The Masters at Work – Vince Corvi and Terry Cowan

Two of the great names of Australian showing, Vince Corvi and Terry Cowan, combine for a clinic session that is really Championship quality…

Words and pix – Roz Neave

Group lessons are not something we see often in Australia. Once the Pony Club years are over, if we have a riding lesson it’s usually on a one-to-one basis. It’s a pity, because there’s a lot to be learnt in a well-conducted group lesson; this is certainly the case in a Corvi-Cowan session.

Actually it’s such a polished performance, that the audience should be paying a fee as well. It moves its concentration from the rider, to the horse, to fascinating snippets of horse knowledge, to humour; then back again in a whirl of concentrated knowledge from horsemen gifted with amazing insight into the art of riding and training horses.

There’s also an empathy from the instructors towards the pupils – the lady with her seventeen year old pony is encouraged, ‘even though he’s that age, so what, he can be told to do things correctly. He’s still got lots of work in him, he’s great, just tell him what to do’.

The sessions are hard work, and when the riders start to get tired and lose concentration, there’s forward seat canter and a rest for the horse’s back muscles and a loosen up for the riders.

The session starts off with those words from the rider’s bible, balance and rhythm. It begins in walk:

‘Always walk on both reins before you do anything else when you sit on your horse. He must look at the ground and look where he’s going, not all around the place. Think of his eye below the wither, because you don’t have them at Grand Prix dressage level, your horse must come forward from the wither and down with the nose.’

One rider is having a problem…

‘Try to get him to reach forward with his neck so he’s not hollowing his back. Send a little bubble through the inside rein, just a tiny vibration, like a little message to him. Much better’.

The horse responds and stretches and rounds up.

Throughout the session, interaction between teachers and taught takes place. Vince provides the shape of the lesson, and Terry concentrates on helping individuals who are having specific problems.

‘Do you always start work at home on the good side? Why not sometimes start work on the weak side? Because quite often you start on the good side, and the weak side is so tired by the time you get there, it’s twice as weak’

Time for trot on…

‘Have his outline deep and round, bring his neck into the middle of his shoulders. The neck is narrower than the shoulders, and the shoulders are narrower than the hips; try to feel that you understand about keeping the narrower part of the neck in between the shoulders, and the shoulders in between the hips.’

Correct school figures are demanded, riders must ride the line of the circle and Terry helps them develop a feel for straightness ‘quarters in, straight, or quarters out’ as the riders come towards him on the circle line.

An exercise which gave the riders a feel for flexion and bend involved riding on the circle asking the horse to make the track of his inside leg between that of his two front legs. I suppose it was technically shoulder fore on the circle, but this way of thinking of it made it easy to understand. Terry again was eyes on the ground for the riders, and he let them know exactly what was going on with their horses legs.

‘Lazy riders make lazy horses.
Busy riders make busy horses,
and crooked riders make crooked horses’

It’s almost a poem that Vince uses to help the riders work on straightness.

‘Ninety per cent of horses we see go rump in and lead with the hip. We say front first, so the face must lead where the horse is going all the time’.

‘Always go front first, wherever you go, say to your horse, front first please – seems that should go without saying, but when we look at the riders, with Terry’s assistance (he tells us what he can see on the ground directly in front of the horse), we see it doesn’t always happen, we see lots of curled horses, quarters in, horses held on the circle with the inside rein.’

‘Don’t try to carry the horse with the inside rein’.

‘People say the horse pushes his shoulder out, to me, they push their ribs out first, and then the shoulder goes too’.

‘Keep the horse’s neck in line with your nose as you make a tum, and then you’ll never get the horse sitting out there, and you’re looking here’.

‘If he’s hollow, ride him forward in a straight line, so he actually pushes his head down’.

‘Establishing a connection’ is the term Vince uses to help riders start thinking about roundness.

‘If the horse raises his head and hollows his back, he loses all impulsion’.

‘The impulsion from the back of the horse, connects the horse to the bit. Connection means feeling a contact, but connection is a better word. If you keep throwing the reins at the horse, you’ll never have a connection. You need to hold your reins, even if it’s a young horse, it’s not china, it’s not going to break. Hit her with the whip if you have to, she’s got to go forward.’

‘Stop riding the same old trot’.

Riders were asked to make transitions to improve impulsion – upward and downward.

‘Ride longer, flatter steps, then higher, rounder steps. The higher rounder steps lead to extension. Ride four inch longer steps, ride four inch shorter steps.’

