|
|
Post by jimmy on Jul 21, 2017 3:50:42 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by horseguy on Jul 21, 2017 12:47:30 GMT
It's important to remember that this discussion is centered in Show Jumping, an area of competition where the US still has US members, not foreign ringers, and we do pretty well. The problems that Kati Prudent raised are many times more serous around US Eventing.
Morris says, “The comfortable, well-to-do people of the 50’s and 60’s, up to the 80’s, their parents wanted it tough. Their parents wanted the trainers to be tough. Now if you look twice at a kid, often the parent criticizes the trainer and takes the kid to another trainer – they want soft. It’s a cultural thing, the parents want it soft – it’s not the child’s fault, it’s their upbringing.” This is true. Before the 1990's I never allowed water breaks during an hour lesson. Parents demanded it and in a rare compromise, I allowed it.
Morris admits, “The origin of jumping sport is bring the country to the arena... Now there is too much pressure not to bring the country to the arena because it could present something unexpected for a top rider, for a very expensive horse, for a weaker student – so from all sides there is pressure to make the jumps all the same."
and
“Now it’s a very difficult sport because you can’t ride at the jumps, they are too delicate. It’s scope now because you can push them. It’s not old fashioned scope where they were two meters wide triple bars. It’s very difficult today, but it’s a different difficult. It doesn’t encourage blood and guts. The most important characteristic of jumping was developing courage in a person, and that’s what riding did and that is what it is supposed to do. And that is not what the sport develops today because the fences don’t ask for that.”
This is what the Millennials don't understand. It's why they cannot train horses, so instead they sort out the talented challenging ones or turn them out as pets. And its why Hunters cannot hunt.
This is priceless George, “Listen, I invented teaching amateurs to ride Grand Prix. I was one of the first ones to bring amateurs all over the world to ride but you have to give them that hard core, and that’s not done today. Today’s riders, when something goes wrong, they don’t know how to handle it, because they are not taught how to handle it. It’s a culture, it’s not riding, it’s a cultural problem.”
He takes credit for inventing "it" and "it" has gone downhill. No connection in his mind between the two. When it was going down hill was he in a Tibetan cave meditating or something? No, he was giving clinics, and writing books and articles. WHY DIDN'T HE SAY SOMETHING THEN? Now it's cultural? Not at my farm it wasn't. OK, you could take a water break, but you had to ride out over terrain and in unforgiving stadium courses without extra strides to fix your mistakes.
At least George doesn't say "everything is fine". But like deflecting the source of the crest release and other "innovations" he foisted on the riding public away from himself, always asserting that none of it was due to his methods, he is blameless. I guess he believes this is true. I don't.
|
|
|
|
Post by jimmy on Jul 21, 2017 19:41:39 GMT
The water break thing is so true. No one goes anywhere without a bottle of water, as if they're crossing the Gobi.
I have given 45 minute lessons interrupted by two water breaks. Call the paramedic!
The guy I give lessons to came off his horse, then went to the house because his finger hurt. I asked him if I should call an ambulance. He wasn't amused.
|
|
|
|
Post by horseguy on Jul 21, 2017 20:00:14 GMT
The water break thing is so true. No one goes anywhere without a bottle of water, as if they're crossing the Gobi. I have given 45 minute lessons interrupted by two water breaks. Call the paramedic! The guy I give lessons to came off his horse, then went to the house because his finger hurt. I asked him if I should call an ambulance. He wasn't amused. We have so many Irish guys running packs of fox hounds here in the US because of water breaks required by Americans, I am convinced. They will hunt hard for 5 hours without a drink, and then when it's over drink but not water.  |
|
|
|
Post by rideanotherday on Jul 24, 2017 10:46:04 GMT
The water break thing is so true. No one goes anywhere without a bottle of water, as if they're crossing the Gobi. I have given 45 minute lessons interrupted by two water breaks. Call the paramedic! The guy I give lessons to came off his horse, then went to the house because his finger hurt. I asked him if I should call an ambulance. He wasn't amused. As someone who has suffered from heat stroke and dehydration...anyone who mocks water breaks is just plain silly. |
|
|
|
Post by horseguy on Jul 24, 2017 12:56:07 GMT
I do not believe hydration is what is being made fun of here. Like all human bodily functions it is something that can be altered. Famously, the Florida Gators football team was the inspiration for Gatorade as that southern team sought to practice and play in their local heat and compete with northern teams with far less demanding circumstances with regard to hydration. Part of riding instruction in the 1950's and 60's was training to "toughen" students to the effects of dehydration using military means of general endurance enhancement. Now the Army uses hydration packs along with endurance training.
Things change, they evolve as science provides more insight.
