It is human nature to feel that when you are doing something difficult, you should be working hard. Inactivity can’t produce results, right? Not necessarily… Each time I train with Imke Schellekens-Bartels, I come away with a fresh new realization, a breakthrough in training. This trip brought me a greater appreciation for what Imke calls the “zero position”. Those who ride with me have heard me ask, “Who is working harder right now? You or your horse?”. This has long been an important element to me during training, but the concept of the zero position is sort of like an onion, as it is understood in layers. Finding the zero position is simple, but keeping it can be quite complex. The main idea of sitting in a soft, allowing position while your horse does the work is easy to understand, but if I had a dime for every time I shuttered as Imke busted me for “helping” a horse with a little leg pressure or driving too much with my seat or activating my thighs when I shouldn’t have… I would be very well off. As a perfectionist, this lesson is tough. Why would I allow a mistake to happen when a little leg pressure could cover it up? Well, the first and most important answer to this question is because my trainer told me to (hint hint), but next in line is because this is how your horse learns! Allow me to create a little word picture: I am working on activity in the collected trot with my horse. I have done my transitions, each one quicker off the leg than the last. The hind end is really working now. The rhythm is beautiful and the connection is clear. As I travel down the long side, I feel my horses hind leg begin to slow. It is just a tiny bit though! I have not lost the connection yet and the trot is still quite lovely. My mind knows that if I just close my leg a bit, I can repair this tiny loss of energy and no one will even know that it happened. Oh, but someone WILL know and that someone will expect me to help out again the next time he doesn’t feel like working so hard and this is where the issue begins. I am a very visual learner. I learn so very much from my lessons, but I learn in a different way when I watch Imke ride. One of my very favorite things about these trips is the fact that when I am not riding, I am watching the best riders in the world develop their own horses and coaching clients that are working toward some very big goals. As I go back through the notes that I took, I would love to share with you a few thoughts I wrote down while watching Imke and Tineke school early one morning… "Watching Imke & Tineke" I cannot tell you how much I wish that I could record these training sessions. Watching Imke and Tineke ride seems to impart decades of knowledge, experience and timing to your sight. Of course, doing it must be learned, developed and perfected, but just sitting here watching and listening gives you so much. We have been really focusing on my “zero position” lately and it is just beautiful to watch both of these ladies live in it. Tineke is riding a young chestnut this morning and she is introducing the one tempis to him. It looks like he is fairly comfortable with the “one-one”, but adding the third in a row is challenging. Two things are evident as I watch this ride. The exercise is new to this horse and Tineke has unending patience. As the session goes on, he tries to offer several other answers, all of which are wrong, but none of them change Tinekes approach. She sits. She waits. At times, she temporarily changes the subject to regain the connection, but then returns to the goal at hand. To me, it did not look as though it was going to happen today, but experience tells her otherwise. He is succeeding at the “one-one”, but has not come through with the third change yet. Each time he makes a mistake, she returns to the “one-one” to build his confidence and then it happens… five beautiful ones in a row! Big, clean and straight. They did not come about by magic or by chance, but by clean, consistent riding. I am feeling very inspired! Imke is working on straightness with the horse that she is riding this morning. I know from past visits, that this particular horse has struggled with some internal unevenness, but you would not know that from watching today. Today, he is straight. Today, his body is even and everything is moving together and beautifully aligned. True straightness is a process though and I am experienced enough to know that although any crookedness is no longer visible, Imke most definitely feels what still needs improving. The lesson to be learned from this ride is a huge one. Imke never leaves her straight, even position in the saddle in order to “fix” what I know she feels. Yes I do not see anything out of alignment, in fact, this incredible horse looks quite perfect this morning, but Imke is a genius and this is her own horse, so she is aware of everything that is going on… every… little… thing. Imke’s horse was featured during a training ride that a handful of clients were treated to last week and I was lucky enough to sit in on this experience. It is always a pleasure to watch Imke train her own horses and to have Tineke put into words what she sees and what Imke is training towards was an incredible learning opportunity! It was obvious that Imke was both comfortable and confident in her own “zero position”, regardless of what was going on beneath her. There were many impressive things going on during this session, but what really stuck with me was the consistency in instruction. Tineke wanted Imke to ride in the same way that she told me to ride and the same way that I watched her ride her own horses. Imke teaches her students riding young horses the same principles as her clients working towards the Olympic Games. She doesn’t tell me to ride one way and then do something different herself. I was able to practice this principle during my own rides and then watch it being executed by her again and again throughout the day. The reason that she wants me to ride this way is the same reason that she rides this way... because it works...
Now if you were to ask me if inactivity could produce results, I would answer with a very inspired yes…
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