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Post by horseguy on Dec 20, 2015 14:50:15 GMT
Measurements have histories. The foot was something everyone had at the end of their leg and it was used as a measurement, so was the hand. Both worked and eventually in more prosperous times people standardize the foot, 12 inches, and the hand, 4 inches, the yard, and so on. The 20 meter circle is one of these ancient standards. This circle is 65 1/2 feet across and its circumference is a continuous bend that lasts for 62.8 meters or 206 feet. These numbers suit a horse in training. The bend necessitated by the arc of the circle and the distance around he circle are both doable but not easy. It's a perfect training tool for flexibility, concentration and fitness. Therefore it is no wonder that the 20 meter circle is the underlying reference for the large and small dressage arenas. The small area is made up of two 20 meter squares, each of which contains a 20 meter circle, and the large arena is three of these 20 meter boxes. Basically, the challenge of the 20 meter circle is to establish a subtle bend that follows the circumference in the horse's spine, and hold that bend in your horse for about 200 feet. Every time the horse seeks relief from the bend in their spine, they will straighten the spine and then will hopefully return to the bend of the circle circumference. For me it is like a guessing game of how many relief spine straightenings does your horse require to get around the circle? When we start a young horse in the 20 meter circle, he makes a random polyhedron in a more or less circular shape like this. Our early attempts at a 20 meter circle might look more like this "circle" above that is more like seven sharp bends and seven straight lines. Each straight line, long or short, represents the horse seeking relief from the bend by straightening their spine. Eventually with work and a lot of strengthening of the spine, so it seeks less relief, we get a circle that might look like the one above. You can see on the left side a section that is straighter. This represents relief from the full bend. Next we work to get a more uniform circle and usually get multiple circles that look like this below. From this series of uneven circular trips around the 20 meter circle we begin to find a more uniform bend that overlays the prior circle traveled. And then we change direction and do the same work in the opposite direction. Ultimately we put both directions together into a perfect figure eight. The point of this post is that the 20 meter size is the key. It has been handed down for centuries through horse trainers, I believe because it is just tight enough a circle to make the horse work at the bend, yet big enough not to make the work not too demanding. It is a great exercise that never gets old.
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Post by jimmy on Dec 20, 2015 17:04:45 GMT
I would like to do a little research on the twenty meter circle and the dressage court. From what I have read, the original courts were much smaller. I'm not sure but I don't think the twenty meter circle as a standard is very old.
I facilitate between believing that standards are an important measuring tool to maintain to be able to measure progress, to, I'll ride any size circle I feel like, thank you very much! But in order to judge regularity and even-ness, a standard circle is necessary. A rider should be able to perform it.But as the perfect vehicle for training the horse, I wouldn't give it that much credit.
I think accuracy is the more important aspect of this. Your seven sided uneven circle, when attempted to execute the same way, twice in a row, would prove to be a very high level test of control and training. I think many riders would not be able to do it.
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Post by horseguy on Dec 20, 2015 19:04:07 GMT
I googled the history of the 20 meter circle in dressage and I got nothing. It just "is", appaently. Not even Wikipedia has a comment on the origin of this size circle being such a foundational measure in riding. I have been told it is very old. Another "hand me down" piece of information I learned many years ago is that the dressage letters are so old that no one can remember from what language or country they came and what they originally meant. One story dates them back to a list of the cities the Roman legions conquered, which would make them really old and Italian. But regardless of the history, the size of the 20 meter circle is very useful because it falls in a range of movement demands that almost any horse can accomplish and refine. The basic small dressage arena is two 20 meter circles in two 20 meter squares with the dressage letters set as reference points around the perimeter to designate where to execute elements of a dressage test. In higher level tests we see 10 meter circles, which require much more of a horse. but primarily the 20 meter circle with variations is the base dressage movement beyond a straight line in dressage. Just for reference, the large dressage arena is just one more 20 meter square added to the first two. This large format permits more speed and more room for more difficult movements. I look at dressage as a kind of favor from horsemen (term inclusive of women) from the past. They did the math and left us with an effective tool. How we use that tool is up to every contemporary generation. It has been used to train the finest war horses in history, great Olympic horses and back yard colts. I also think that the fact that western round pens at their usual 60 foot diameter might come from this 20 meter circle, although it is a tad smaller. The bend of this size circle is good for a horse, even an out of shape horse, where as a 15 or 10 meter circle is too small for an out of shape or young horse, in my opinion. The circle bend is where the horse first feels the seat bones "out of parallel" and must learn to interpret this feeling. It is where the inside leg begins to pair with the outside rein for special effectiveness, and where the outside leg begins to work with the inside rein to shape a bend. For me it is the beginning of subtlety in the aids, as oppose to throwing a horse around as seen in the grayhorse's horse & trainer video on another thread. It's the beginning of finesse, and I have been thinking about how the square zero waiting works in the 20 meter circle. Will post more on that later.
