Riding and schooling

When it comes to equestrian education, it is important to be clear about the practical foundations on which the rider is trained and the horse is schooled. La Guérinière, the “Father of French riding”, never separates the schooling of the horse from the instruction of the rider, so closely linked do the two appear to him. So what should we make of this pairing of “riding and schooling”?

Riding and schooling: the views of Gustave Le Bon, the philosopher of riding

If Gustave Le Bon, that philosopher of riding, is to be believed, in the English cavalry regiments every man without exception had to school his own horses himself and take them all the way to haute école! That is unquestionably the best training there is, but what was possible in the eighteenth century, or in a professional army, is only exceptionally practicable in modern conditions, if only because of the shortage of instructors. Does that mean that riding must be separated from schooling, whether out of necessity or by choice, with the horse world divided into écuyers and horse trainers on the one hand and the majority of ordinary riders on the other?

To which Le Bon replies: “By the mere fact of sitting on a horse, one is unconsciously either schooling him or un-schooling him.” The weekend rider who faithfully follows the horse in front of him, and would be quite unable to move away from his companions, may perhaps be learning, in a modest way, to “ride for himself”, but he is certainly closer to un-schooling than to schooling!

By contrast, the rider who, though no more than averagely gifted, rides as many horses as possible, works, thinks, compares and does his best to put into practice what he has learned in theory, will begin — at first unconsciously, then consciously — to school his horses.

Riding and schooling, hard to separate in the rider

Riding and schooling are always intertwined in a rider with a certain amount of experience. Progress will reward the knowledge he feeds through his work, provided that he starts out with sound principles. If, with a good seat and then a correct position, he looks above all for impulsion in a horse, and if that horse obeys nothing but correct aids, then — and only then — can he begin to try to regulate the horse’s paces, to make him more supple, to put him on the bit and to correct a faulty balance.

If he manages this properly, riding and schooling will already begin to merge for him. He will undoubtedly meet with disappointments and failures, but work and perseverance pay off, often when he least expects it, and he will feel something like joy; his smallest gains will make him want to achieve more.

He is well on the way to becoming a true “rider” and may one day become an “écuyer”.

Is riding a science or an art?

There has been much debate as to whether riding is a science or an art. In fact it is something of both. Knowledge, and later science, supported by experience and practice, are indispensable to anyone who wants to get the best from a horse in all circumstances; while fineness of feel, intuition in the choice of means, the speed, accuracy and discreet perfection of the aids all presuppose science but belong to art. Here we enter that exceptional realm reached only by a privileged few, for “not everyone can go to Corinth”!