United States Eventing Association

Secrets of the Top Equestrian Trainers: Interviews with Tina Sederholm (David & Charles 2005)

The state of American publishing on eventing is so sorry that we have to turn to a British publisher to hear from an American Gold Medalist. In “The Language of Horses,” David O’Connor talks about the use of western training and loose jumping in his training methods. He finishes with a plea to “Break down the silos that everybody is in – I’m an eventer, I’m a natural horseman, I’m a hunter rider – if we are going to make some changes. The problem with that thinking is that we don’t think of ourselves as horsemen, in an equine industry. So show jumping tries to promote itself, and eventing tries to promote itself, and dressage tries to promote itself, but the numbers aren’t big enough. Whereas if we promoted ourselves much more as a horse industry, our numbers would be huge.”

The other current eventing contributor is Goran ‘Yogi’ Breisner, World Class Performance Manager to the British three-day event team, “Success is not one big thing, because if it were, it would be very easy to achieve. To me, it is a combination of an awful lot of small things. Like a puzzle, you need to put all the little pieces together, and the one who gets the pieces in the right place, they are the ones who succeed.”

The others are equally Big Names in dressage, show jumping, racing & western. The other Americans are Anne Kursinski, Robert Dover and Mark Rashid. Also, while we are counting, three of the 10 are women. There are no “Secrets” in the book but Brief Life Histories and Thought Process Overviews of Top Equestrian Trainers wouldn’t market well.

The interviewer, daughter of renowned trainer Lars Sederholm, had complete access plus familiarity with the people and the international scene. On the other hand, the questions are all softballs. Everyone’s training method is wonderful. All the horses are trained flawlessly. No one in this book would ever test positive for drugs at Hong Kong. Contrast this with Pessoa’s comments in Jaffer’s article on the subject. For me, the sunshine & roses kept the book from being truly thought-provoking.

On yet another hand, seeing slices of life at top barns is always engaging. Plus, it is refreshing to find a book that is more interesting the more you know about riding.

Conrad Schumacher’s Dressage System: Prepare to Win

Volume1: Basic Level

DVD (ADERRO 2008)

A few weeks ago I had the chance to watch a Schumacher clinic. I followed the concept when he told the first rider to relax her shoulders. After that I was lost. I could see the horses going better and getting happier but not why. Schumacher did not give many standard riding teacher corrections about body position or horse speed or whatnot. Instead he would have the rider do some insanely complicated pattern of circles and counter-canters and halts. Suddenly everything was lovely.

The DVD reinforces this concept. Less than an hour is not long enough to help your dressage but it is long enough to absorb his take-home messages: control the neck, feel can be trained, use working patterns as the link from learning to performing. Inexplicably, Schumacher’s comments to the 400 spectators are inaudible and replaced by an unknown female narrator explaining the action.

From my admittedly worm’s eye perspective, Schumacher’s methods recall the exercises with cones and patterns in Major Ander’s Lindgren’s Teaching Exercises.