The Classical Tradition...
The Training Scale Part Four: How old are our principles? Story Chris Hector

Changes have continued throughout the twentieth century. In Germany, which has been the heart of dressage riding in the twentieth century, the first attempt to codify something like the ‘classical principles’ occurred in 1912 in a Cavalry Manual, this was later expanded in 1937. I am extremely grateful to my friend Kerstin Niemann of St Georg Magazine who translated this important document for me.
Here we find the development of the concept of ‘throughness’ – of a contact that is elastic and in a state of changing equilibrium, rather than the Baroque concept where the rein is looped and the horse behind the bit:
As the straightness improves, the throughness of the horse will improve as well. The pushing capacity of the hindquarters can now go its way through the horse up to the mouth and makes the horse give to the pressure of the bit, bend the neck and chew on the bit.
This is the natural way the horse achieves the correct “going through the poll”. It would not be correct to achieve this “going through the poll” by brutally pulling neck and head of the horse. Instead it must be the result of the hind legs pushing towards the quiet still hand. This is the only way to fix the neck to the wither. And only if the neck is fixed to the wither it is possible to link forehand and hindquarter.
While training a horse, it should never be the way that only separated parts of the horse are worked on, but always the whole horse. Difficulties and disobediences are always connected and will show in either stiffness of the neck, the back and the hindquarters. The rider should always solve those problems with the horse in motion. The rider can gain a false impression that the horse is giving while it is standing still – whereas this wouldn’t happen when the rider lets the horse stride forward energetically.

Felix Bürkner (1883-1957) one of the authors of the original formulation of the modern training scale...

And later in the document, we find:
Shape/ frame for dressage use
The best shape of neck and head is the shape when the neck heightens freely out of the wither and the upper line builds towards the poll in a soft bend, which highest point is the poll itself. The head should be held on a straight line from forehead to nose. Such a frame/shape is the right one to allow the rider to best have an effect on the hindquarters. This grade of “aufrichtung” (the horse having his poll at its highest point) should only be asked from the horse for short periods of time and only in halt or in collected gaits. In higher tempo the rider must allow the horse to lengthen the bent neck and to slightly push the nose forward as well.
Kerstin – who is regarded in Germany as THE expert on the training scale, included this comment with her translation:
“As you can see, in this chapter you cannot even find the word “training scale”. I therefore had another look through a few of my books and found a few sentences about the development of the training scale. It is found in a new book for professional riders that I worked on with Hannes Müller. This chapter is written by him with a little help from the dressage judge, Angelika Frömming:
I quote:
“The first military riding instruction was published in 1825, but became well-known in the “Heeresdienstvorschrift 1912”. This book was mainly written by the equestrian experts, Redwitz, Lauffer, Felix Bürkner and Hans von Heydebreck. Their ideas based on the knowledge of the earlier authorities, Ayrer, Seeger and, mostly, Gustav Steinbrecht, who wrote a “timeless” classic book with his “Gymnasium of the Horse” which has been re-written by Hans v. Heydebreck in 1935/36. (The first issue was published after the death of Steinbrecht by a pupil of his in 1886. His name was Paul Plinzner. In this first edition were a few sentences and thoughts which had to be corrected.)

Left: Elena Petushkova and Pepel - World Dressage Champions in 1970
- and right - Reiner Klimke and Mehmed, World Dressage Champions in 1974