 

Vince went on to explain impulsion as energy.

‘If you have no impulsion, you have no engagement. But you must have impulsion first, then engagement.’

To improve the horse’s energy in the walk, Vince asked the riders to use alternate aids, left, right with the rhythm of the horse’s back legs.

To give riders a feel of that energy and activity which leads to impulsion, another exercise consisted of downward transitions from strong canter directly to strong trot The horses kept the power from the canter and Vince asked the riders to maintain that feel into the trot, it worked.

‘When you are riding in a double bridle, think of using twice the leg and half the hand.’

‘Don’t sit against the movement, go with it, because the back of our body is stronger.’

I’m not quite sure what Vince is getting at here, but an explanation flows straight on…

‘Stretch the chest and shorten the back, lengthen the neck in front, and shorten the neck at the back, and level your shoulders. To have the head in the correct position, your outside ear should be slightly higher than the inside ear. If you watch a lot of riders, they are good on one rein, but don’t change when they change rein.’

To the rider trying to push the horse forward…

‘Stop wriggling, you’re not a hula girl.’

To the rider of the hot horse…

‘You’re such a fizz bomb, everything I say to do, you’re oooh, be a little more graceful with your body.’

‘Ride like Miss Australia, not an old bag.’

‘Your aids should whisper, not shout. When you put your legs on the horse, he shouldn’t say HELP. But if he’s really lethargic, shout at him a bit, and when he’s not so lethargic, whisper to him.’

As the riders move into rising trot…

‘You might like to check your diagonal, I’m not saying it’s wrong, I’m just mentioning it’

Then to an exercise to give the riders the feeling of bending and straightening their horses – change the rein through the circle…

‘You ask the horse to bend, then straighten, in this exercise, then bend again and go forward on the new circle. The hardest thing is to keep regularity and rhythm, all the time as you’re changing rein.’

To the rider having problems establishing the new bend…

‘Can you feel what he’s doing with his ribcage? You need to push the ribs to the outside, allow the outside of the horse to be a little longer, you’re trying to make him short on the outside and the inside. People misinterpret the use of the outside rein; they hold it too tight, or they drop it completely. The outside rein should be as supple as the inside rein, but it is the president, it has control of the speed of the line you’re on. If it’s too heavy you’ll kill the movement’

Vince suggests this exercise for riders to try at home in walk, trot or canter. Riders should try to get their horse’s outside ear in line with his inside hindleg. Vince said the exercise helps the rider get the feel of bend, and from that, straightness.

To the rider of the horse spooking at the doorway…

‘You’ve got to tell the horse where to go and how to do it. Restrain, release. If he’s too negative, you’ve got to be more positive, and if he’s too positive, you’ve got to be more negative. Otherwise you’ll become more horse, and he’ll become more human. Really if your horse challenges you with his weight and his strength, he’ll win. But it’s where you put your weight as a rider that makes the difference.’

‘Never let the horse ignore an aid, and never accept what he volunteers to you. Always ask just a slight bit more. If you accept what he offers, tomorrow he’ll offer a bit less.’

‘When the horse needs disciplining, it’s the legs around him that do it, it’s not the reins.’

Even in the walk rest periods riders had to be thinking about what they were doing…

‘All your horses are hollow because they’ve been allowed to go on a loose rein instantly we came back to walk. When you’ve been in a round frame and you come out of that transition canter/trot, and let the horse fall to bits, he will learn to yank the reins out of your hands. When you are competing and you come to halt, he’ll be yanking at your hands because he’s been allowed to do it in his training. You should always, if you’ve come from a round frame, and you’re going to a longer frame, give the reins inch by inch.’

‘And when you go to take up the reins, you don’t take up six inches at a time. You take up inch by inch, and you let out inch by inch. Then the horse learns what submission is. The horse must submit to your commands: submit to the leg, submit to the rein, submit to the whip, round his back, all those things. Just like when Terry said to that rider, stop, and the horse said I think I’d rather face that way, and the rider said, OK. The horse told the rider what to do.’

Those all-important hands…

‘Keep thinking as you ride that you’re holding a wine glass by the stem in your hands, and don’t tip the wine out so often!’

‘When the horse is too deep, or behind the bridle, allow with your hands, but don’t drop the connection.’

Impulsion is necessary to get roundness, ‘push and get the back legs quicker, then seek the contact with the reins.’

Just when you think the lesson is starting to flatten out, a new exercise is introduced. The riders are asked to decrease the circle from 20 metres to 15 metres, ride one 15 metre circle, and then back to the 20 metre circle.

