British born, trained at the Spanish riding School. British Olympic dressage team coach and coach of the British eventers. Based in the United States for many years.

In the April 1988 edition of The Horse Magazine, Pegotty Henriques profiled Robert Hall:

Robert Hall: All you need is FEEL

 ‘The secret of successful riding is that it should feel good and that it should be enjoyable’. This was the message that Robert Hall brought to England recently when he took a series of Clinics and gave a lecture demonstration on the new teaching techniques he has been developing over the last few years.

Robert Hall, who is now 61 years of age, was born ina picturesque part of Yorkshire. He rode from the age of four because his parents wanted him to, then, at the age of eighteen, and much against their wishes, he decided to make horses his career. He had tremendous  natural talent but relatively little formalised training.

When he decided to move his teaching establishment down to Fulmer, near London, he met Col. and Mrs V. D. S.Williams, who, recognising his ability, tucked him under their wings and made it possible for him to go and train at the Spanish Riding School in Vienna.

He spent two periods of six months in Vienna, an experience that totally changed his life.

“I went through a phase of being very technical and I learned a lot of very important things. Perhaps the most important was that I learned ‘how to learn’. My attitude to a whole lot of things was changed, perhaps I even learned some things that were not necessarily ideal when applied to Thoroughbreds.”

Only the Lippizaner is used in the Spanish School.

Though he had previously made his mark on the British equestrian scene, including riding round Badminton, it was not until after these two training periods that the Fulmer School of Equitation developed into an establishment of world renown.

Robert himself became the Olympic team trainer and one of the world’s leading dressage instructors. His system of training was based entirely on the Spanish school, though he developed it further to enable even novice riders to find it totally simple and comprehensible.

Despite the great success of his teaching and the expansion of his establishments in other parts of the world, a disillusionment set in. Robert had long since realised that when he rode pupil’s horses and then they got on again, they would tell him how good the horse felt and ask him ‘what he had done’. He would tell them what was technically the correct thing to do while in his own heart he really knew that he didn’t know what he had done and hadn’t, at the time, the courage to say ‘I don’t know’.

Itwas about nine years ago that he asked a pupil, after her lesson, to write down everything she did during her ride. When he read her notes he saw that every third word seemed to be ‘feel’. That set him thinking and he began to explore new techniques of teaching.

It is this slowly evolved system that Robert Hall brought from his new base in South Carolina, America, back to his former pupils and followers in England.

At first, especially if you are used to a normal system of training when you are directed to do certain things, it is somewhat unnerving.

Instead of being told what to do – you are asked to express what is happening and what you are feeling. Do you like what your horse is offering you? You are encouraged to respond spontaneously to your horse’s actions without your brain getting in the way. You are never given direct instructions. You are encouraged not to be afraid to make mistakes.

Robert explained to me: “It’s like everything else you do, you don’t KNOW ‘what to do’. If you get up to turn the television set on and go and sit down again, you don’t work out exactly how to do it, you just do it! It’s like 95% of all the things you do all day. They are automatic. When you walk, you don’t know exactly how you move your leg; you learned to do that naturally when you were a small child. I have realised now that it’s far better not to know what you are doing because when you do know, you always try to do it better and in trying to do something better you invariably ‘blow it’.”

“There are advantages and disadvantages to everything you do. You must weigh up the advantages and make sure they counteract the disadvantages. Of course with riding you have to learn the basic alphabet. Once you’ve got that you don’t have to think about it any more, you just get on and do it. It’s much more relaxing and much more fun. It works better too.”

I watched Robert with a wide variety of pupils and was intrigued by the remarkable responses he got from them. The basis of the teaching is HIM questioning THEM about what they are feeling. Not the way they think their horse is going, but positively what it feels like. Ifsomeone is enjoying the feel of what is clearly incorrect they are never corrected. The system is far more subtle than that. Instead they are led gently towards experiencing a better feel and enjoying it.

