Rollkur

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Penguinboots

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I was just reading a bit about it...never heard of this method before, from first impressions, can't say I really agree with it... Here's a bit form wiki:

"In rollkur, the horse is taught to lower his head and round its neck as it works--working "deep"--so that the head is pulled inward. In the extreme, the horse's mouth touches the middle of his chest. Rollkur is not a quick movement lasting a few seconds, but is held for a length of time, through work at the walk, trot, and canter, including shortening and extension of the gaits. Rollkur is not just longitudinal flexion (nose to chest or forelegs), but accompanied with repeated bending to the rider's toe. Most riders accomplish the head position by lowering and fixing the hands until the horse yields its jaw backwards in response to the pressure on the bit."

Watched a couple of vids of Anky using this method on Youtube, looked a bit harsh, and quite unnatural to me, what's everyone else's views?
 
this is going to be fun
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personally am anti it too, but think you might get quite a debate going here
 
Yeah, thought there might be some mixed views! This could get quite interesting!! lol. At the moment, the more I find out about it, the more I disagree with it, it doesn't seem to be about the unity between horse and rider that dressage is supposed to be. But we'll see what other people have to say!
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Hate it with a passion and whats worse, with all the publicity it's been having, it just encourages more and more people to try it.

Im from the classical school.... so for me, its absolutely incorrect on the most basic level.

The problem is that rollkur is very effective in what it does - it creates neck curl and many many riders are perfectly happy with that, believing that their horse is working correctly and they have "mastered" the art of dressage.

With correct training - of both horse and rider - this shouldnt be necessary. Sadly everything is about the quick and easy these days.

HOWEVER! - The subject of rollkur has been done to death on these boards and due to the very nature of it, it generally ends up with people bickering and sniping at each other. So, I'd just like to point out that my opinions are my own and no offence is meant to anyone on these forums.
 
As a training exercise, and without being induced by force, I can see a place for it. But it would be a potentially damaging technique in the wrong hands. So I am on the fence with popcorn on this one!
 
Hmm I dont really see how its done without force :P

Horses dont carry their heads like that naturally at all. We're not talking about being slightly behind the vertical... we're talking about being SO behind the vertical that the only thing the horse can see is it's own chest - they will never ever do that in nature because it goes against their basic instinct to survive.

Sure - many riders dont use draw reins to drag them in. Many do, might i add. But when you're using a double bridle and an overtight crank - you often dont need the gadgets to drag them in. A curb is pretty damn effective
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Fact is that eventually, the horse will stay that way. Sure they're let "up" for the tests, but you can stop trapping them because their neck muscles develop in such a way that that they cant do a whole lot else.

Anyway - i'll hold my hands right up and admit im on a yard where rollkur is used regularly. Why? Because we have a lot of full liveries who want to be able to show up and ride a horse that's "on the bit". Easiest way? Work them very very very deeply for the rest of the time. The rider gets a very manageable horse that is pretty much guarentee'd to keep its head down. If it looses balance - where by nature it would put its head up - it wont.

I would also like to stress however - that my horse has never ever ever been ridden this way and nor will he be ridden this way.
 
Not only is it physically extremely damaging to the horse - hyperflexion of any muscle for any length of time is always going to cause damage and then you've got damage to the actual skeleton which will be caused if the method is used repetitively over months or years - but it's also psychologically damaging. When in hyperflexion or rolkur or whatever you want to call it the horse cannot see in front of him... so basically he's going along blind. It's about the rider getting total dominance of the horse and has absolutely NOTHING to do with dressage partnership. Anyone who practises rolkur IMO cannot call themselves a student of dressage and certainly not a lover of horses.

Cruel and totally unnecessary.
 
I'm not very well-informed on Rollkur AT all, but I have to say it DOES look very uncomfortable for the horse. BUT if it's so bad, why does Anky do it? Surely she rides well enough to get her horse's head where it should be without force and with the necessary engagement behind?

Confused person who doesn't do dressage
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Only Anky really knows the answer to that one!

My guess would be that she rides very big, very powerful horses who are bubbling on boiling point temperament wise in order to show the expressiveness in their tests that gets the high marks and in order to get them together and submitting to her control she uses rolkur.
 
Rollkur is (illegidly) a fast way to get a horse to work through its back.

If you listen to her trainer's justification, Gedenski' girl isn't far off the mark.

Anky rides big, powerful horses. To do well in a test, you want the horse to be working through its back - judges will pick up very very quickly if they dont. The fact of the matter is that big horses are harder to hold together and work correctly than smaller ones. He *claims* that if he could get on the horse in the warm up, then he'd get the horse working through the back correctly - but he cant. So the ideal is obviously to provide lighter riders with a way to raise the horse's back as quickly as possible before entering the ring.