‘Teach the horse to come into the circle from the outside aids. The outside rein and leg bring him in, so the inside aids soften. Then we lighten the outside aids, strengthen the inside aids and make the circle bigger again. You’re teaching the horse to connect, because you’re teaching him to come off your inside leg, but not run away from it.’

Vince got several effects from this exercise, it helped roundness and self-carriage and engagement of the inside hind leg, and Vince and Terry were quick to discuss these results with the riders to be sure they had recognised these improvements in themselves and their horses.

‘Can you feel that the trot is in front of you now? There’s half the horse in front of you, and half the horse behind you.’

Next exercise was to change the trot diagonal every second stride, from the correct to the wrong and back again.

“This does a number of things: it pushes the lazy horse, it relaxes the hot horse, and straightens and strengthens the rider.’

Do we have an Australian poet teacher in our Vince? Yes, and a poet with an empathetic wit.

‘The horse slows down and says, what are you doing up there? So that makes you a stronger rider. If the horse is rushing on, the exercise asks him go in a slower rhythm.’

On we move again, there’s never a dull moment.

‘Think that you’re like a beautiful tree when you’re up there on your horse, you grow all the time.’

‘I’ve got to get you thinking, ‘I’m good’. Because you ride out there and you say, don’t look at me, I’m awful. Ride out there and say, look, I’m good. You’ve got to say to that judge – call me in, I’m good.’

We move from circles to squares.

‘A square with four straight lines and four corners. The preparation for the corner is before it, and when the corner’s over, we re-do the preparation for the next straight line; you prepare before the corner, and you correct after the corner. Inside leg before the corner, and outside rein, and correct after the corner with your outside leg. Not too much inside rein, that’s very easy to do.’

Another adaptation of this exercise was with quarter turns on the forehand in the corners.

‘The front feet should make a circle only about as big as a dinner plate, the horse should be flexed around the rider’s leg and move his hind legs steadily about the forehand’.

Vince pointed out the benefits – hind leg engagement- and the faults he saw ‘you’re too bossy with your inside hand, let the exercise correct you, did you use too much inside hand?’

And then leg yielding.

A great exercise for less experienced riders, and/or green horses to really get the feel of leg yield involved starting at the marker in the middle of the short side, riding straight at the first quarter marker on the long side and keeping the horse facing the wall and just letting the wall make the leg yield happen.

‘Have an open rein and look where you want to go. The horse should be at an angle of 45 degrees to the wall.’

Canter.

“Nobody canters enough, you all trot your horses to death.”

“If the trot is not engaged enough, you need so much aid and the horse becomes nappy. If the trot is not of good quality, you have to kick like hell to get a reaction’.

‘Any time you look at a horse and say, he’s a lovely mover, you’ll find that horse is off the ground more than he’s on it’.

One horse had a very choppy trot and no split between the hindlegs in canter, the solution…

‘How to develop it better, nearly walk and then trot on again.’

‘Like a half halt?’ (rider)

‘I don’t say half halt it’s like a burning word to me with you riders, because you grab the head. I say engagement. So engage him, and then push him forward’.

Another very effective exercise was counter bend in canter on the circle.

‘Shorten the outside of the horse to get the hind legs more under. Back to true bend, then outside again’.

‘Push his rump down and let him jump a bit, don’t kill the movement, have lighter hands, you were going to squash him (with your hands). Don’t drop everything, I’ll give you a little rest in a minute (this was towards the end of a session).

‘We need to have lots of impulsion, bend and flexion. People fiddle around in strike-offs too much, make far too many preparations, so the horse stops, then the canter aids are so strong, he pigroots’.

‘Any time you look at a horse and say, he’s a lovely mover, you’ll find that horse is off the ground more than he’s on it’.

Transitions

‘Just brace your body and trot, don’t pull. Don’t pull your hands back, you’d love to pull them back, and then say, Mum he leans. One day when Terry first worked for me, he said that, so I walked up and cut the reins, and said, now tell me if he leans. Prepare for walk, sitting trot, hands forward, walk. It’s funny how the riders say, he’s leaning, he’s doing this, he’s doing that. We see that every day that we teach’.

Yes, and it did happen, nice smooth downward transitions.

The session ends as it started, horses and riders are cooled down, and farewelled…

‘Sleep well’, say Vince and Terry, and I’m sure everyone will.

And you thought show riding was easy…