with Mike Baker
Michael Baker is one of Australia's leading riders and trainers and after winning the Emerald College's training scholarship, Michael spent time in the UK with British Young Riders coach Kate Hamilton.
Upon returning to Australia he worked for two years under the guidance of Heath Ryan at the NSW Equestrian Centre before striking out on his own as a freelance trainer. Michael established himself in Victoria and has developed a strong clientele, based upon his students significant success. Michael has trained no less thanfive Victorian dressage champions and recently his pupils took the quinella at this country's leading juvenile three day event, winning both the Junior and Young Rider sections at Naracoorte 3DE.
Once upon a time there was a story that if you rode your horse perfectly, patiently, correctly, right from the start, then nothing ever went wrong, each day was another little step in the progression that lead to Grand Prix greatness - and if you did meet with any problems or resistances, then it was because you had hurried too fast, and the answer was to back off and go back to doing something simpler.
It's probably a useful story for the average rider, because unless you know exactly whal you are doing when you confront resistances, then you can make the situation much much worse, and it can be dangerous for both you and your horse. But with most horses there will be a point where they say, 'I'm much more comfortable doing what I like, and I'd rather not make the extra effort...' If you genuinely want your horse to go to the top, then it's probably time to take your horse to a professional, someone like Mike Baker, and let him work through this difficulty.
Let Mike explain...
My experience is that most riders in a lesson situation do their best to avoid resistance, they avoid the confrontation - whereas really as a trainer what you want to do is find the horse's problems, what are the things the horse finds difficult, because if we can work the horse through those problems then that is where the most irnprovement is to be had.
Resistance is something that a good rider gets good at dealing with.
Most people think that if there is resistance, then something has gone wrong. You do have to be careful because there is a definite line there. What you are doing, is trying to take away the horse's capacity for evasion. A horse learns that there is an easier option - easier than what you want him to do - so the horse has the choice, his easier option or your harder one, and he'll try and take the easier option.
When the rider starts closing that option off, and taking it away from the horse, you are getting into a difficult area, you have to make sure you don't block off all the horse's options all at once and put him under too much pressure because then his brain can't cope and he can't think about what he is doing, that's when he starts jacking up and running sideways. You have to watch that you don't get to the point where the little switch in the brain turns off and the horse is no longer sorting things out.
The skill of the rider is the skill of taking on resistances in order of priority.
The first thing before you even start putting any pressure on the horse is that the horse accepts the rider. Now in 99% of cases this is not a problem but occasionally we will get a horse that is so green that you have to be very careful about putting any pressure on him because he not entirely sure about the rider on his back.
The next thing that the horse has to accept is to go forward. Even horses that are working at a higher level can sometimes have a problem going forward, and it is sometimes not understood because the quality of a horse going forward is not related to its speed, really it is the horse's attitude, and the horse's desire, so it is a mental thing not a physical thing.
It's the willingness to respond.
You can have two horses travelling at the same speed, yet one is quite happy to go forward for the rider, the other rider has to work very hard to keep the horse going. One horse is thinking forward, the other is not - even though they are both travelling at the same speed.
The horse that is thinking forward is the one that will become lighter to the aids whereas the horse that isn't really forward will become heavier. I find quite often when I am teaching people and trying to get their horses thinking forward, that the riders feel uncomfortable riding the horse in a quicker tempo and they feel uncomfortable putbng pressure on the horse when the rider feels that it is already travelling at the speed they feel comfortable with.
Once you get the horse thinking forward, that changes a lot of other things about how the horse goes. When a horse has not been made to go forward, and the longer the horse is allowed to go without being asked to go forward, then the greater the resistance will be because that horse has had that avenue of resistance open to him for such a long time. The easy option is not to go, he's always taken that and he feels very comfortable doing that - horses are creatures of habit, and often when an experienced rider gets on a horse like that and says 'today you are going forward' then there can really be fireworks.
You'll see horses kicking out at the whip, trying to jack up - very often the poor pupil who is watching all this is horrified, because their horse is seemingly going worse than it was when the owner was on. As an instructor you have lo be very careful to explain to the rider exactly what you are doing when you are working through resistances. With most horses you can work through their resistances, and the rider sees the improvement within even one session.
Often at a school you'll see a horse that looks as if it is going quite well, then an experienced rider will get on the horse and will find resistances that maybe the owner was unaware of - or maybe the owner was just carefully avoiding and working around. After the experienced rider has worked through those resistances, you will see how much better the horse is going - then you can really start to work the horse through his resistances.
I think that is part of the definition of working the horse through - working the horse until he is physically and mentally at his best. With a young horse you want him to understand to go forward and straight, and you want the horse to come round and onto the bit, and swing and be soft through the back.
That's the first slep, then you can say the horse is through, now we are ready to move on and do a little more, introduce some lateral work, try to maintain the quality through the transitions. When the lateral work is coming along he is ready to take another step and become a litlle more engaged and collected.
The first step is to work the horse tluough and have him thinking forward and accepting the aids, and straight and balanced. When you are riding a horse, if for instance the horse is resisting the rider's aid to the right, then the aid gets stronger. So the encouragement for the horse to obey, whether it is to bend, or go forward, is that the aid will get stronger. If the horse doesn't do the right thing, the aid will get stronger slill, the horse will start to get uncomfortable and he will try and seek an answer to the situation. The answer that the rider encourages is the one where the horse yields and softens, and then the aid becomes lighter.
That's what all our training is based on. You put the leg on and the horse does nothing, then the leg gets stronger to the point that the easy option - to ignore the aid - is actually harder. You say to the horse, if you don't go forward, I am going to use my leg, I'm going to use the spur to make you terribly uncomfortable, until it is easier for you to go forward. It's the same with bending. You use the rein, you put pressure on the horse, you try to encourage the horse to yield, and as soon as you get something there that you feel is heading in the right direction, you move to a lightness.