What I think Jimmy and I were addressing is how today Americans, particularly parents, "run-with-it" so intensely. I have had parents insist on water breaks in the mid winter at 38 degrees in an apparent effort to appear to be properly parenting. Like so many things, it's a balance. This kind of discussion always takes me to the Kurdish Millennials who have now freed hundreds of thousands of people in Mosul and are doing the same in Raqqa as we discuss horsemanship here. Apparently their parents raised them differently than we raised our children of the current generation. Rome fell because the Romans eventually could not field an army that could fight, so they hired the northern tribes as mercenaries, the Goths, and others like them to fight their battles. Goths, Kurds, same stuff different day. We know the outcome. Everyone's concern about this is different.
|
|
|
|
Post by rideanotherday on Jul 24, 2017 13:16:59 GMT
I do not believe hydration is what is being made fun of here. Like all human bodily functions it is something that can be altered. Famously, the Florida Gators football team was the inspiration for Gatorade as that southern team sought to practice and play in their local heat and compete with northern teams with far less demanding circumstances with regard to hydration. Part of riding instruction in the 1950's and 60's was training to "toughen" students to the effects of dehydration using military means of general endurance enhancement. Now the Army uses hydration packs along with endurance training.
Things change, they evolve as science provides more insight.
What I think Jimmy and I were addressing is how today Americans, particularly parents, "run-with-it" so intensely. I have had parents insist on water breaks in the mid winter at 38 degrees in an apparent effort to appear to be properly parenting. Like so many things, it's a balance. This kind of discussion always takes me to the Kurdish Millennials who have now freed hundreds of thousands of people in Mosul and are doing the same in Raqqa as we discuss horsemanship here. Apparently their parents raised them differently than we raised our children of the current generation. Rome fell because the Romans eventually could not field an army that could fight, so they hired the northern tribes as mercenaries, the Goths, and others like them to fight their battles. Goths, Kurds, same stuff different day. We know the outcome. Everyone's concern about this is different.
I'm not a millenial. I know how to assess myself prior to a lesson etc. If I need a drink etc, I do it prior to the lesson. If it's a consistent problem, or it gets on your nerves, tell the student to take care of things prior to the lesson. Maybe they haven't learned how to do that for themselves yet. What does it hurt to be caring of another person? Does it really make them less of a rider or horseman because the way they answer their needs is different? Coach them through the issue - look, we are going to be working for 45 min (or whatever). Go grab a drink and hit the restroom quick because you need to be focused. If they aren't taught by someone else, then teach them. I really don't see the issue. |
|
|
|
Post by horseguy on Jul 24, 2017 14:28:32 GMT
Mclean Ward, one of my favorite modern riders, said this about Kati Prudent's comments, "It’s very hard to compare the two times. A six-foot wide oxer with 10 trees in the middle with 20’ poles isn’t harder or easier than a 1.55-meter oxer today with three poles and a false groundline and breakaway cups and a fast time allowed. The sport has had to change internally and because of external pressures, and the greats of any generation will adjust to what the sport is." That is a very complex statement. Here are some of the jumps from Stadium Jumping from the military era that ended between 1950's and the 1960's.   Harry Chamberlin US Army Like today's cross country jumps, these were solid jumps and if you made an error you had to deal with timbers, earth and other solid surfaces as opposed to rails down on the flat even footing. Ward's comparison is very technical and he interchanges very different yet similarly high degrees of difficulty. His examples are similar only in the intensity of their respective degrees of the difficulties each example presents. Where his comparison falls short is that technical difficulty and physical difficulty are so extremely different. For a horse, a false groundline is a mental challenge. They dislike the ambiguity of these kinds of lines. Ward compares this mental technical challenge with a horse facing a six foot timber oxer, that would have a very unambigious groundline but a massive spread compared to a 1.55 meter modern oxer spread. To a horse, the six foot solid spread is an extremely different challenge, not so much mental as physical. Horses approaching these kinds of jumps do not communicate to their rider the kind of insecurity that ambiguity brings as with the false groundline, but rather a certain kind of doubt about their own power. Two very different challenges for a rider approaching a jump. The approaches to these two jumps would be ridden very differently. In the modern technical jump with its much narrower spread and safe cups holding a rail that will fall, a rider needs little courage, and they therefore can push their horse more intently due to the lower risk. By contrast, approaching the 6 foot timber spread oxer does require courage. It's not going to fall down and save your bones or your horse's. But more importantly, the long spread requires a different kind of precision in how the horse plants his feet in the take off. If the rider pushes their horse too hard here and distracts him from this most important feet plant in the take off, the rider has created a seriously dangerous jump. Therefore, the comparison Ward offers is similar to comparing auto racing at 200 mph to Olympic rifle target shooting. At the top of each sport there are remarkable experts with near super human skill sets, but the elements of these skill sets are mostly non-transferable. What is transferable is competitor concentration, self control, understanding how your car or your rifle performs etc. but the two competitions are so different as to be more irrelevant that relevant. It's not surprising that McLean Ward attempts this comparison because he is the most detached rider I think I have ever seen in Stadium Jumping. I have watched him correct round ending errors during a jumping competition with the precision and aloof detachment that an accountant changes a number on a spread sheet. So, I have no doubt that he feels his comparison is accurate and justified. But few riders have his unique "Artificial Intelligence/robotic" perspective on the mechanics of how a horse jumps as he does. Being commonly human, I find his comparison and the justification he provides from it so apples-and-oranges that we cannot benefit from it. As he said, "It is very hard to compare the two times". You can't really, and because of this it is easier to see what has been lost to horsemanship. |
|