Aside from this, there is another consideration. If you're working a horse from a more classical viewpoint, there will be times when, the horse comes off balance and it's head will raise. That's very normal - they do it in the wild - it's their reaction. There is quite a fine line to tread in classical dressage between riding correctly and maintain a degree of liberty. The aim being to have the horse's head on the vertical, the poll as the highest point and for it to be unrestrained. You should be able to do a complete give and retake of the reins with the horse in perfect self carriage so that it never falters.

Now, remembering this, there are times when you lose the outline. It's perfectly normal. The horse becomes unbalanced, the head goes up. The rider regains it (theoretically) in a few strides.

What if in a test situation, you really dont want the head to come up? Ok the horse might falter and go off balance, but it takes a keener eye to spot that than it does if the horse goes off balance AND comes above the bit. The answer is to combat the natural reaction of the horse to raise it's head when its unbalanced. So, if you school a horse to such a degree in such incredible hyperflexion, it just won't do this. The muscles develop in such a way that yes, they can stop using force to hold the head there because thats how the horse now works. It's not because its working correctly or in any form of natural self carriage... it's because its muscles have developed and it's fixed. (Think of how horses that have been excessively draw reined go)

It's all about the scores in the competitions...... These riders dont have the time to school horses as they once were (remembering that the likes of the spanish riding school spend a good 10 years schooling before the decide whether or not a horse will move to high school work). Now consider all those 5 year old and 6 year old dressage championships that need winning! There's no time for all that... you need the horse up and working asap.
 
One final thing. In an interview Anky did regarding rollkur - she also claimed that using rollkur makes the work harder for the horse.

Theory being if you make the work as hard as possible at home, then take it into a ring where you make it easier (dont ride over flexed), then the horse will find the test work easy and score better.
 
I tried watching some of the anti-rollkur explanation videos on youtube but couldn't bear it. I think it looks a bit like the old draw reins debate to me... maybe in the right hands... but I think on those videos it looked a bit extreme! Less is more and all that.
ETA after seeing MM's pictures - surely we are meant to be working in harmony with the horse? Riding is meant to be enjoyable for horse and rider, not rider causing horse to feel pain for 30 min warm-up just so he/she can win a rosette? I would rather stay at unaff prelim my whole life than purposely cause a horse pain to be able to get an extra few marks. It isn't worth it, and the horse didn't ask for or deserve any pain.
 
I'm not sure but my trainer went to a forum a while back (can't remember which particular one it was but it was featured in H&H) - Anky and Sjef demonstrated the method and the general consensus was "is that what all the fuss is about?" as she actually only held the horse in position for a moment. I know that's not to say that that's how they use it behind closed doors or if its how anyone else uses it...
 
hmmm.... does seem as though it's a 'quick fix' type thing, prioritizing gaining points over taking the time to school the horse correctly, surely that takes the 'art' of of dressage?
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OMG............ had read all the posts before getting to the pics, thats awful........ I didnt realise that sort of thing went on.... (I worked/trained with a Blummin good dressage trainer/judge for a year) why would you want to do that, it isnt correct, and it just looks hideous!!
 
There are a couple of people on here who definitely ride their horses in Rollkur on occasions.....you can tell by the way the horse carries itself.

It's definitely NOT something for me; I'm a washing-line-western-rider!!
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There was a convention last year that many many UK trainers were invited to in order to "kill the debate" about rollkur.

Yes, comments were made about it didnt look "held" and yes, thats true. I know for a fact that I can sit on a number of horses on our yard and ride with a very light contact without them moving. They will be over bent, but the contact won't feel heavy. Why? Because just like with draw reins, if you abuse it enough, the muscles stick.

Now dont get me wrong, in the demo, they didnt ride like this ALL the time. They also showed how the horse could be lifted back up and worked in a higher carriage and this can be done (although it takes more skilled hands to be adjusting the head carriage like this. In the same way it takes more skilled hands to alter a head carriage in a none rollkur'd animal). You have to remember their aim isnt to ride like this in a test sitation, so they do need to be able to get the neck back up. In a test, they're aiming for the poll as the highest point and the head on the vertical. What you'll notice however, is that even at the very top of the sport, you'll still see many horses (GP horses) with their outline broken at an incorrect area of the neck.

I for one, couldn't inflict this training method on my horse. The pictures posted are horrifying to me and whats more, completly un-necessary in my eyes.

Personally i prefer:-

http://www.freunde-hofreitschule.at/images/common/intro.jpg

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Also, aside from the implications of rollkur itself. Remember that another danger arises from the fact that when people read about the methods used by people such as Anky - they want to use them too. She's a world champion right? She must be correct.