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Post by horseguy on Dec 21, 2015 3:27:55 GMT
We have been discussing waiting and making space in the training process for square zero, as Ray Hunt calls the per-movement moment of preparation. It got me thinking about polo and how the game includes waiting and how that makes spaces for the horse and the rider to experience the moment of preparation for movement. That thought lead me to training tasks where we must wait in other ways. Take the example of doing an early circle like this. We begin and we are moving forward in a circle, but its not a circle. It's a circular set of connected lines with quirky bends or turns connecting the lines. We try to make the string of movements rounder. How? Apply more force with the reins and legs to shape the movement to make it more round? I think Ray Hunt might say no. He might say wait for a moment when the horse feels lighter, where we could bend him like a soft twig. It may not come, so we wait for a better moment than we have going straight when we want to be going round. We wait so we don't have to force the bend. And then the horse bends. After that I think then we wait for the pre-movement of when the horse wants relief from the bend. We feel it coming. The horse is tiring of the bend and wants to straighten its spine to feel less stressed along its back. We feel that pre-straightening and we have a choice. We can correct it and try to have the horse hold the bend longer. That's the goal. Or we have a choice of letting go of the immediate goal and working instead on the horse's long term softness. I am thinking that in some training tasks like polo the work provides the waiting moments that are larger, but in other tasks it can be completely up to us to make nearly all the choices of what the horse experiences, and these are smaller. I think 20 meter circles are one of those tasks where we have a lot more choices.
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Post by horseguy on Jan 7, 2016 15:11:42 GMT
I am surprised that this topic has received such a cool reception. Putting a horse into a subtle bend in a big circle is very challenging. It is a test of a horse's mind, physical condition, discipline and willingness to work with a rider. It also tests the rider's ability to feel, anticipate and deliver guidance in the moment and before in the "before movement" moment. When I go to look at a horse for sale, I mount up and I sit. I wait to see what the horse will do. Once in the saddle, you get from a horse their expectations. They will move off, if that is what they expect to do. They will stand and wait for a command, if that is their expectation, or they will look for a fight if that is how they have been ridden. If you wait, the horse will tell you how it thinks and feels about being ridden. Once I see their expectation, I give them mine, which is to work in a collaborative, disciplined manner and hopefully to have some fun doing it. But first I work through their expectation, which might be to run around a little, stand quietly or wrestle a bit. I never know, but once we move through it, we go into a circle. Some will do a perfectly round circle but maybe by pulling all the way around on the forehand. Some will engage their hind and give an irregular roundish shape but a nice energetic ride. The circle tells me so much. And then we do a circle the other way around. The circle for me is like doing scales on a musical instrument. Can you hit all the notes? When you can do all of them elegantly it might look something like this. There are that many elements that go into a finely ridden circle, and in a way we and our horse make the melody of it. There are circles and there are circles. But like scales, you must enjoy or otherwise dedicate yourself to the spaces in between the notes.
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Post by jimmy on Jan 8, 2016 15:43:29 GMT
I agree that being able to ride a perfect circle is of primary importance,and difficult enough for new riders, but not more important,or equal too, at least, riding a straight line. Twenty meters or so, is good, easy, circle for most horses. I don't find the twenty meters that magical or perfect, and not as intriguing as the Golden Ratio, or Fabonacche's sequence. The proportions of the 20x60m dressage court does not fit the golden ration, which is disappointing I don't find the 20 m circle, once mastered, that special, or mentally particularly challenging to the horse. The fact that it isn't, is why it's a good place to start, in that most horses can do it with ease. Moving in and out of a spiral is more revealing to the degree of training. Either way, the point of the exercise is that you are riding a line. Even a circle is a line. Riding a line requires the student to feel where the horse's feet are taking off and landing. Add to that, the horse is either traveling equally, that is, both ends carrying roughly the same weight and the horse is turning on his center, or he is turning more on his hind or more on his front. These three simple ideas, front, back, middle, seem to clarify for students what is taking place, or needs to take place, in many movements they will learn. All this being said, the most logical place to start with a student is to ride some form of a circle around me, and without a court, many cannot comprehend 20 meters, since we think in feet.Some of my lessons are often outside somewhere. So I will say something like, Start that far away from me, and keep me that far away, while you ride around me. Later I might have to add cones. I do however like geometry. I find it difficult at first for most beginners to get a sense of where they are in space and time, in relation to the walls of an arena. It is one of the first things I try to instill. Ride there, then ride over there, then ride back to over there. And when they can do that, they can ride a circle.
