Steffan Peters Clinic

These past couple days have been super good. I really enjoyed auditing the Steffan Peters clinic. It was neat to see someone that almost everyone has heard of and you see all the time in horse-y news and on the interwebz in person. I really liked Steffan Peters - I liked his laid back way of teaching, he seemed very nice and tried to make the riders comfortable in such a large crowd. A lot of dressage trainers I've worked with aren't very nice, but Steffan Peters (I feel the need to say his whole name every time, lol) was.

I took quite a few pictures, though unfortunately they're all poor-quality cell phone pics, but hey, at least I took some pictures!

Here are my notes from the clinic. I was super good about really paying attention and getting what he was talking about in the beginning, but by the time lunch was over I was getting sleepy and it's harder for me to focus on the GP movements when I've actually never ridden a Grand Prix movement, much less trained it.

"We need to train the horse within its comfort zone. Each horse requires something different. We probably wouldn't train a hotter horse like this, for instance a thoroughbred or other breed." This was evident in how he asked the rider to work with each horse differently. No two horses were the same, thus they all had to be ridden differently.

"Bracing in the transitions - its not because she's young and maybe not strong enough in the back. Teach her to be supple and the strength will follow." This was in reference to several young horses, I think there were three horses that were 5, 5 and 7. Steffan doesn't like to rush horses, but he doesn't want the excuse for not doing something to be that they're just young. Ride them and it will all fall into place.

"Don't kick, that only gets their attention, driving aid is leg on for a full second and cluck."

"Everything comes from the proper reaction to the leg."

"I have three rules - suppleness, suppleness and suppleness."

Steffan seems to have three major things that he focused on for this clinic. 1) Getting the horse in front of the leg, 2) suppling the horse and not allowing the horse to brace and 3) neck position

"Neck position depends on the horse. You choose the position." Each horse will have a different neck position while training. If the horse is using long and low to evade the bit, then that horse must be ridden higher up, while the horse that travels much like a giraffe will be ridden lower and deeper than the other horse. It has to be the position that allows the horse to perform the best, but it also has to be the position that the rider picks, not the horse who might be doing it to evade the rein aids.

"Leg yield - create a reason to let go of the inside rein." This was something that struck a chord with me. I've found that teaching Jetta to do a leg yeild has worked wonders for, well, everything. What Steffan says is to get the horse to release that inside rein and stop bracing is to create a reason for it, with the leg yeild being the simplest exercise to create submission and relaxation.

"A bad reaction is better than no reaction at all." You'd much rather that the horse takes off at a canter when asked to trot than have a horse that doesn't respond at all to leg pressure. It's easier to train a horse that's in front of your leg.

4 of his international competition horses were 18 years old. Interesting tidbit there. I think this was kind of in response to his thoughts on rushing a horse. He wants young horses to have the building blocks to do the upper level movements and won't use the excuse that "oh, they're just young" but he wants to train the horse in a way that won't cause them to break down.

"It has to feel right. I don't care what it looks like to the trainer or the judge, if it doesn't feel right, you have to fix it." This was very nice to hear from a trainer. Oftentimes as a rider you have a moment where the instructor tells you "There! That was perfect!" But it sometimes feels terrible or like the horse could really do a lot better. So fix it. He says that the rider is the one that feels everything, so if it doesn't feel right, it will look even better if you fix it. I think one of his most common comments was "It's no problem. No worries." When for instance it took the rider half the arena to prepare for the canter when he asked for it at the other end of the arena. He wanted the riders to take the time to prepare the horse so that you'd get it right. No rushing.

The first horse was one that I really identified with because she had similar problems as Jetta. Trouble in the trot canter transition, diving on the bit and occasional disrespect (ignoring) the leg aid. The first thing Steffan Peters had her work on was getting the horse in front of the leg. If the leg goes on, that horse goes forward. The first quote was something he said with this horse though. This was something he'd do with a horse with a relatively laid back disposition, not a hot and already forward horse because this would just make them even more crazy. He had her put leg on for a full second and get after her if she didn't go forward. And forward movement was rewarded, even if she took off cantering when they only wanted a trot. Then he fixed her neck position. She was traveling in a kind of "baby position" with her neck long and low, but she was curling behind the vertical. Steffan got on to show her how it was done and brought her head more up so that she couldn't evade the bit and it really did change her whole way of going for the better.

Another horse that I really liked watching was a 7 year old drop-dead gorgeous gray gelding. He was pretty hot and spooky, so they worked on a lower neck set that looked less like a llama. The rider was a very nice, competent rider and the horse was obviously very well trained. They worked on getting him to "come back" by doing a lengthened canter, then coming back to a collected canter almost like you would do in a pirouette. Another thing that Steffan Peters reiterated with all of the riders is that if you ride the canter at one single pace, it's not going to improve and often the quality of the canter will decline so by sending the horse forward and bringing them back you're actually going to get a better quality of canter. Interesting. It obviously worked with several horses, especially on a I-1 level mare whose canter wasn't the best of her gaits.

One woman that rode had a GP schoolmaster that she was riding in third level (I think) and competing in classes for the handicapped (I don't remember what she called them). I don't know if she is going for the Paralympics or not, but I know that she's going to a show in Florida that Steffan Peters is going to (and his competition - Totilas!) so he said that he would see her there! How neat would that be?? Anyways, she had the most wonderful horse. He reminded me a bit of Grady in his try-his-hardest personality. At one point he got confused on what they were asking him to do so he went through his "bag of tricks" trying to figure out what she wanted him to do - piaffe? passage? travers? half-pass? What a nice problem to have!

I'm sure there's a ton more that I could talk about, but that'll probably pop up in my future posts. Overall, I'm glad I got to go and watch and if I ever get the opportunity to ride with Steffan Peters I'm jumping on that chance with no hesitation!