Rollkur

As CM says, sustainabledressage.com is by far the best imo.

I started some articles on it in my blog, but ive not had much time as of late and it needs some serious time to add some pictures and such.
 
Ooooh yay!
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I feel pretty strongly on the rollkur subject as many people know
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I decided a while ago to undertake a website collecting together views on rollkur and then some comparisons with more traditional methods. I underestimated how much work it really required though. I will start it again after we move though
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Its really good, I found it so interesting. We agree on so many things. I have a really good classical instructor and find it amazing how little I have to do as a rider when I'm sitting correctly! Axey is like a different horse too.
 
Yep!

Sadly, most people prefer to blame the horse rather than look at their own riding. It also seems like more and more instructors are condoning the use of various gadgets these days and the short cuts are becoming more and more of the norm :*(

I had the pleasure (or otherwise ;p) or liverying with a few very well known dressage trainers in the UK - competing at GP, representing the UK and being highly involved with the BYRDs teams... Rollkur is a lot more prevalent (imo) than many think. Its just they dont understand that giving it a different lable doesnt make it NOT the same old rollkur
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Arg! See?
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Im ranting
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This is why no one ever wants to meet me off the forum! (Referring back to that thread in the soapbox!
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[ QUOTE ]
Yep!

Sadly, most people prefer to blame the horse rather than look at their own riding. It also seems like more and more instructors are condoning the use of various gadgets these days and the short cuts are becoming more and more of the norm :*(

I had the pleasure (or otherwise ;p) or liverying with a few very well known dressage trainers in the UK - competing at GP, representing the UK and being highly involved with the BYRDs teams... Rollkur is a lot more prevalent (imo) than many think. Its just they dont understand that giving it a different lable doesnt make it NOT the same old rollkur
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Arg! See?
tongue.gif
Im ranting
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This is why no one ever wants to meet me off the forum! (Referring back to that thread in the soapbox!
tongue.gif
)

[/ QUOTE ]

I'd love to meet you
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I agree with you, a few months ago I was getting very fed up with Axey and used to blame him for everything that was going wrong, when in actual fact it was me. As soon as I was put in the correct position he started working correctly and is now a joy to ride.
My instructor is training to become a BD judge but she is getting increasingly fed up with badly trained horses getting higher marks just because their heads are tucked in.
 
Yep
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Most of the horses seen at top level dressage are working incorrectly. However, they get marked highly so people assume that it IS correct. Even finding pictures on the internet of correctly working horses is really really hard... so how can people ever be re-educated? How are they meant to know what theyre striving to achieve when much of what is on display at the top, is wrong?

Its a sad state of affairs
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You might enjoy "Tug of War: Classical versus Modern Dressage" by Gerd Heuschmann. Written by a German vet/rider, he goes three thraining methods:
- the strong hands approach, where the rider uses his hands to shorten the neck, the back collapses and the hind legs never come under
- the classical approach, the focus of which is to raise the back and create power from behind which eventually leads to collecton
- rollkur where the back is lengthened but by distorting the main neck muscles
The book is very easy to follow mainly because of the brilliant diagrams and photos.
 
Ive read a lot of Gerd Heuschmann's work. Infact i think ive quoted him somewhere in the blog
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Im also a huge fan of a classical rider by the name of Anja Beran who has done some studies with Dr Heuschmann
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And yes, its a great book
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Yea
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Hind legs in a completly different county to the front end
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Outline broken in the neck, back hollowed blah blah blah
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But as you said, we arent olympic champions are we?
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Ive given up on competitive dressage completly. im sick to death of it
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We've bought out own place with our own stables and im going to retire in my own world and ride how i want to ;p

Seahorse - Along with Dr Heushmann's stuff, id really really recommend Anja Berans books. She explains things very well and with beautiful photographs. She also does something which ive noticed many classical books dont; she actually lists the exact damn aids !

Excellent rider and wonderful lady with a real passion for horses!
 
Does anyone have any pictures of correctly working horses? I know that it was mentioned that they are hard to find. It would be interesting to be able to compare the two.
 
