Tough, Fun, Fair Kyra Kyrklund At the USDF Symposium, this master trainer taught riders how to use their bodies better to communicate with the horse. By Beth Baumert One of the best things about a clinic with Kyra Kyrklund is that she rides. At this December 2008 U.S. Dressage Federation (USDF) Symposium in Denver, she rode nearly every horse. She talks almost constantly while she rides telling us what she s thinking all the time. There are no secrets, and while she talks, we see her attitude, which is practical, realistic and peppered with humor. It would be fun to be her horse. She is tough but fair and appreciative of the horse s efforts. Here are a few enlightening tips: Training the Rider Seat bones or hips? Kyrklund talks more about the rider s hips than the seat bones. She wants the rider to rest the weight of her upper body on the hip joint. The seat bones are farther back, she explains. They are at the ends of the bones. The hip joints can absorb movement like shock absorbers, but the seat bones cannot. If you look at the triangle that is formed by the two seat bones and the pubic bone, she says, the location of the hip joint is above a central point in the middle of that triangle. She says that the more you can relax down in the saddle, the more you can feel your horse. She wants relaxation without loss of posture positive tension, not negative tension. Weight. Kyrklund wants to see equal weight in both hips, no matter what. She wants the riders to sit squarely, even on curved lines and in the lateral work. The rider s core is most important, but it needs to be framed evenly over the hips, she says. One rider at the symposium looks too much to the inside, which puts him on the outside of his saddle. She asks him to look to the outside to help him sit squarely. While riding one horse, Kyrklund says, He doesn t want to carry my left hip, but I don t compromise. Most of the time, mistakes happen because the rider removes one hip or another. During question-and-answer sessions, the audience is persistent. In many ways they ask the same question: Do I always sit squarely? Even on circles, when I have always been taught to sit to the inside? Kyrklund knows that many problems are caused by riders who intend to sit to the inside but instead become crooked. Kyrklund shows her animated teaching style as she works with Grant Schneidmann and Superman. Photos by Bruce Lawrie 24 Dressage Today February 2009
She outlines a common problem: The rider s inside ribs contract, the weight goes to the outside, the inside leg comes off and the toe sticks out, and then the outside elbow sticks out. She imitates the position that we often see, and everyone laughs. She says that the less-than-ideal instructor tries to fix the toe and the outside elbow. Now, she turns them both in and looks quite ridiculous. The real problem is with the hips, which are still crooked. It is difficult enough to learn to sit evenly in the saddle, she says. If that is achieved, we can go into details later. She concedes only that the rider might think of moving both hips to the right or the left, but never one forward or one back. Sit still over the center of gravity. Your horse can feel a fly on his side, but if there are many flies and they re buzzing all the time, he feels nothing, Kyrklund says. She wants the riders to sit still and feel their horses changing. You don t change, she says. Keep your weight on your hips. Stay in the same spot in the saddle over the center of gravity. If you lean back, your center of gravity is behind the horse s center of gravity, and he will be inclined to run away. If you lean too far forward, he will try to stop. Kyra s elbow routine. At a halt, Kyra pushes against the back of a rider s elbow to check its stability. She wants the elbows to be strong when the horse tries to get too long in the frame. Then she stands facing the rider and pulls on both reins against the rider, as if she were a pulling horse. She wants to draw on both of the rider s hips because of the depth and stability of the rider s elbows. The rider s elbows, together with the weight dropped down on the hips and the tummy muscles, stabilize the rider and put her in a position to frame the horse with specific boundaries. When the horse wants to get too long, those boundaries become active. In motion, Kyrklund wants the rider s elbows close to her sides with a relaxed shoulder. The hand can be independent and the fingers relaxed when the elbows are stable. She says to one rider, Imagine that I am pushing on the back of your arm. Feel the horse in your elbow, not in the hand. By pushing back on Kyra s imaginary hand, the rider keeps the rein the same length when the horse wants to get long. He doesn t shorten the neck by pulling back. The rider s legs. The leg is the accelerator. Ride with the leg until you feel he really goes from it, she says, but keep your weight still. Don t push with the seat. The seat should remain the same, no matter what you are doing. The leg is the forward-driving aid. Kyrklund says that the horse s energy is like the flow of a river it must flow between your legs. She wants riders to use the leg but not squeeze. If you squeeze with your legs or move too much, you prevent the flow of this energy. Popular clinician Kyra Kyrklund, a five-time Olympian, has the unique ability to educate and entertain. Bruce Lawrie February 2009 Dressage Today 25
