Dumb beginner question

[Gremlinsateit]

Inspired by some recent threads on here I have had some proper lessons recently as a “beginner again”. I had mostly done trail rides previously and had begun rising trot and a tiny bit of canter in the trail ride setting, where the horse was comfortable following the leader.

I find the lesson experience really different and uncomfortable. The riding school wants us on quiet, safe horses which is completely understandable. But these horses, while very sweet and stable, just will not move for beginners. It takes massive over-exaggerated aids to get them into a plodding walk. Then the instructor wants us to kick vigorously and hit hard with a crop.

Yesterday’s lesson - it was a windy day and neither horse wanted to be there - felt like animal abuse. The other learner and I were starting to get a bit teary with upset and frustration. If I did get the horse into trot he would stop after a few paces and then the instructor would yell to kick again. He tried to take off back to the stable area at one point and I had to brake him like a train. Not at all the gentle aids I would like to be learning.

From my own perspective as well I feel like I won’t progress with balance etc when the horses will only trot a few paces at a time.

Is this typical and I have to grit my teeth for now? Is there anything sensible I can say to the instructor about how I don’t want to spend my lesson hitting and kicking? I think I am much too inexperienced to ask for a more forward horse.

Sounds like you might need to either have a chat with the riding school or find somewhere else.

I did this and changed schools after a few months. The difference was incredible. I went from horses that would trot when the instructor said 'trot' (they obviously knew what was expected of them) with no input from me. To riding and feeling like I was truly learning. I think some schools cater for tourists who simply want to try out riding, whilst others cater for people who genuinely want to teach good horse craft.

It might take a few tries to find the right one, but keep persevering.

As a fellow adult ‘beginner again’ I feel your pain! I had a couple of lessons at one school where it was almost impossible (for me) to get the wily old school horse I was on to move an inch. Like you, it feels wrong to
kick and hit, especially as it made no discernible difference. It’s frustrating as I know from watching dd riding that it’s possible to give subtle aids which don’t involve kicking and hitting at all.

Two things might help - does your school offer lunge lessons? It’s really helpful to be able to work on your position and balance without having to worry about keeping the horse moving. And there are degrees of forwardness - obviously as a beginner you don’t want to be put on a fire breathing dragon of a competition horse but there are plenty of safe riding school horses about who don’t need you to be constantly kicking in order to keep them in trot. It’s much easier to learn how to do rising trot when the horse is actively moving.

The only problem at the moment is finding a school with spaces - there’s been so much pent up demand after lockdown that most schools are having to turn people away

Thank you both very much, those are helpful suggestions. I’ve emailed another school which says the right things on its website about soft hands and communication, and I’ll try to summon up the courage to say something at next week’s lesson :)

There is a school near us like this and I cringe seeing my friends post pictures of their DC hitting and booting horses that probably are older and doing 3 hours work a day...
I’d look for another school myself.

Thank you, it’s so helpful to see my concerns are reasonable, and I feel more equipped to raise this issue and move on if need be.

It's not a dumb question at all, you are right to be unhappy I think. Personally I hate to see beginners taught the 'kick whack pull' school of riding, it's no fun for them or the horse, it's really hard to learn things like rising trot or canter transitions on a horse that just won't go, and it's no sort of preparation at all for eventually moving up onto an even averagely forward going horse, there's plenty out there who would absolutely deck you if you tried that kind of thing with them! On the other hand I do get the challenge for riding schools, it's not only finding quiet, sensible types - I would describe my mare as that in that she's never spooky, hot or rude, but because only I ride her I train her to be sharp off my leg and that alone makes her unsuitable for an absolute beginner - most beginners lack stability in their lower leg and sufficient core strength to consistently and consciously give correct quiet leg aids, riding is such a different set of muscles that nearly everyone will swing into the horse or grip with the lower leg to keep balanced or give them a boot when they meant a gentle squeeze, and my mare would certainly shoot forward if you did that, nothing nasty but enough to alarm or unseat a beginner, and if you were then rough with your hands getting her to stop she'd quickly get confused and nappy...

So to some extent RSs have to use horses which are trained to be slow off the leg and to ignore quite a lot of what the rider does and to not trot or canter unless really pushed for it. But the trouble then is that those horses get used a lot for beginners which isn't much fun for them, they can anticipate their mouthes being hauled on or their backs bounced on (not saying this is you OP but riding is hard to learn so it's almost inevitable a bit of this will happen, we've all been there!), and unless the school is very careful about their management, they rarely get to do the more fun stuff like fast hacks and jumping, so day after day of the school stuff sours them quickly. My preferred solution to all this is the continental one that everyone is taught purely on a lunge line until their balance, aids and confidence are good enough to ride a properly schooled quiet horse that has a varied workload independently. Yes this can be boring and frustrating to the rider who is itching to be allowed "just" to ride rather than spending ages walking in circles working on subtle positional corrections that may not feel that important but to me it's (a) a much better way to learn the basics and set a good foundation for your riding to improve off and (b) kinder on the horses. But I've yet to find a UK school that teaches this way as standard. Even the owner of the riding school I'm based at which I would say is much better than average in how they manage beginners looked at me a bit when I suggested they use it more often, they're very set in their 'follow the leader' style group classes method, will give a lunge lesson if requested but rarely suggest it to anyone.