Often you will get horses that are quite used to very strong aids - if you have a rider that has been quite strong, but never strong enough to get a response, then you are going to have to be stronger again before you get there. Horses can just become used to people smacking them with the whip, so instead of it being an aid to go forward, the whip becomes something the horse accepts and just puts its ears back every now and then.
To actually change the horse and make it go forward, you have to hit it harder until you get the change. As soon as you get the response, you can start refining those responses, and refining the aids, and that is where the lightness comes from.
I think that's where people get confused about resistance. The rider should look for lightness, but lightness doesn't come because the rider starts nice and light - the lightness comes through the horse's understanding of the aids. If your horse is running along like a tank, and you want to slow it down, it's no good sitting there thinking 'I must be light'. The horse must learn to come light.
If you watch a very well schooled horse and a very educated rider, then you won't see the rider getting heavy with his aids because it has all been done in the past, and the understanding is there.
The other thing that is very important is that once you start putting the horse under pressure, it is the skill of the rider that is able to work the horse through the resistance and make it very clear to the horse what you want, and what you don't want.
It is important that the rider recognises that if the horse has a long standing resistance and has developed an evasion, then sometimes it takes a very experienced rider to work through that resistance. If you find at home that you are coming to a dead end, it may just mean that you need an experienced rider to make things clearer to the horse.
It can be very difficult to work through problems if the rider is a little unbalanced and inexperienced himself. But again be a little careful, there are a few trainers around who set themselves up as 'problem solvers' who really are just horse bashers - so again check out who you are dealing with, and preferably talk to someone who has sent their horse to that person before you entrust your horse lo an unknown expert no matter how well they talk.
Thomas, the horse I am working with in these photos, is a very laid back character. Although a Thoroughbred, he is a very quiet type of Thoroughbred. He is also a slightly long Thoroughbred, and to make him go round and work correctly, he has to be working quite hard, which is not always easy to do. The main thing I've been trying to achieve with Tom is to keep him forward and to get him stronger so that he finds it easier to carry himself in that round outline.
We've done a lot of very forward work keeping the horse very deep, so that he develops that topline and finds the demands easier. He has improved a lot, and developed a lot more muscle, but he still has moments when he reverts back and tries to get out of going forward by hollowing out, and he needs to be ridden strongly through those moments of resistance.
We found that those moments are becoming less and less until there are only a couple of moments in each session where we have a trouble spot and he needs to be sent forward and given a smack with the whip. I think it will only be a couple of months before we completely olve this problem. The other thing about riding horses more forward like this is that they do get stronger and fitter, and more able to do what you ask them to do, and we've found that with Tom. With a bit more suppling work, and more strengthening work, he is going to find it all much easier to do what we want.
Here I've asked Thomas to go forward and he gave me the feeling that he was not coming off my leg. I put my left leg on, and I felt that he was just starting to back off and come behind my leg, so I sent him forward, and Thomas' first reaction was to hollow out, and resist the leg.
Here I've continued to ride Thomas forward and after half a circle, he was starting to accept the leg aid, and come forward and round again. To reinforce the aids, I sent the horse into a strong, even trot, and put him deep and a little behind the vertical, so he came sofier through his back.
Tom is showing us again his evasion to going forward. Here you see Tom just after I've given him a hit with the whip. What I would like to see is him lowering his quarters and pushing forward - rather than do this, Tom has swished his tail and come up behind. So shortly after Tom got another smack with the whip until I got the response I wanted, and then the driving aids could immediately become a little softer. Then I tried to encourage him forward, with all my aids, by making them lighter.
All horses have a side that they find easier to work to, they all have a stiff side and a soft side. Most horses are stiffer to the right, and Tom is no exception, he finds it harder to yield through his right side. I deal with that resistance by exaggerating the bend and encouraging him to bend more through his right side.
More than just bending the horse, what we are looking
for, is for the horse to bend then yield and relax
through that stiff side. The bending is important,
but once you have achieved that bend, the inside
rein relaxes and stays soft through that side of
his body.
It doesn't matter if we are on the left rein or the right rein, we still have to deal with the side of the horse that he fnds it difficult to yield through. So very often, although a horse might feel more comfortable when he is on his soft side, the stiff side can still pose a problem, the horse can get crooked. Even though we are on the left rein, he still has to yield a certain amount to his right side to be straight, and to engage. In this photograph, you can see the horse is resisting as I am trying to get his right side, even though I'm on the left rein.
On a horse that has resisted going forward and resisted going round, these sort of exercises will strengthen the horse's back and make it a lot more supple, so later on the horse will be able to be engaged and collected, and ridden off the forehand.
As the horse gets stronger and more supple, and the understanding of the horse becomes greater, you find that the corrections become smaller and lighter, and more and more refined. If you are watching a horse that seems to be going along with the rider sitting doing nothing, the rider can still be comrnunicating to the horse constantly, and making very small corrections, and making half halts that aren't perceivable from the ground. This communication is actually the corrections that the rider was makjng originally when the horse was resisting badly, refined one hundred times.
When the horse starts to get crooked, instcad of the horse resisting the aid by throwing its head above the bit or running sideways, the correction is refined to the point that the observer on the ground can't even see it. So the horse may still attempt to get a little crooked, he may drift a little or he rnay get tight, but the correction is not noticeable. This is what happens as the horse becomes stronger and more supple, the aids become lighter and lighter. This is where we have to be careful, it's no use riding your horse light when he's still resisting badly.
Good luck, and remember that real resistance is a job for the real professional.