Tough, Fun, FairKyra Kyrklund Patricia Lasko Kyrklund s willingness and ability to ride demonstration horses was much appreciated by the more than 500 attendees at the two-day USDF Symposium. It s all in the way you breathe, she said, as she talked and rode without getting winded. Make him wait. Kyrklund rides as if she has an imaginary rein around the base of her horse s neck. Imagine that the reins are not to his mouth but around his breast, she says. When you use your legs to engage or quicken the horse s hind legs, this rein prevents the horse from running away. Then the rider can ride the horse s back. Don t let the horse s breast run away from you, she says. When riders activate the hind legs but prevent the front end from running away, it activates the horse s back. Kyrklund points out another benefit of this imaginary rein: you cannot pull on just one side of it, because it would just slide around the neck. It encourages the riders to use the reins together and helps them stay sitting squarely behind the withers. Coordination of leg and hand. Someone from the audience wants to know if Kyrklund recommends using the leg and hand at the same time. She reaches down and grabs a bit of footing. She packs it, as if it were a snowball. If I want to make a ball, she says, I need both hands. I can t collect my horse with only one aid. However, she explains that, in the beginning, you can only use one at a time. When you want to make the horse reactive, you can only use the leg, and when the horse gets heavy, you use the hand without the leg. Then, you must be able to balance the horse between the hand and the leg by using them together. This is a matter of coordination. She likens the horse s body to a spring. A spring stores energy, but it doesn t work if you only push on one end of it. Likewise, she explains that if you push the ends of a spring too much together, you get too much tension. Some horses don t accept a lot of coiled energy, she says, but you have to go to the limit to find out how much they accept. You push together and then release. She uses this opportunity to explain why you can t make a horse round by just putting his head down. Muscles always work in pairs. When one gets shorter, another has to get longer. If you shorten the spring on one side (comparable to the horse s stomach), you get the bascule in the top line that we want. In this bascule, the horse s tummy gets shorter, and the back longer. If the rider just makes the head go down, it will go up again as soon as she releases the rein, because the top line hasn t stretched and the tummy muscles haven t shortened. How riders learn. Kyrklund says 26 Dressage Today February 2009
when you are learning something new, you can only learn one thing at a time. You do it with your conscious mind, which she calls the big brain. When the skill is mastered, it moves to the unconscious, or the little brain. Then you are free to learn something else. If the rider learns a skill in the wrong way, she has to bring it back to the big brain. It takes 5,000 repetitions to make this change, she says, and then another 100,000 repetitions to make it automatic. This is why I don t mind nagging about the same thing. When Kyrklund first learned about the number of repetitions needed to make good habits, she says she became a more patient trainer. When the student had problems, she knew it didn t mean she was a bad trainer or that she had a poor student. She tells us a few things that the trainer can do to reduce the 100,000 repetitions: 1. The trainer should know that the student who is relearning can only do one thing at a time, so she must choose the single most important thing to teach. 2. Mental rehearsal is as good as physical rehearsal, so the rider can practice perfectly in her imagination to reduce the number of physical repetitions. 3. The trainer can link the rider s need to something familiar to the rider s experience. For example, if a rider has flat hands that lay down, the trainer might ask her student to imagine holding a glass of champagne. This would make the rider put the thumbs up, and because the rider has experience with that, she might reduce the number of physical repetitions needed to change the habit. The comfort zone. Riders are often inclined to stay in the comfort zone. Kyrklund encourages them to tempt the limits. If you always do what you always did, you ll always get what you always got. Beyond the comfort zone is the stretch zone where learning occurs. It can February 2009 Dressage Today 27
Tough, Fun, FairKyra Kyrklund Bruce Lawrie Patricia Lasko Petra Warlimont (left) rode Rohmero, a 6-year-old Hanoverian gelding. Training horses is like climbing a mountain, said Kyrklund (right) on Superman. There are different paths. If one doesn t work, go back and look for another way up. be uncomfortable but is not dangerous. The panic zone is beyond the stretch zone. The horse says I don t understand this and resorts to his natural fight-orflight pattern. When the horse is in the stretch or panic zone, the rider must stay in the comfort zone. Both horse and rider should never be in the panic zone together. Training the Horse When each horse enters the arena, Kyrklund explains her procedure for establishing horse-and-rider communication. She wants to check to be sure each horse understands the aids and reacts to a satisfactory degree. Communication check. Kyrklund wants the horses relaxed, but not lazy. To achieve this, she checks each horse s ability to go, stop and turn. She uses transitions and turns to balance each horse on straight lines and through corners within the arena. The horse must react from a small leg aid, and if he runs away, she does a downward transition and goes forward again. She wants the horses to wait for her aids to turn. When you flex to the inside in preparation for the turn, she says, the horse s body shouldn t fall to the inside. Invariably the horses want to turn on their own, and she corrects them by quietly but firmly halting before each corner with the inside leg and outside rein. Then, she doesn t think of turning the horse s head. Rather, she turns the withers with the outside rein. If the horse still doesn t turn properly, she uses her outside leg more firmly and more forward than it s usual position to address the shoulder. Unless the horse waits