OP I think you can certainly try asking for a more forward horse and also lunge lessons, if nothing else their attitude to you asking the question will tell you a lot! Frankly I'd be thinking about changing schools though, like I say anyone that can honestly recommend to beginners giving the horse a hearty whack probably wouldn't be getting my business any more unless it was a genuine one-off!

Whilst I appreciate that lessons cost a lot of money, and you just want to learn to ride, but what stood out for me, is use the crop hard' which is abuse.
Maybe you can report your concerns to this organization.
www.bhs.org.uk/our-work/welfare/reporting-horses-in-distress
Those poor horses.

Thank you! I’m in Australia but will think about this.

Today was awful. It was a new instructor and I was hoping for less kick whack pull, but instead got yelled at directly for not kicking and whacking enough. I asked early in the lesson for more guidance on how much pressure to put on the reins to stop or turn, and was told “as much as you need to make him do what you want”. So I won’t be back. I ended up getting quite flustered and upset about halfway through the lesson and was told to get off the horse and walk him back!

I have a lesson booked at the other school next week and have told them expressly that I want to learn gentle aids.

It’s really difficult because novice riders don’t have the skill, strength or stability to sit any form of naughtiness. Therefore riding schools have to use bomb proof plod alongs.
I’ve been there, I started in riding schools as a child then had a massive break until my early 20s when I started riding again. Having to kick and smack feels horrible but at the same time so does sitting on something with a bit more sass, being shit scared and having no idea what to do when it’s going backwards, sideways, cantering without stopping.
Riding is a skill which takes years to develop. I’m still learning and undoing incorrectly taught things such as turning with the outside rein and trotting isn’t ‘up down up down’.
Stick with it OP, once the foundations are built you can move on to something with a bit more go.

Good decision to try another school, aside from anything else if you are left feeling tearful and frustrated each time (we all feel like that occasionally but not every time!) it's not a good use of your money and time.

Just a word of caution about using the terminology 'gentle aids' - maybe different in Oz but over here saying things like that will get a lot of horse-people eye-rolling at you and thinking you are the kind of delicate flower that just wants to 'bond' with the horse and stroke its pretty mane and never ever have to be firm or bossy with it, and that just isn't a safe or sensible way to expect to interact with a 10 ton flight animal... I'm sure what you mean is you want to learn correct, effective aids, which by their nature are not harmful to or hurting the horse. Correct aids are not always 'gentle' per se, sometimes it's necessary to be firm, the horse should look to the rider to be their leader and that sometimes means you have to be quite directive to keep them and you safe.

As above I absolutely don't mean you should ever have to whack or yank the horse roughly around but in order to train yourself to give a subtle aid, and the horse to respond to it, you do need to do a bit of trial and error which may mean sometimes giving a harsher aid if the first doesn't work, since horses are taught using a pressure/release training system where you apply 'pressure' in the form of an aid, leg/rein/seat/voice/crop until you get the desired result, then immediately withdraw the pressure and praise the horse when you do - exactly how much pressure/aid to apply and in what way is the subtle art of becoming a rider and something we all work on every single day .

So while your instructor's answer to your question about rein aids does sound a bit curt, he wasn't totally wrong. I'm not a professional instructor but I've shown plenty of people the basics and if I was asked by a beginner 'how much rein do I need to use to stop or turn' I would first remind them (I hope you've been taught) that stopping and turning does not only come from the rein but also your legs and seat, and that in fact higher level riders can guide the horse purely from the seat and not use the rein at all. Then we would practice stopping (easier than turning IMO), with you first using the very gentlest aid imaginable, no more than an imperceptible closing of the fingers and deepening of the seat. When (predictably) the horse, being a riding school plod and not very well schooled (and/or your aid isn't quite correctly applied), does not respond to the minimum aid, we would practice incrementally using firmer aids - a firm squeezing of the rein, a back-up voice aid 'woooo-ah', deepening the seat and shifting the weight slightly deeper (you may be taught to lean backwards which isn't quite classically correct but is easier in practice), a firm, sharp half-halt etc until the horse does respond, and immediately praising him for doing so - so yes 'doing as much as you need to get the response' like your instructor said - we wouldn't just let the horse merrily carry on because he's ignored a 'gentle' aid - that's a swift road to a horse that will never respond to any aid at all . But, having been through that process, we would then try the halt again starting with the quieter aid, repeating several times over - hopefully teaching the horse that if he responds to the quiet aid he gets the release and praise sooner, and also showing the rider exactly the degrees of pressure available to them and neither teaching them to automatically expect instant results from the very quiet aid or to always go straight to the very harsh one but instead to assess where the horse they are riding is at and trying to improve his responsiveness - this is the fundamentals of schooling a horse and used by riders at all levels across the world... to be fair not all instructors take the time to explain this to their students in so many words, some prefer to teach more intuitively, but a good teacher should be able to tell if you aren't understanding or are getting frustrated and be able to help you make improvements without resorting to 'tell offs' so I'd write that guy off as a bad teacher/bad school and try somewhere better as you are doing...

Sure, I realise I’ve written myself as a bit of a wimp in these posts. I have no issue with firm, decisive direction, barging the horse over to shift his weight to pick out a hoof etc. There was no suggestion to use seat or voice aids at all, no “try squeezing and then amp it up”, just “kick him! Again! Again! Hit him! Don’t stop kicking him!”. And re the reins the message was clearly to haul hard. So I’ll see how I go at the other place next week, and thanks to everyone for your input :)