Rollkur is bad enough on it's own. In poor hands it can have terrible consequences for the horse involved.
 
Yes it is a quick fix! And yes, it does take the art away from dressage. This is precisely why there is such a huge gap emerging between the classical riders and the competition riders. This gap has always been there... but it is, undoubtedly, growing.

Classical dressage has one very simple aim - to teach the horse to carry the rider in the best possible way for the preservation of the animal's physiology. People call me soft... but for me - this is how it should be. These are very noble animals and riding them should be a gift. The very least we owe them is the preservation of their backs!

If you compare horses that are classically trained, to those that are trained with more modern methods - their working life is uncomparible. Some of the horses on display with the Spanish Riding school are late 20s and early 30s. They can still produce the high school movements. How often do you hear these days of a 15 or 16 year old horse being referred to as old? How often do you see a horse in it's 20s competing at GP dressage? They break down.... they break down because their physiology is compromised by the work we demand of them and thats just not fair.

Tia is also very correct. You can spot the horses worked in hyper flexion from a mile off. However the sad fact is that this is now being deemed as "ok" in the modern competitive world. Remember it was the standards of the Spanish Riding School that set the original FEI rules for competitive dressage. Now the rules are being altered to account for modern training methods. That's completly backwards! Training methods should be devised to help ATTAIN the level required for FEI standard - not vice versa!

Dressage can still be an artform and until people have sat on a horse that is trained to a a truely advanced level, classically, then they can't understand the difference between sitting on a GP level animal rollkured to within an inch of it's life and a horse brought to GP level using classical methods.

I only hope that the videos of rollkur methods that are out there, shock some people into seeking alternative methods... because they are available
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Marius' Mum- those pics remind me of last year when a couple of us snuck into the dressage at the hickstead SJ..I am not a dressage rider, I enjoy schooling my horse so we are both willing and able to work well to achieve some sort of harmonic partnership- but watching the warm up I felt sickened. Draw reins on double bridles, immense spur use and everyhorse looked like a machine. The amount of pressure that competition horses are put under is alot, but im sure those who compete dressage on here do not use these methods? Do you? I know theres been a bit of debate about SJ warmups, and the use of gadgets in them, maybe this is a D warmup debate?
 
From what I can tell, it seems that this technique, to some extent, ignores what is going on behind the rider and concentrates on the head and neck - when surely it should be the other way round?

I have always been taught concentrate on the horses' bum and getting them to work properly through their backs and the horse will find it easier to work on the bit.

I'm not sure that I would go to the extreme of saying it is cruelty though, although can't say I know too much about this method.
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Dear me I am watching a video and tbh the horse looks really uncomfortable... I dont know hardly anything about dressage but the ones I like to watch are the ones where the horse looks effortless - to me this looks like far too much effort...
 
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Some of the horses on display with the Spanish Riding school are late 20s and early 30s.

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However these horses aren't broken until 7 years old so they mature more naturally. I personally don't care for the Spanish school training as I don't like the constant use of short side reins during all of their training, there is one picture used to advertise some supplement or other in all the equine mags where the horse is doing one of their high flyers, don't know what it's called, but it looks very tense.

Sorry slightly off topic but I really don't like it....
 
Prittstick you wouldn't have seen any draw reins on double bridles in the warm up at Hickstead Dressage as they are not allowed under any circumstances. (Unlike the SJers who can use them in the warm up.) You wouldn't get away with that at a normal affiliated show let alone an International one like Hickstead where there are stewards on duty in the warm up at all time.
 
I find this entire debate totally fascinating.

I never really know which "camp" I fit in? I try to keep an open mind to most training methods and pay more attention to the personality of the person using them to try and establish intent (when listening to people from the top that is).

I currently have lessons with Georges Dewez (very classical trainer) am a member of the Classical riding club, but am also taught, and my long term trainer is a BD pyramid trainer. She has always instilled classical concepts into my thinking (hence my classical leanings) but she is also influenced by the likes of Anky and is a very open minded trainer.

I'm the same in my handling type work, I like to pick a mix of styles that fit me and my horse. I use alot of IH type things and am about to go on an IH course, but I do use things that clash with IH from time to time if I feel they suit me.

My intentions are always to try to train my horse in as compassionate way as possible, and NEVER to breach his trust.

I do feel that Anky adores her horses, and is not attempting to harm them but as Tierra has said, the competition pressures must have an effect on her choices? As it does all competitive riders.

I don't really compete - I plan to, but only when I truly feel ready enough to enjoy it. That day may never come though if I feel that I'd have to compromise my opinions to win???

Hmmm...

My mind is well and truly boggled!!!
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