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Post by rideanotherday on Jan 8, 2016 16:11:04 GMT
I almost never work on circles. And I don't place much emphasis on straight lines unless there's a reason (show / pattern). What I do work on is body control. Can I move the head, neck, shoulders, ribs and hips all independently of each other? Endless drilling of circles or lines gets boring pretty rapidly to me. I suppose that's why most lessons are tough to get through.
The last lesson I had, it was here in Maryland and I rode through 45 minutes on the rail, long trotting. Minimal interest or exchange from the instructor except at direction change. Snoozefest!
I spent time before hand outlining my experiences and knowledge and what I was looking to accomplish. None of it mattered. I will not go back to that stable.
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Post by jimmy on Jan 8, 2016 17:55:17 GMT
I almost never work on circles. And I don't place much emphasis on straight lines unless there's a reason (show / pattern). What I do work on is body control. Can I move the head, neck, shoulders, ribs and hips all independently of each other? Endless drilling of circles or lines gets boring pretty rapidly to me. I suppose that's why most lessons are tough to get through. The last lesson I had, it was here in Maryland and I rode through 45 minutes on the rail, long trotting. Minimal interest or exchange from the instructor except at direction change. Snoozefest! I spent time before hand outlining my experiences and knowledge and what I was looking to accomplish. None of it mattered. I will not go back to that stable. I think you may misunderstand my use of lines. It isn't about being on a rail. One of the most important concepts in riding,is the idea of straightness. It is actually the essential key to classical riding. Yes, you need body control for straightness. But I have seen the evolution of the teaching of body control, to the point that it has lost it's meaning. As if it is a thing in and of itself. Clinics are given in nothing but body control, and never address straightness. I take issues with this. Body control is a means to an end. The real purpose of suppleing exercises, and lateral work, is to get your horse working equally on both sides, so that he can be STRAIGHT. If you are unable to ride a straight line from point a to point b, and stop straight, and again move off straight, then you have wasted the meaning of "body control"
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Post by rideanotherday on Jan 8, 2016 18:03:20 GMT
I almost never work on circles. And I don't place much emphasis on straight lines unless there's a reason (show / pattern). What I do work on is body control. Can I move the head, neck, shoulders, ribs and hips all independently of each other? Endless drilling of circles or lines gets boring pretty rapidly to me. I suppose that's why most lessons are tough to get through. The last lesson I had, it was here in Maryland and I rode through 45 minutes on the rail, long trotting. Minimal interest or exchange from the instructor except at direction change. Snoozefest! I spent time before hand outlining my experiences and knowledge and what I was looking to accomplish. None of it mattered. I will not go back to that stable. I think you may misunderstand my use of lines. It isn't about being on a rail. One of the most important concepts in riding,is the idea of straightness. It is actually the essential key to classical riding. Yes, you need body control for straightness. But I have seen the evolution of the teaching of body control, to the point that it has lost it's meaning. As if it is a thing in and of itself. Clinics are given in nothing but body control, and never address straightness. I take issues with this. Body control is a means to an end. The real purpose of suppleing exercises, and lateral work, is to get your horse working equally on both sides, so that he can be STRAIGHT. If you are unable to ride a straight line from point a to point b, and stop straight, and again move off straight, then you have wasted the meaning of "body control" I don't misunderstand about your use of lines. I understand what straightness is as it applies to the horse and riding the horse. I merely stated what I do. I don't go to clinics for "body control". I have been to cutting clinics, or cow work clinics because I have interest in that. I believe I am able to ride a horse in a straight line.
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Post by jimmy on Jan 8, 2016 18:29:00 GMT
My issue is with the over use of body control taught by some top cow horse trainers. Not that it isn't important, but I have seen it lead to riders micro managing their horses, to the point where they won't allow them to make a mistake. The truth is, you are never really operating the parts of the horse separately, because the horse works as a whole, and we can often get in the way of him operating efficiently and smoothly. I know in these clinics they might emphasis breaking the horse down to all his parts. As Ray said, sometimes you have to take them apart, and put them back together. But not always. Many times, the horse can fix his own position, if you give him the freedom to. It isn't that the clinician is wrong. It is how the information is perceived by the students. Being able to feel where your horse is and what he is doing, even if it is the wrong thing, is the important thing. An example of unnecessary body control taught, in my opinion, is in the picking up of a lead, where it is taught that the correct way is to cant the hip inward, in a sort of half pass position, to achieve the lead you want. I see this in the reining patterns, where th horse trots in and stops, then must pick up a left lead,for instance. But the horse's hip is set in first, and sometimes there is even sideways motion. To me, this shows an untrained horse. The pattern calls for a lope depart, and says nothing about a hip in maneuver. I am sure you have seen this yourself. Body control, as it is sometimes taught, tends to by pass the horse's mind and attempt to go straight to the body. But a horse can so easily learn a signal for a lead. He can, and should, step into a lop from a stand still, or at least from a walk step, from a perfectly straight position. Because, through training, he understand what lead you want, what direction to go. He doesn't not need to have his body manipulated into place in order to achieve this, if his mind is right. Even a lift of the rein can signal a gallop depart. I try and teach my students that they don't need to overly manipulate their horse. That the ideal is the horse simply steps into a canter, lope, straight. All they need to know at that point is what lead you would like them to take. And what direction you would like to go. I avoid teaching them about moving the hip over first, because it is a habit that becomes hard to break, and their horse will never be straight.
