twitter facebook digg google pinterest linkedin

"I believe that there are two categories of ecuyers. Those who, while skilled, use the horse as a tool, and those who love and allow him to express the brilliance of which he is capable.

The former are not less expert than the latter. During dressage tests, they may even triumph, although never taking the risk of making a mistake when the opportunity to yield with the hands occurs and lightness presents itself. The latter always risk being the damned poets of this art. They are misunderstood by the masses of riders who cannot distinguish between the former's means and the latter.

Only the latter enjoy the pure pleasure of feeling how a creature collaborates without constraint, as a friend." (Nuno Olivera)

In the same line of thought, Albert Einstein emphasized value over success. In the early seventies, the late Commandant Durand, who later became Colonel and then General, delighted the "Grand Parquet" spectators with his jumping courses. Durand teamed with a horse named Pitou. The Grand Parquet is very famous, a show jumping place at Fontainebleau in France. Years earlier, Pitou was the winner of the Three-day Event Individual Olympic gold medal of Bromont (Canada) with Jean Jacques Gillion. Pitou started a second career in show jumping with his new partner, Commandant Durand. Durand was very well known for the beauty of his stadium jumping courses. He was a delight to watch, the discretion of his rebalancing. The subtle adjustment of the take-off stride, the fluidity of the course. Each jump was a demonstration. It was like a dressage freestyle over the jumps.

It was the jump-off, and Durand approached the last jump. The distance was a little long, and Durand rebalanced the horse finding the perfect take-off place. He cleared the jump and passed the finish line half a second slower than his opponent. I was watching next to the French jumping team coach, and the coach commented, "Damned poet; he could have taken the long stride. The horse is powerful enough to make it, and he would have won." He would have won, but he would have placed the horse in front of an unfair challenge. I kept my thoughts for myself, but looking around, I saw a new dimension of the conflict that was in my mind. Competitors criticized Durand for choosing value over success. He was admired and criticized for being an artist more than a competitor. The jumping coach did not want Durand on the team because a jumping coach's career relies on successes, but the blinders were full of peoples appreciating the value over the success. As soon as Durand entered the course, everyone came to watch, knowing that it will be beautiful. As competitors, we are a slave of success; We believe that success is what spectators expect from us, and we push our horses beyond their limits. Applauding the winner is part of the norm. The next day, spectators don't even remember who the winner was, but as a competitor, we believe or want to believe that the applauds are personally directed to us. Durand offered respect for the horse. He took the risk of giving his horse the liberty of adding his style to the accuracy of the performance. He was a poet indeed and a damned good one.

At this time, I assisted the French Three-day Event National coach, riding and training world-class and Olympic horses. We were applying fancy techniques making the horses do it, the team veterinarian checked every day how the horses withstood the training program, but it was no in-depth analysis of how the performances challenged the horses' physique and how we could specifically develop and coordinate each horse's anatomy for the athletic demand of the performance. We believed in the efficiency of what we were doing. Still, earlier as a young gymnast, I experienced the difference between a regional coach focusing on the problem and a more advanced coach focusing on the problem's source. I had difficulties with the landing of the summersault, and the regional coach focused on the landing. I did not progress, starting to think that I was not good enough. Instead, the better coach analyzed my difficulty and identified the root cause, which was an imbalance in my back muscles. The national coach did not let me practice the move as I was using the wrong muscles and developed instead a gymnastic program correcting my back muscle imbalance. Once, he felt that my back was functional. The coach let me try the summersault, and I landed perfectly square. I expected the same level of analysis with equine athletes but both, training and therapeutic concerns were about the problem but not the source of the kinematics abnormality causing the lesion or the soreness.

I dreamed that one could be a winning poet. I wanted to win, but I agreed with Colonel Margot when he told me, "There is no glory in a victory gained at the expenses of the horse's soundness."

Equine researches were at this time in their infancy, but it was already pertinent thoughts. Richard Tucker suggested that the back muscles lifted the back instead of the abdominal muscles, the core, as commonly emphasized. "An initial thrust on the column is translated into a series of predominantly vertical and horizontal forces which diminish progressively as they pass from one vertebra to the next." (Richard Tucker-1964). It was evident that abdominal muscles could not create the sophisticated coordination of the back muscles converting the thrust generated by the hind legs into horizontal and vertical forces. Shortening the horse's lower line could only create an overall flexion of the horse's thoracolumbar spine. I always have found this traditional explanation overly simplistic; The flexibility of the whole thoracolumbar spine is not even; vertebrae situated in the cranial thoracic vertebrae have twelve articular facets while vertebrae situated further back only have six articular surfaces, Lateral bending occurs within the ninth and sixteenth thoracic vertebrae, transversal rotation is located mainly between the ninth and fourteenth thoracic vertebrae, etc. It never appeared accurate that such a diversity of motions could be precisely orchestrated from the abdominal and pectoral muscles' contraction. The thought that the back muscles made such refinement was more in line with the anatomy of the equine back.

The problem is that conventional riding principles promoted concepts such as shifts of the rider weight that were in contradiction with the construction and setting of the back muscles and, therefore, ineffective in creating subtle muscular coordination. It was then necessary to reconsider the teaching of our predecessors in the light of new knowledge. As I further understood how the horse physique effectively functions, it became more and more challenging to combine value and success. Techniques that I had successfully applied for success were no longer acceptable from the perspective of ethics and value as they did not efficiently prepare the horse physique for the athletic demand of the performance. These techniques were making the horse do it but failed to provide adequate muscular development and orchestration. Even worse, some of these techniques induced damaging stresses on the vertebral column and limb joints.

I realized that even if I believed that I loved the horses, what I was doing and trained to believe was about loving to win more than loving the horse. It was a crisis; my business demanded that I won, or at the less, I was brainwashed to believe it. General Durand proved otherwise. He had a successful career placing respect for the horse and therefore value above success. I decided that using the horse as a tool was not how I wanted to live my equestrian life. I decided that I will not make the horse do it. Still, instead, I will further study how the horse physique effectively functions and, damned poet, I will never ask a movement without giving first to the horse the athletic development and coordination allowing expression of the athlete's full potential and style and soundness.

Interestingly, the percentage of success did not diminish. Some judges did not like it, but the ones with more significant experience and sound intuition did. The soundness was an effective result. Horses remained sound, performing better, and for a more extended period of time. The problem was to explain. It was no doubt that many riders had the intuition and the skill and the will to further their equitation, but all the words had already been used for the wrong feeling, the improper coordination, the wrong meaning, and the wrong picture. When I was using the term "collection," I thought about the proper education of the back muscles. Still, the word was understood according to the definition promoted in the training pyramid and other schools. The solution was explaining the practical application of advanced research studies through a clear explanation of how the horse physique effectively functions.

The ones who want to continue to believe in simplistic and false theories such as stretching and relaxation will continue to believe in stretching and relaxation even if the horse body functions at the level of subtle nuances in muscle tone instead of lack of muscle tone. They confound equitation and religion. They want the horse to embrace their faith instead of questioning their faith in the light of factual documentation of test analysis, which is Linus Paulin's definition of science. Those are the formers. Instead, the latter upgrade our ancestors' wisdom to actual knowledge and enjoy the pure pleasure of feeling how a creature collaborates without constraint, as a friend.