Riding Through 'Release' in the Context of Jumping
Leslie Desmond Trainers’ Clinic – A Review
October 2007 / Aguanga CA
(Published in Horse Connection Magazine,
December 2007 Issue)
Four Points Ranch in Aguanga, CA (near Temecula), had the pleasure of hosting Leslie Desmond, international horsemanship coach. The eleven participants were trainers that had traveled from as far away as England, Canada, and Hawaii to learn from the expert. This clinic was highly anticipated, as Leslie has bee overseas living and training in Europe for the past several years.
There we were, eleven trainers, from a variety of disciplines: colt starting, therapeutic riding in the mountains, professional barrel racing, western riding, gaited horse training, and my own – jumping and event riding. How did we come together at this crossroads with Leslie in Aguanga? The common thread is our interest in empowering the horse to freely offer his full athletic capacity to perform.
Leslie achieves this by releasing the life in the horse and shaping athletic maneuvers with balance and lightness – on a float (slack in the rein). The key to keeping the horse’s athleticism available is to preserve the natural elevation and lightness in his shoulders. If you are not sure about this, get down on the ground and lean your weight over your arms: now try moving forwards, backwards, left, right or up to jump. Next, rebalance your weight onto your knees, so your arms are supported on your finger tips, and try those maneuvers again.
The horses showed us with great clarity what causes the shoulders to die: a rider’s center of gravity or core energy leaking over the pommel, the rider putting pressure on the mouth or head, or using both legs at the same time. The horse’s head might go up, his back might hollow and his hind legs might trail behind him. His shoulders get stiff, and he feels resistant, becoming less responsive to the reins and leg aids. A horse in this posture is not set up to do anything to his full athletic capacity.
In terms of jumping this manifests itself in a variety of ways: he may stop or run out because he can’t see to judge distance or height, or because he can’t coil his hind quarters under him to push off, or he may jump “flat”, or knock down a pole. Possibly the worst scenario is when the horse silently works around this ungainly posture and heaves his front end up and over, like a deer. This is a horse that is headed for early retirement from joint or back problems.
Classically speaking, in order to jump athletically, the horse needs to be free to raise the root of his neck, extend his neck forwards and down, so he can see to judge distance and height, use his abs to lift his back, coil his hind quarters from the joint that allows him to tilt his pelvis, so he can push off, extending into a natural bascule over the jump. Leslie taught us how to bring up the life in a horse to release this posture back into his way of going, so this athleticism was at our fingertips: light and available. This is the same posture a horse will assume when he sees something that causes him to “get ready” for any maneuver he might need to release himself from danger. He is empowered to offer whatever we ask.
If you have the opportunity to watch Leslie, the horse will show you what this approach feels like to him, as he freely offers everything he has in him with his full attention, focus and heart.
Sincerity, faith, mastery, integrity, endurance, patience and heart are things I found in Leslie's coaching. I did not expect to find this ‘feel’ also living in all of us, around us, through us. The positive intensity of this clinic experience is hard to describe.
By Karen Musson