal Olympic jump rider, nothing is a greater waste of time than pursuing techniques and theories that have already been disproven by previous masters. One of the big problems of teaching dressage is if the instructor has not been trained through the entire process of fragmentation. My favorite example of fragmentation is a quote by David Bohm, the renowned physicist. Take two identical watches. In one hand you have one watch, which is completely disassembled, in the other you have one watch that has been smashed with a hammer. In both hands you have all the pieces of the watch, but only in one hand can the watch be assembled into a cohesive whole. Undertrained instructors can get infatuated with shiny pieces of a broken system. Dressage then cannot be made into cohesive whole.

 Finally, even if the instructor is highly qualified, but their personal style clashes too strongly, one may have to look elsewhere.  A student won’t progress without a feeling of some camaraderie, or at least connection, this leads to honest communication.  Challenge and intimidation are not the same thing.

 Questions, not declarative sentences

Let’s say you have found someone you can work with. What is your responsibility to make the work together successful? Let’s look at a couple of examples of practical lessons.

Somewhere in the lesson, the instructor tells the student, “You have the horse on the forehand.” The student immediately answers, “He’s pulling every time I use my leg.” This comment has inadvertently highjacked the lesson and any potential advice. Its quite possible the instructor was concentrating and about to give some pertinent advice, but now they have to deconstruct the incorrect analysis of the student and reconstruct a more accurate analysis.

Patient instructors or hungry instructors might gloss over these “internet search” type of opinions from riders, but these declarations, explanations can easily turn into excuses that will shut off the flow of a more experienced analysis of what is actually going on. If this happens too often, you are wasting your money having the instructor keep explaining why your ideas are inaccurate, instead of helping form new habits and probably a more successful approach.

If you are working with less patient instructors they will usually stiffen against your explanations and likely will find a way to stop working with you, or worse, patronize you. In any case, they will close the door to their library of knowledge. At best this interference can disturb the rhythm of a good instructor’s analysis, which sometimes can take a little while to formulate.

Let’s look at another lesson. The instructor says the same thing, “You have the horse on the forehand.” This student answers, how do I fix that? Now the student has surrendered to the authority of the instructor. This does not have to be seen as subordination. It usually focuses the instructor’s attention.  They might answer, I’m not sure, let’s try a couple of things. You might need to review films, do some research. In any case, you have engaged the instructor to do what you are paying for. Now you are getting efficient value for your lesson.

 A Lesson is not a punishment

One time I asked another instructor what they thought was the hardest lesson to teach. He said, teenage girls. “It is just silence, and then out of nowhere, complete meltdown, puddle of tears or violent temper tantrums. I don’t know how to teach them.” The point here is not to denigrate a certain demographic of riders. It is to emphasize the problems when there is a lack of communication. The instructor, who already sits in a position of authority, has the cultivate conversation. Silence is not acceptable. A lesson is a chance to have 45 minutes of an expert’s individual attention. Don’t waste the time having them explore all the possibilities, help them rule out things you may have already tried or didn’t work.

A lesson is not a punishment, it is a chance to get an answer to something, that might be bothering you, that maybe has been has been bothering you for a long time.

 Finally, if you do feel a riding lesson is a punishment, then you need to give some serious thought as to why you are riding. A horse is an amazing creature and it is not fair to saddle it with your negativity, which has far reaching consequences in the natural world.

 A lesson is not an exhibition, it is a place to explore mistakes

A famous and successful clinician precedes every clinic with a talk to the riders. He says, “We are not here to make anyone look badly. Let me know what your best movements are, and we can showcase them. What is not going to happen is that either of us will look poorly in front of our audience.” These situations are not educational, they are demonstrations, usually aimed at marketing.

If you think the price of the clinics is worth it for a personal advertisement, fine. But those are different metrics than education. These lessons are of little value in terms of education. If your ride goes well, good instructors can feel useless. They get challenged when you make mistakes. They know from brain science that we learn from failures. Lessons need to be explorations of failures, not party pieces for your grandmothers or some dressage club.

More follows…

Prepare, practice. A lesson is not an addition to your curriculum vitae

A man I know is an experienced videographer. He has videos of many clinics. He was talking to me about a famous dressage instructor. It got so that he could predict who was going to have a good lesson, because this instructor always started the lesson with three questions. And depending on how each rider answered these questions, the experience could be enlightening, or humiliating. It got to be so predictable, he felt obliged to help the riders ahead of time. The questions were basically: Do you watch your videos? Which is a kind of code for are you self-aware of your strong points and weak points; Have you read my book? Code for due diligence – do you know my philosophy or are you here from some other reason; and finally, what do you want to work on? Are you here for social reasons or do you want my help on a particular problem.

 So here was a chance to get some help and advice from a world class instructor with a wealth of knowledge and experience. He could do everything he taught. I can tell you that I once had a conversation with this instructor, he actually admitted to me, seemingly disappointed, that he felt most of the riders he worked with just wanted to say they rode with him for his title.

 In a lesson with a person this qualified, read their book, understand their style, be prepared with what you would like them to help with. These people often live in a world of social flattery, but they are masters of preparation and hard work. They instantly recognize it. They can come alive if they see this is what you are there for. You can have a chance at advice; forget about your resumé.

 The practice of dressage is like learning to eat fish and vegetables

 Remember your mind is like your stomach. It abhors a vacuum. But like your stomach, it has to be trained to discriminate. When it is hungry you can’t satisfy it with convenient candy bars of theory. You will need discipline to study the best science available concerning ingredients effects, and then more discipline to apply that knowledge to your own habits.

 Otherwise, these pre-diabetic patterns will not only affect you, but your horses will pay as well. Dressage is not about vanity and personal gratification, hamburgers for your ego. It is about healthy discipline to develop the body and mind of the horse and rider.

There are only as many masters in one generation as there were masterful students in the previous one.