{"id":22197,"date":"2015-03-24T16:14:17","date_gmt":"2015-03-24T05:14:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/?p=22197"},"modified":"2017-02-10T10:30:38","modified_gmt":"2017-02-09T23:30:38","slug":"george-morris-on-clashing-aids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/2015\/03\/george-morris-on-clashing-aids\/","title":{"rendered":"George Morris on Clashing Aids"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"header\"<\/a>More and more people concerned with the current \u2018rollkur\u2019 debate in the world of dressage, are starting to realise that one of the problems in the warmup methods of the Dutch riders, is the simultaneous application of go-and-whoa \u2013 in other words, the poor horse is subjected to clashing aids. There is no trainer in the world more famous for spreading the notion of clashing aids than the doyen of American jumping trainers, George Morris. Both jumping riders, and dressage riders \u2013 indeed all riders \u2013 should listen hard to what George has to say on this topic:<\/p>\n

\u201cI was taught about clashing aids right from the beginning with Gordon Wright who traced back principally to Fort Riley and the French School. All the old French books talk about hand without leg, leg without hand, which is the principle of coordination of aids. The most elementary, fundamental principle: clashing of aids versus concert of aids.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like driving a car, when you step on the gas with a brake on, that ruins horses, that is far removed from coordination of aids. When you ask the horse to turn right and at the same time limit him with the left rein \u2013 that mostly belongs in the realm of beginners who don\u2019t have yet a coordination of aids. That coordination has to be very diligently and slowly taught to beginners.\u201d<\/p>\n

It can become very close \u2013 when we ride a horse into a halt, we push into a restraining hand for an engaged halt?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThat is a later stage. It\u2019s like going to school, often teachers and horse trainers, try to teach 8th grade to 3rd graders, that\u2019s why the French School is so clear. First is hand without leg, leg without hand, and later on, it\u2019s four pounds of leg, one pound of hand, four pounds of hand, one pound of leg.\u201d<\/p>\n

So we can have simultaneous aids if we are very sophisticated?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cYes, but that has to be progressive, you can\u2019t ask a beginner rider, or a very green three year old horse to understand that closer connection in the driving and the restraining aids.\u201d<\/p>\n

When you started training with Bert de Nemethy, was that more of a German way of thinking, with the aids more closely connected than the French School?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cNo, all the Schools in the end are the same in a sense. When I got to de Nemethy, I was then a very advanced rider and the horses he had were very advanced horses. They weren\u2019t green colts learning to steer, learning to stop and start, they were already made horses with made riders.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Baloubet\"<\/a><\/p>\n

He rides for Brazil, has lived all his life in Europe \u2013 so is Rodrigo Pessoa\u2019s perfect style American or is it European? There\u2019s no such thing any more says George Morris: \u201cThere are no styles \u2013 just good horsemanship.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cDe Nemethy stressed the coordination of the aids which is the exact opposite of clashing of aids.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was an extreme Italian \/ French line in America, that taught that you just left the horse alone and didn\u2019t even interfere with what lead he took?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWith the disciplines of showjumping, eventing and dressage, there is too much emphasis on collection and precision for that way to work. The courses of the old days, even my early days at Aachen for example, were very big fences, but mostly single fences and very far apart \u2013 massive fences. Now today it is too intricate, too quick, it\u2019s the difference between the Grand Prix Special and Intermediaire. It\u2019s too technical, it\u2019s too quick, too balanced, too much collection for the strict Caprilli way of thinking that came in my country to Vladimir Littauer. He taught no contact and all of that \u2013 but really that\u2019s history. It was history in the fifties.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYoung horses and young riders are the same, old horses and old riders are the same, as a teacher, as a horse trainer, I look at them the same. Right from the word go this was where Gordon Wright and Littauer always had conflict \u2013 this is where a boy named Paul Cronin and I always had conflict. Paul was a great friend of mine but he was a student of Littauer, so we couldn\u2019t agree. Right from the first lesson I teach contact from the leg of the rider to the rib of the horse, contact from the seat bone, contact with the hand. Right from the first lesson they understand that contact is the first step towards communication with the horse, through your body, which we call aids.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI realised that in the 50s when I started with Gordon, that the Littauer, the Caprilli, that very extreme non-interference \u2013 didn\u2019t work, I didn\u2019t win the McLeay that way. There was Bernie Traurig, who was Littauer\u2019s greatest student, but don\u2019t forget Littauer was a Russian \u00e9migr\u00e9 who was a high school dressage rider under James Fillis in the Court of Nicholas II. He came to the United States as a very highly schooled dressage rider who realised he would go broke doing that kind of riding in New York City.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOn Long Island they were limited riders, they wanted to hack, fox hunt, and that\u2019s when he adopted the extreme Caprilli ideas \u2013 very very far forward, very passive leg, no contact with the horse\u2019s mouth \u2013 because that\u2019s how he got bread and butter.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the highest level of showjumping, are your horses on the bit?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no question. You take Nelson and Rodrigo Pessoa, Ludger Beerbaum, Beezie Madden, Markus Fuchs \u2013 those people in a heart beat could\/should do a Grand Prix dressage test.\u201d<\/p>\n

You have Americans and Europeans in your top list, is there no longer an American style and a European style?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cNo, no, no \u2013 universal truths prevail, honesty, good horsemanship always prevails. That\u2019s why you see the Europeans now galloping out of the saddle in straight lines, in the saddle for jumping and turning, they\u2019ve lightened up. The Americans have more collection, they\u2019ve deepened up, because that\u2019s what works. That\u2019s what accommodates the horse. All those dressage exercises shoulder in, haunches in, they physically supple the horse, make the horse more obedient. So the sharp ones learn how to do that, because it makes the result better with the horse. There are no styles \u2013 just good horsemanship.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article first appeared in the THM August 2006.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

He invented the term ‘clashing aids’, master showjumping trainer George Morris explains…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22198,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1151,71,77],"class_list":["post-22197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-show-jumping","tag-clashing-aids","tag-george-morris","tag-showjumping-training"],"acf":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22197"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32420,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22197\/revisions\/32420"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}