This term gets its own blog title because I need to create a fuller description that suits my purpose and goal of extraordinary dance which must have 'ease' as its distinguishing characteristic. Tempo, speed of the hoof beats, is easy to understand when you compare 2 horses of very different size. One will have a speedier regularity of footsteps than the other. That's it! Tempo in a nutshell! Not so fast. We have to work with tempo. How do we manage this? Simple! We don't! We let the horse manage it. What we do is help hold him to his own task of self-management. We help him keep his 'tick-tock' crisp, clear and regular. This takes away all the pressure of finding the 'right' tempo. We let the horse find that for himself.
Have you ever gone jogging with a friend who is either not at your level of fitness or who is of a different build? If you have you will know that it's not fun. One of the two of you is going to wear out before the other. Why? Because you each resonate in a way specific to your mass, shape, and fitness. Each horse does this too. If your horse is jogging along at a beat that is not in sync with these elements which are specific to him, he is going to wear out prematurely.
If you jog on your own, you will learn that you have to get into your own specific regularity of rhythm and a tempo that is unique to you in order to sustain the continuum of the jog. Soon you will start to feel comfortable with yourself and can endure.
This is how we want to train for dance with the horse---to let the horse find his tempo which we adjust to and help him maintain. Increasing the tempo(which remember is unique to him) adds stress which complicates the body's ability to carry the rider with ease as well as limits the body's ability to expand its energy to express itself in lift, volume and flexibility. These latter qualities require a certain kind of body tension to achieve. Without the ease of tempo we detract from the energy reserves the horse needs to improve other aspects of his motion. We create additional and unnecessary tensions that only impede flow of energy.
So----if the horse settles into a tempo that he feels very easy with but WE don't particularly like because it seems too lifeless or slow, then we have to do some rethinking and not just react by assuming we must push the horse on faster. This is a big mistake! This is how 'ego' gets in our way of success. Only the slower, natural tempo is going to serve us optimally in the exceptional dance we are after.
Rather than asking the horse to push on, we ask him to magnify the quality of his steps in the tempo he chooses. Tempo is speed of the HOOF BEATS not speed of the HORSE!
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Thank you for this great post. I believe I understand what you are saying about finding a tempo that is one's natural best tempo. And that what you say holds true also for the horse.
ReplyDeleteThe idea I would be interested to understand better in what you wrote is the idea that the tempo chosen by the horse is the one we should accept, that the rider shouldn't alter.
I myself use different tempos as I walk down the barn aisle for example, depending on the day/hour/minute. I have my slow "I'm tired/lazy tempo". I have my quick hurried "I have a zillion things to get done today tempo". I have my "The sun is shining and I'm peaceful tempo" with positive flowing energy-- not too slow, not to fast. And then there are many in between those tempos.
When I played a favorite song on the radio and its beat fits to the tempo of my foot falls of my "sun is shining" tick-tock, it would match perfectly and I feel in sync with the rythem of the music. However if I was in either the "I'm lazy" slow or "I have a zillion things" quick tempo, the first would be too slow to match the music and the later would be too fast. I'd feel out of sync.
Also my "sun is shinging" tick-tock tempo may in fact the best tempo to make me move atheletically. The other two are either too slow or too fast. An exceptional dance is not possible or at least much more difficult with those tempos. Yet both of those are still my own normal tempos on various days/hours/minutes.
The horse depending on his mood seems also, on his own, to choose different tempos. I see that clearly if you like me happen to walk your horse out to his paddock every morning. Some morning's he's in "I'm tired tempo" and the tick-tock is slow.. while other days he's in the "I have a zillion things tempo" starting with my hay pile that's waiting! and his tick-tock is very fast. Other days he's peaceful and purposeful and walking with "The sun is shining" tempo.
If while being ridden, the horse would choose his "I'm tired tempo" rather than his "The sun is shining" tempo. And the later is the best tempo for his atheleticness, then it doesn't seem like 'ego' for the rider to encourage the horse to change, and use the tick-tock tempo that the rider knows the horse would choose if in a different mood or energy level that day.
On a day when the horse simply doesn't have it within himself to go on his best tempo, maybe that's the day for a hack thru the woods.
I've begun over the past 6 months to experiment with becoming a better metronome for my horse. His choice of tempo on any given ride is variable I feel. First I try as hard as I can not to get in the way of blocking him from finding his best tempo. That's a tall order that I seem to continuously strive for. If he choose another tempo not best for an atheletic dance then I try with my posting or sitting or canter rhythem in myself to encourage him to join up with the better metronome. I've begun to find that when he does this he becomes more "forward".