for the aids before the corner, she explains, you can t get bend in the corner. When the horses wait, they stay upright between her thighs and aids. Between the corners and turns, Kyrklund does frequent transitions within and between the gaits, and we notice that she gains greater access to the body of the horse. Self-carriage. With each horse Kyrklund rides, she repeats the same aids consistently until the horse is carrying her on her chosen line of travel. All the time, I try to keep my weight on two hips without moving the middle of myself. I must sit in the middle until he carries me. As she rides another horse, she comments that the horse s usual rider has been carrying the horse s neck too much. When he comes against my hand, I turn him, she says. I must push him to the hand without carrying him with my hand. Later when the usual rider is aboard, she says, Don t try to lift him. He has to lift you. The horse steps rhythmically through the back and carries the rider. She can take her legs and reins away, and the horse continues exactly the same. When the horse is in self-carriage, we can see how much better the rhythm gets. At this point, Kyrklund feels she can start to influence the length of the horse s steps. Coordination for Collection. Now 28 Dressage Today February 2009
Kyrklund wants the horse to make shorter, quicker steps. When the horse s frame gets shorter, the forward energy will go upward into collection. She tells riders to sink the upper body weight into the hips. Don t force or squeeze yourself down. Just concentrate on equal weight in your hips, and ride the down step. If the rider uses her leg when the horse s leg is in the air, she is trying to lift him. Think of the down beat, she says. It s like bouncing a basketball. When the ball is almost going down, you make the bounce. At the moment when the horse s leg is carrying weight, Kyrklund wants the rider s quick leg aid to quicken the horse s step. She often asks a rider to make the horse sharper with the outside leg. The legs say quicker and the reins say don t go away, she says. More forward. Kyrklund says that we often hear, Ride more forward, but what does that mean? Does it mean to go in longer strides or quicker strides? If the rider doesn t make the decision about what it means, the horse certainly will, she says. If the rider wants to lengthen the strides, the horse will usually take small quick strides. The rider needs to make the decision about whether she wants longer or quicker strides. Ride the back. Kyrklund tells one rider, I don t want you to go forward with your horse s back down. I want you to go forward with the back up. Then she asks the rider to use that imaginary rein around the breast to prevent the horse from leading with his chest. In transitions, she encourages riders to feel the back and keep it moving. In transition to trot, she says, think that you start it with the back rather than the hind legs. And the back must move into a canter transition too. Focus on the back, she says, which should move a bit quicker than the legs. Sometimes the saddle gets in the February 2009 Dressage Today 29
Tough, Fun, Fair Kyra Kyrklund Bruce Lawrie Kristi Wysocki rode her 14-year-old Danish gelding, Red Adair at the symposium in Colorado. rider s way, so she reminds riders to ride the back of the horse and not the saddle. Many riders push the saddle to the outside. Imagine that the saddle isn t there. One of the horses carries himself with the poll the highest point, but his back doesn t work well. Don t think of getting the head down, she advises. When you do, you ll be using the brake, and then the horse can t be in self-carriage. She says that the horse s head weighs 10 percent of his body weight, so we shouldn t think about it more than 10 percent of the time. Think about the rest of the body 90 percent, she says. Straightness reminders. Kyrklund helps riders keep their hip bones squarely behind the withers. The rider s lower leg then sends the withers forward toward the bit. These horses didn t have the normal tendency to become crooked, as the riders were encouraged to think of turning the withers. A 30 Dressage Today February 2009
higher-level horse and rider did smooth transitions between large walk pirouettes and canter pirouettes while the rider was reminded to just turn the withers. Mental Flexibility. Training horses can be like climbing a mountain, says Kyrklund. There are different paths up the mountain, and if one path doesn t work, you might need to go back down the mountain a ways before looking for another way up. Piaffe and passage. Someone in the audience asks if Kyrklund normally teaches piaffe or passage first. She thinks of them at the same time, but starts with the weaker one. I don t want either to become too strong, she says. She concentrates on transitions between piaffe and passage so they develop equally. How horses learn. Horses learn based on punishment and reward, but the punishment isn t harsh. It is pressure and release of the leg or the hand. As soon as the horse reacts from a pressure, the rider has to release the hand or leg so the horse can carry himself. The horses in this clinic go, stop and turn from pressure and release. Kyrklund plays with them. With transitions, turns and movements, she molds the outlines of the horses. They take shorter steps and longer steps, quicker steps and higher steps. Every horse and rider improved markedly and worked happily through the back in self-carriage. Kyra Kyrklund is five-time Olympian, representing her native country, Finland. She trained with the late Walter Christensen and Herbert Rehbein. She rode Matador to win the World Cup Final in 1991 and rode Matador s son, Max, to eighth place in the 2008 Olympic Freestyle in Hong Kong. She lives in West Sussex, United Kingdom, with her husband, Richard White. February 2009 Dressage Today 31