You might hear him say, ‘Imagine how it would feel if you were sitting on the best trot you could dream of. Don’t do anything, just imagine. ‘ Then as you watch, you see the quality of the trot improve, even though the rider has not ‘done’ anything, not at any rate that they were aware of. Obviously they have communicated something to their horse and are aware of enjoying an improved feeling. They are often mystified yet delighted. Riders soon become greedy for those good feels and re-create them by remembering the sensation rather than working out how they got it.

“You see as soon as the body works without the mind, the body knows what to do”, Robert explained, “the body is the computer, not the mind. Thinking slows down the spontaneous reactions to the feel of the horse. The best things we do are spontaneous.”

“There are three things I tell people. Don’t try, it doesn’t matter and don’t be careful. This is the key to the whole thing.”

It used to worry Robert if he couldn’t get his horse going correctly in a reasonable time. Now it doesn’t because he knows there is always another day. He himself now rides with a much more relaxed attitude, believing that if the horse doesn’t go well, it doesn’t matter.

Obviously the result of this philosophy is a far less uptight pupil. A pupil who is not always striving for a kind word of praise or feeling crushed by continuous corrections does not become tense. Every horse goes better for the rider who is supple and harmonious, rather than forceful and dominant. The smallest aid is always the most effective for it does not interfere with the horse’s freedom. The perfect aid is so small that riders are inclined to say ‘I didn’t do anything. I just thought halt or canter or whatever’.

‘Feel’ rather than ‘do’ is the guiding principle behind this system. From a teaching point of view Robert says: “Once you can find out from a person what they are feeling you will realise it is more precise, exacting and correct than what they think. If you get someone into a feeling situation they give you the right information from the beginning. Correct training of a horse will encourage him to be relaxed, supple and flexible. He will feel good to ride.”

This system seems to work for any level of rider, though of course there still has to be the fundamental knowledge that, for example, knows how to originally ask for piaffe. But once that knowledge is in the subconscious the rider almost forgets its existence and relies on feel alone. Though there are a few riders who find this new method unacceptable, Robert would never go back to his old way of teaching, for he likes progress and new ideas.

“No way,” he said when I asked him, “Pupils must enjoy riding and ride for themselves, not for me. I think I must owe an awful lot of money to people I’ve  given lessons to in the past.”

As one of ‘those people’ I can assure you he doesn’t owe me a penny. However, the results he is obtaining with a wide spectrum of riders is convincing enough to make his new teaching an experience not to be missed.

• Pegotty Henriques

After his death in September 2014, Maayan Schecter penned this obit for Hall’s local paper, the Aiken Standard:

Indiana resident Jill Fagan remembers the late Robert Norman Hall as a great mentor, full of energy and spirit.

Before Fagan became a professional horse trainer and opened her private facility, she went to school in England for horses, and upon returning, found a newspaper ad looking to hire work.

“This was 1997, and I talked to Robert, and he kind of persuaded me to come down and be interviewed,” Fagan said. “It was really a great experience working under him. I got lessons from him, got to ride a lot of nice horses and learn about his breeding program.”

Hall died Saturday at the age of 88.

Born in Hilton, North Yorkshire, England, Hall was the son of the late Frederick “the banana king” Hall, a well-known merchant in Yorkshire and surrounding areas.

Hall later became a horse rider after he was motivated at a young age by his father and his father’s wife, Olive Gwendolyn Hall. As he grew older, he found a passion for riding horses, and later managed a horse trade with his father – buying, training and selling English Thoroughbreds.

Hall was later noticed by the Spanish Riding School in Vienna, Austria, where he learned the art of classical equitation.

Once he completed his schooling, Hall returned to Fulmer, England, where he purchased and established the Fulmer School of Equitation, teaching his “Fulmer Way” of bringing a classical style of riding to current equestrian practices in more than 15 countries.

Hall also worked as the dressage coach for the British Equestrian Olympic teams in the 1956 through the 1968 games.

Hall later moved to Aiken, changing the name of his school to Fulmer International Inc. and settled on a 65-acre farm on Hitchcock Woods – the farm where he met Fagan.

“He was just so full of knowledge,” Fagan said. “Just the way he teaches and his teaching methods are amazing. I still carry all of his theories to this day, when I teach and when I tried. For a 74-year-old man to ride around and take a ride on four-wheelers, that’s pretty great.”