BTW.. I absolutely loved how you described forwardness! in this blog article http://mvkunzcogitations.blogspot.com/2010/04/balance-half-halt-forwardness-rhythm.html
"...The whole issue for me is cleared up if I can just describe the term like this: the horse needs to be poised(or ready and willing) to move when asked. The degree with which he responds is his 'sparkiness' to my request. If he MOVES, I am satisfied! If he moves sluggishly, then he needs to be 'sensitized' to my request not be made to go more forward!"
If one agrees with the premise that the horse like the human has different natural tempos (with or without a rider) on different days/hours/minutes depending on his mood/energy/etc, I'm very interested to understand how you blend that idea into the ideas your presented in your article.
Thanks,
Nancy
Nancy,
ReplyDeleteI am new to replying to a comment, have tried twice and failed. Trying this time.
Nancy,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment. I will try to summarize my reply. The important point that you may have missed is that the emotion of the horse plays a big part in the quality of his movement. You pointed out that your horse may experience different moods, that a hack might be better on his dull days. You are recognizing an importance facet....emotion.
What we are after is joyful motion. You will almost never see speed in horses engaged in joyful play. If you spot them running along joyfully with their mates, the quality of the tempo will be different from fearful running.
What I see most often in riders is that they struggle with the lack of power they feel in their horse. Could it be that what they are feeling is lack of emotion in the beats?! That emotion is what cadence is about.....it is produced through the magnification of those very same sluggish feeling footsteps.
Remember that power is not gained through speed. Power is expended or wasted through speed(speed is the enemy of impulsion). Different emotional states reflect different levels of power. Building power per beat rather than speeding up the beats is, I theorize, a route to enhancing the emotional state of the horse toward a more joyful one.
Through subtlety and nuance, we can learn to change the emotional state of the horse without force.
The use of your internal metronome is a good way to build and understand cadence. You also use the phrase "blocking him from finding his best tempo". When you start the work you switch on your metronome and adjust it until you feel the beat is steady and regular.....this is the ideal tempo. As soon as the beat shows regularity you set the metronome to this and hold him to his beat. Interference at this time sets up a cascade of blockages in the horse as well as in yourself when you tense and strive to get this right. This is a special time to loosen your holdings, stir your chi in your own powerhouse within your torso, and open yourself to the horse in preparation for the rest of the ride.
Never miss the significance of beat....regular beat. Each time the horse steps and pushes off the ground, we receive the wave of energy which passes through the back of the saddle(however minimal!), magnify it in out torso, mix it with our intent and channel it back into the horse to reuse and build the power of the next strike of his foot. There are many other things we do in the saddle, not the least of which is to expect the horse to assume responsibility for holding himself up. Before we know it there is so much power striking the ground that the horse becomes airborne and light on his feet, stirring and reorganizing the excess power he has, surging in his core and taking his stride vertically higher. He gets almost ahead of himself....almost reaching a loss of control. One can't help wonder how he must feel.....free? flying? joyful?
Explore cadence through ease of tempo and seek joy.
Nancy,
ReplyDeleteTo stimulate thought I would like to add some interesting quotes I located from Etienne Beudant(1931). He says, "A training system...must consider the moral qualities of the horse and not seek to force him to coordinate his efforts exactly with the laws of mechanics. The horse should be the master, not the slave, of those laws." "It is not only a question of deciding the method to use in obtaining a certain movement from a horse set as we wish; it is also a question of changing the method to suit the circumstances of the moment. The horse supporting his own and the rider's weight, by each or both of which his balance may be affected, feels instinctively, and even more accurately than we, HOW and WHEN the method must be modified. This is the reason he must be left free and allowed to dispose his forces as he sees fit to comply with our wishes."
He quotes Baucher: "Let him think that he is our master, then he is our slave." Beudant adds, "The horse is the sole master of his forces, which all of our vigor, of itself, is powerless to increase. It is for him therefore, to employ his forces in his own way, and himself to calculate the manner of that employment so as best to fulfill the demands of his rider. If the man tries to do it all, the horse permits him, and limits his own efforts to those which the rider demands. On the contrary, if the horse knows that he must rely on himself, he goes ahead, expecting nothing from the rider but simple indications. Then he gives his all with all his ardor."
It is important to realize that the human body has the ability to stand upright with ease and can adjust its motion and adapt its posture and form much easier and more readily than a horse on 4 legs. It is then much better that we adapt to him and his management of his body than he adapt to our idea of what is best for him. Then we can use intelligence and create what we are after from another avenue!