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Post by horseguy on Jan 8, 2016 18:32:12 GMT
I believe a straight line, with exceptions, is more difficult than a circle, especially for most beginner/intermediate students. For a student, at least in a circle the rider ends up more or less back where they started, but when I send a rider down a long straight line, in an open space - not on the rail, they invariably end up way off a straight line. I also think it is far easier to over correct when riding a line than when riding in a circle. There are ways to "cheat" in a line, like using acceleration to straighten a horse, but a steady straight line is technically difficult at a very high level of precision.
Both lines and circles done well and with maintaining a horse's "presence" is a challenge that I enjoy. At the farm, before I retired, I'd take the best riders out for a good time ride in new fallen snow and we'd do a competition for roundest circle, straightest line in the fresh snow. It was kind of an adult version of making snow angles. Fun. Difficult.
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Post by rideanotherday on Jan 8, 2016 18:46:08 GMT
Oh I completely agree it can be overdone, Jimmy. I like to have fundamental skills in place. It's like learning how to color with big thick crayons first and then moving into conventional crayons and then into colored pencils. There's a progression. I think the progression, and the reason for the progression frequently gets missed, especially in the clinic type setting.
If you don't teach fundamentals, you end up teaching "tricks". I have noticed that some will do that, they teach "circles" as a singular thing and then teach roll backs etc etc etc...and not teach the horse how to follow its nose, or move it's ribcage or lift it's back or set it's hip etc...and then there's no way to just "fix" one thing, rather than having to reteach an entire series of things because something went wrong at a show.
It's one of the reason why natural athletes struggle in more advanced levels of sports. As a kid, they naturally excelled and didn't have to train as hard as other kids they just "had it". Conversely, a young athlete who didn't have the skills, but did have drive, spent more time on fundamental skills, so that later in advanced levels, training was easier because the building blocks were there already and they didn't have to go back and learn pieces.
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Post by jacki on Jan 8, 2016 22:03:52 GMT
I enjoy watching both circles and straight lines - both are more difficult than they sound. I remember Laura's first attempt at a circle on a slope - talk about "body control"! One of the things that really impressed me with your barn/training, Horseguy, was that there was no fence around the arena (no cheating by using the fence). Skills were taught in the arena, and then you took the students out into "the wild" to put them to practical use. Laura remembers the snow circles - hard, but lots of fun!
Best wishes to Rideanotherday with your riding next week. I hope your post surgery/rehab reentry into riding goes well - and that you find a good barn/instructor!
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Post by horseguy on Jan 10, 2016 15:37:53 GMT
Body control and body awareness are essential. Can they be overdone? I don't know. Having had a farm near the US Army War College and thus a flow off students who had ridden and taken lesson all over the world from S. Korea to Germany, I would say that American riders do not get as much training in body control instruction as riders in many other countries. Even children as young at 8 get a level of repetition in control exercises in Germany that would fry an adult brain in the US. Our national expectation of fun and entertainment in riding instruction prevents a lot of these repetitions. Maybe it's good? I teach the way I learned. Nothing quite like going out on a side hill in January and February and doing 20 meter circles. On the hard frozen ground of a 5 degree sloped open hill with the top couple inches of dirt thawing from the noonday winter sun, a trotted circle or downward spiral can be rather exciting, not boring at all no matter how many you do.
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Post by rideanotherday on Jan 11, 2016 11:15:12 GMT
Body control and body awareness are essential. Can they be overdone? I don't know. Having had a farm near the US Army War College and thus a flow off students who had ridden and taken lesson all over the world from S. Korea to Germany, I would say that American riders do not get as much training in body control instruction as riders in many other countries. Even children as young at 8 get a level of repetition in control exercises in Germany that would fry an adult brain in the US. Our national expectation of fun and entertainment in riding instruction prevents a lot of these repetitions. Maybe it's good? I teach the way I learned. Nothing quite like going out on a side hill in January and February and doing 20 meter circles. On the hard frozen ground of a 5 degree sloped open hill with the top couple inches of dirt thawing from the noonday winter sun, a trotted circle or downward spiral can be rather exciting, not boring at all no matter how many you do. I don't know if I'm brave enough for that sort of exercise!
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