Leah Beckett – Shamwari Debonair (4 Year Old)
This young stallion came in feeling very bouncy and fresh, with a few leaps thrown in for good measure. Helen explained that, in the beginning, safety is the highest priority and that it is important to keep control but be careful not to constrict or to close the front door. She advocated always riding forward and giving the horse somewhere to go, not pulling back if they explode forward.
As before, Helen stressed the need to establish suppleness, throughness, and a steady body position before asking for more impulsion and expression, and ensuring that that suppleness is maintained even when increasing the forward energy.
Finally, she reiterated her point that stretching the horse is important but that it is just as important to maintain the contact and for the horse to remain on the hind leg without tipping onto the forehand.
Emile Faurie – Cavalia (7 Year Old)
Helen and Emile continued the work they were doing on Saturday by varying the tempo, flexion and frame within the movements. Helen asked Emile to use some counter-flexion to help bring the forehand in off the track and to gain greater control over the shoulders. They then moved on to change the bend in the half-pass to make it a leg-yield before returning to the half-pass and then changing the frame in the half-pass, putting Cavalia into a lower neck position and then bringing her back up again.
Helen then asked Emile to bring the trot back without asking too much for the passage that the horse offered. She then explained that a horse that offers too much should never be punished and instead rewarded for its efforts before being shown more clearly what its being asked for. She also said that the rider should wait until the horse is really waiting for its next command and is settled, not anticipating, before giving an aid for an exercise.
Jackie Siu – Ferrera (Small Tour)
Lots of the focus with Ferrera was on maintaining the rhythm. Helen explained that the rider should only push as forward as the rhythm can hold, instead of really pushing for increased expression you should instead thinking of letting the horse ‘swing bigger’. They continued the theme in the half-pass, varying the trot within the movement. The aim was not to care about how it looked but instead concentrate on the reactions and the suppleness, the idea being that the end result would take care of itself, as Helen again repeated: ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’.
Continuing from Saturday, they did some pirouette work, mainly concentrating on the preparation for the pirouette, starting with a transition into a very collected canter within a half-pass and making sure to hold it with the seat, checking that Ferrera could hold it even when Jackie gave the reins. The first step of the pirouette had to be very small, just bringing the haunches in almost without forward tendency, and then after that it was possible to ride bigger strides through the remainder of the pirouette.
Hayley Watson-Greaves – WG Rubins Nite (Big Tour)
The focus was on the same exercises as on Saturday – the canter zig-zags and the passage and piaffe work. In the canter changeovers, Helen stressed the importance of the new inside leg to support the horse for the first few steps in the new direction. She also advocated riding forward in the Grand Prix 3-6-6-6-3 zig-zag, stating that many people ride the half-passes too steep and therefore lose the quality of the canter. According to Helen, the rider must always have two questions in their mind: ‘What do I have? What do I need?’.
In the trot work, she reiterated the idea of always keeping the same rhythm – it is clearly not possible to keep exactly the same rhythm in a piaffe and in an extended trot but that aim should always be in the rider’s mind.
Again following on from Saturday’s work, she asked Hayley to flex Rubins Nite in the piaffe and advised her to take the bend and wait until the horse was comfortable in the new positioning before then pushing the hind leg forward and into the rein. She explained that a double beat in the passage often comes when there is too much pressure in the rein and that it is important to keep the horse loose in front.
Impressions
Personally, I found the two days with Helen Langehanenberg both interesting and inspiring. Her focus of softness and looseness was great to see and it was nice to hear from a rider and trainer who is clearly never tempted by shortcuts or quick fixes. Her way of training really took into account the long term wellness of the horse, and its mental and physical wellbeing.
I have just one minor criticism of the training sections of the two days. First of all, I felt that the horses chosen, while fascinating to watch, were perhaps of too consistently high quality: the vast majority of people in the room would not be able to relate or to incorporate various aspects of what was being said into their training routines at home. While a lot of Helen’s principles – softness, throughness, suppleness – were universal, these were all things that, by and large, these top quality horses offered on their own. It would have been interesting to see a horse that didn’t find it all so easy and to see how Helen worked through different issues.
All in all, however, Helen was very impressive in both her coaching and riding, exhibiting a great combination of sympathy for the horse and practicality in the training. Trained by Klaus Balkenhol, her system is clearly rooted in the traditional style of dressage riding yet she is aware that sometimes the theory doesn’t always work in practice and that it is necessary to think outside the box and adapt one’s riding while still sticking to the principles. Her focus on varying the tempo, flexion and outline clearly helped keep the training fresh for the horses and it was interesting to hear how she didn’t spend much time training expression, instead trusting that correct basics and sufficient swing would get the horse into a place where he would find expression easy when asked. She has given me lots to try with my own horses, and even more to think about, and I thoroughly enjoyed this insight into the training system that has made her one of the top riders and coaches in the world.