The essence of these earlier writings was then published in 1954 in the first issue of the “guidelines for riding and driving”. In this publication the scale of training still did not have its name, the most remarkable thing was the listing of:
phase of the horse getting used to everything.
phase of development of pushing capacity.
phase of development of carrying capacity.
The scale of riding was first published in the 1980’s. To the first abovementioned phases were added rhythm and Losgelassenheit, these two points were separated in the early 90’s. The listing of these elements shows that “classical” does not at all mean “old”, but it shows a developed, harmonious system. It is known like this all over the world and even the rules of the FEI are based on these ideas.”
Once again, thank you Kerstin for your assistance.
So the ‘timeless’ training scale is in fact, a child of the nineteen eighties…
The late Reiner Klimke who won the World Dressage Championship in 1974 told me that when he started competing in dressage, that coming from a background in eventing, he warmed his horses up firstly in a long free-flowing frame before bringing them up to a competition outline. He said at the time he was one of the first to use this technique which later became standard…
As we can see from the photo, Dr Klimke and Mehmed have a very modern look about them…
Especially if we compare it with the photo of the World Champions of just four years earlier – Elena Petushkova and Pepel, with their more elevated head carriage and loose rein.
It is my impression that in our desire to find an unbroken historical golden thread of Classical Dressage from the Greeks, to the modern day, we obscure many important ways in which the dressage tradition has developed and matured, and most importantly, the kind of training methods and techniques that are appropriate to the kind of horse we are dealing with have been modified. Perhaps the current furore over the deep and round methods, which started back with Rembrandt and Nicole Uphoff and continues to rage today, are merely an indication that consensus on the right way to deal with the current crop of modern dressage horse models, has yet to emerge. Certainly we can be open minded about new techniques so long as we refer back to that over-riding tradition, that relates every training technique to the horse, its physical and mental properties and well being.
For example look at this photo – to my mind there is nothing objectionable happening. The position of the nose may offend some on aesthetic or ideological grounds, but the horse’s neck muscles are relaxed, his eye is calm, he is obviously not being forced into a frame.

I guess we can all think of plenty of examples where the rolkur technique has been used in an unacceptable way - the horse resisting the contact, the rider forced to use strong contact, the horse does not look calm. This to my mind is not acceptable – and to those who feel this whole rollkur debate is simply a German plot to de-rail the Dutch dressage team’s rollercoaster ride to Gold, I would point out that the acceptable photo is of a Dutch team member and I can think of a number of occasions where I have seen German riders (including team members) using an unacceptable technique.
The point then is that you can not lay down a geometrically precise series of rules or principles – we must refer to a Classical Tradition, that marries the physical and mental capability of the horse, with the demands of the training or the test – and in these modern times the guardians of this marriage, are the people sitting in the boxes – the judges.
And this is why judges must always be horsemen. When you handle horses every day, you soon learn to recognize tension - tense horses are the ones that can do unexpected things that hurt you. I know in our country, there are Grand Prix level dressage judges who do not see a horse from one competition to the next. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck. If a horse won’t halt, is covered in sweat, irregular in its movement, has its ears back and switches its tail, then the chances are that it is tense – and if Olympic level judges can’t see that, then they have no business judging. There are plenty of horsemen in the ranks of the spectators who can see what is invisible to them.
I guess this – for mine – is the crux of the matter. While we have seen huge advances in training techniques built on a body of highly intelligent and insightful theory, the attempt to judge and score dressage on some sort of objective scale, is a recent project and one that has more often failed than it has succeeded.
At each Olympic Games, from 1912 to the present day, the judging in the dressage has given rise to huge controversy. Sadly it is not possible to say that the most recent judges – those at Athens – covered themselves in glory. Quite the reverse, judging standards seem to be deteriorating rather than improving.
Perhaps then just as we have seen that the progress of the sport has been driven by changes in the breeding of the dressage horse, we need to look similarly to our judges – are we selecting on the basis of the best gene pool available? Are middle aged ladies with incomes large enough to allow them to travel to the plum jobs and then show the diplomatic skills that see the ‘right’ result emerge, necessarily the breed we want in judges boxes?
Or are we going to have to finance judges who are also knowledgeable horsemen to take over this role, if we are to see the classical tradition flourish on the scoreboard and in the medal count of this the twenty first century?
Our horses continue to improve every year, our rider techniques become more and more refined, watching dressage tests should be a source of increasing joy – and it will be, if we can find a way to ensure that those who get the highest marks are those who conscientiously relate their demands to the capacity of the horse.
I believe that the classical tradition will survive, but it will not survive if it is frozen into being a museum exhibit – to survive it must be a living organism, that is always in a state of evolution. I look forward to those developments that increase the beauty and grace of the performance, We must continue to speak out against techniques that are harsh and restrictive. In other words, we are back where we started, with those words of Xenophon:
‘For what the horse does under compulsion… is done without understanding; and there is no beauty in it either, any more than if one should whip and spur a dancer.’
To that, amen.