Lot of beautiful pictures to be found here:-

http://p23513.typo3server.info/index.php?id=33&L=1

Although do keep in mind that the site features horses at different stages of training, so they wont all be in the "up" correct outline

One of my favourite pictures:-

http://www.bentbranderup.dk/img/huginpiaff.jpg

(Remembering hugin is blind in both eyes and had 3 broken legs as a youngster)

And then :-

http://www.classicaldressage.com/photos/thomasritter.html

Has a lot of beautiful examples also
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Hugin is beautiful. If i remember correctly, he was about 27 years old in that photograph and, as i mentioned, he's blind in both eyes.

Quote from the site:-

"All this led to the meeting of Hugin in 1986. A Knabstrupper stallion, seriously injured, with three legs broken in 1991and later on in 1995 he went totally blind. Trough Hugin Bent learned to use the Dressage for the Horse instead of using the Horse for the Dressage"

Sadly, Bent Branderup's more recent ride has also been diagnosed with the same awful disease that ultimatly led to Hugin going blind
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The disease is a genetic problem in the knabstrupper breed :/
 
Rollkur itself:-

http://everyrider.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/6713closeupf.jpg

http://www.horsegroomingsupplies.com/pictures/files/1/6/2/8/ankyrollkur.jpg

The below shows the controversial pictures of power and paint that were taken at the pony championships..

http://imagebank.ipcmedia.com/imageBank/p/Powerandpaintlarge.jpg

Then moving onto horses not actively ridden in rollkur, but likely trained with it:-

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/172/479448868_a5c4c8dada_o.jpg

http://ticklebooth.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/blue-hors-matine.jpg

Compare the above picture of the highly famed Blu Hors Matinee (who incidently, is prized for her piaffe and passage), with something like this:-

http://www.albion-saddlemakers.co.uk/images/srsrider1.jpg

Piaffe and passage particularly is where incorrectly trained horses start to come undone somewhat. They've never been taught to carry their weight back over their haunches so they lack collection. Remember that piaffe and passage were originally prerequisites for the levade! More frequently you'll see a very disconnected back with the horse punching from the ground with its shoulders (often with very over developed shoulders too). Compared with a transference of weigh backwards which is precisely what these movements should display.

Rollkur has a couple of different names for basically (in my eyes) the same thing. Anky refers to her training method as LDR (long, deep, round) which is quite the misconception in itself. Riding in a long, low outline is quite hailed in classical training, but its vital that the horse stretches down and OUT for this to be truely beneficial:-

http://www.sustainabledressage.com/rollkur/work_stretch/silvestro_fdo2.jpg

Here the horse is seeking out the contact and stretching correctly over its whole frame.

Compared to the very deep and curled in frames used in LDR / rollkur:-

http://www.sustainabledressage.com/rollkur/how/rollis_001.jpg
 
I used to do quite a bit of teaching tbh! However, in many cases i found that people didnt like how long more traditional methods can take before they see an effect. It seems very much like people want things to happen NOW and the judge of a good trainer is whether the horse is trotting round with its head in by the end of the lesson. (Doesnt matter if its over bent, not tracking up and generally hollow through the back; as long as the head is down ;p)

I did really enjoy it though. As for every 5 or more people who wanted instant results, you would find one who really wanted to learn a different way. That in itself was worth it
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I haven't had time to read this thread properly, so don't know if I'm duplicating this - but a good book to give a basic understanding of the mechanics of the horse's muscles is 'The Horse's Muscles in Motion' by Sara Wyche.
S
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Don't all jump on me at once, but at least in the BD convention in 2006 Anky asked everyone to work in long and low (the true, classical way as in the silverstro link above) when they first came in. Almost all the riders apart from Spencer Wilton with Dolendo, walked in to their warm up with exceptionally strong hands, holding the horse's neck in and, in some cases, making their horses look almost crippled. She did not ask for rolkur from any of the 'pupils' and everything she did with them seemed very beneficial.

When she rode her horses (Painted Black and Krack C) she did show the rolkur though.
 
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I used to do quite a bit of teaching tbh! However, in many cases i found that people didnt like how long more traditional methods can take before they see an effect. It seems very much like people want things to happen NOW and the judge of a good trainer is whether the horse is trotting round with its head in by the end of the lesson. (Doesnt matter if its over bent, not tracking up and generally hollow through the back; as long as the head is down ;p)

I did really enjoy it though. As for every 5 or more people who wanted instant results, you would find one who really wanted to learn a different way. That in itself was worth it
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Ah yes this is my life every day of the week. Sometimes I just despair. And then occasionally you teach someone who really "gets" it. And then you
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