Auditing the Dom Schramm Clinic

Image by Kira Hoffmann from Pixabay
At one point Dom was talking about a horse getting just the right effort and take off for a jump:
"And if they get that tail flick at the end? [insert Italian finger kiss] Perfection."

A couple of weekends ago I went to audit the Dom Schramm clinic at the National Equestrian Center. I've not really audited many clinics before, but I'm planning on a bunch for this year. Already I can see that this is going to be a great plan. It cost very little money and I have so much to think about and learn from.

I'm really not going to put much effort into making this a very cohesive post. Consider it more a list of notes I took, packaged with just a little bit of context and added descriptions. There was far too much good information for me to share all that I tried to absorb, but here are some of the most impactful things I heard.

The Notes:

"There's a big difference between compressing your canter and weakening your canter"

This was in regards to approaching a jump with a tight distance. If you need to shorten that stride be sure you don't also sap the energy from it. Think "compression", not "less."

"My dressage trainer says when you trot a corner feel like you have access to a walk transition if you wanted it"

This came up often during the warm up exercise. It was 4 trot poles that you alternate which way you turned after. It was a challenge to get an accurate turn and straight all the way through. 

Some horses would rush, particularly when he started asking for the trot poles after cantering a bounce. This is a good phrase to have in your mind for being particular about getting back to just the right tempo of trot.

Day 1 Indoors. A lot of jump elements in a small space.
CEC riders certainly have practiced for this!

"If I can only pick one thing with a baby or green horse I always pick straight" "a crooked horse is a weak horse. Straightness builds strength"

Some pairs at the clinic made the exercises look really easy. The time and effort they had put into training really had a time to shine. 

In some cases it was the rider who  struggled with accuracy and meeting advanced expectations of excellence from Dom. 

And in several other cases it was the horse who was inexperienced and needed help to understand the questions and find the right answers. 

This quote was regarding the green horses. If you were struggling with track, and wiggling, and not enough forward momentum, or inconsistent pace, and it's just too much to handle all at once, straightness is priority #1. 

"Think elbow open and push chin up over every jump"

This particular phrase came up quite often during the clinic. There was also a very amusing demonstration of the movement that went with it sometimes. 

Sometimes he would tell a rider to push their helmet towards the ceiling over every jump. I think he would say chin if they had their head tipped down, and helmet if the head angle was good. 

The idea was to not get too forward over your horses neck through a release, but still make sure your hands are lowering and moving with your horse. 

This did raise a question for me. I see students of my own (and myself sometimes) straighten through the knees and hips through a release instead of hinging or bending. 

I was wondering by focusing on so much "up" if that lower body straightness could be an unintended side effect. Is the helmet up concept only for an advanced rider maybe?

I actually got a chance to ask him on the second day. He said that it can be an unintended side-effect sometimes with a few students here and there, but usually the knees acting as shock absorbers is enough to keep that from happening. 

"DON'T FORGET WHAT WE TALKED ABOUT!" "DON'T FORGET OUR SQUIRCLE!" "DON'T FORGET! "DON'T FORGET!" 

This is what he shouted (in a nice way) at a rider through her whole course. I loved it so much. I am definitely stealing things to use on my students. 

Squircle is the shape you want a corner to be when it needs to be not too round, use a bit more space, and have a little bit of a sharper turn to it, but not be really square either. Great new word, in my opinion. 

In between courses he would talk to riders about their biggest challenge and how to address it. Often this would go into some significant detail and fine-tuning of riding. "Don't forget what we talked about" and "don't forget" are excellent ways to bring those same details back to mind but in fewer words for well timed reminders. 

"Like you are looking at the ceiling" 

He used this description for sitting up and back, especially relevant to downward transitions. It's really simple and I love it. It's a great way to communicate exactly the posture change you want, since it's something your body does so automatically when you try to look at the ceiling. Or at least it does for me. Is this everybody?

"You are trying to get your hand to do the work that your leg should be doing" 

This was said to a rider who was crossing their inside hand over the horse's neck to try to help the horse stay out or balance a turn. 

"Don't follow him down that rabbit hole. Keep to your plan" "Know that he can't keep that up forever"

He said this about a horse that was feeling really fresh and throwing some small parties during the clinic. Many of the horses were fresh on the second day since we were outside for the first time in forever. All the riders did a really impressive job both at keeping their cool and also sitting whatever shenanigans they were given.

Day 2. Beautiful weather, somewhat sloppy conditions, first time out since winter.
It was the perfect excuse for horses wanting to be fresh.

I really liked how he dealt with spooks, bucks, refusals, naughtiness, greenness, whatever the trouble might be, throughout the clinic. He was very calm, no blame games.  It was all just keep to the plan, adjust what you need to, leave alone what you don't.  Nothing too rough or tough, very help the horse oriented, but not too soft. 

He never told anyone their horse wasn't good enough, or suggested that their care or training were at fault. Maybe he thought those things silently, who knows. But I really appreciated that he accepted every horse and rider at face value, as they were, and treated them all as deserving to learn by merit of simple being there willing to learn. 

"Careful jumpers are often spooky horses"

This was also said multiple times throughout the clinic. I think it may be just that my world view is too narrow, but I'm so used to thinking of bucks and spooking as bad and undesirable behaviors. And I suppose when you are teaching beginner lessons, they really are.

But in the world of pro-eventing, they are just things that exist. If you want a horse that is very good at jumping clean and leaving the poles up, there's a good chance they will be a bit spooky. If you want a fiery, brave, athletic cross country ride, they tend to have quirks.

He talked about how the amazing equine athletes often have challenging personalities, but if you can figure out how to work with and guide their emotions, that's where the magic happens.

"Try to position your horse in a way that when he goes to stare at the spooky thing he doesn't get his head between you and the spooky thing"

The first day of the clinic was in a very small indoor arena, and it was a pretty chilly day. The spectator bleachers were not far from the horses' working space, and as people got cold, more blankets and coolers made appearances in the stands. Some horses were not big fans. 

Dom gave out this advice for when you have to ride past an area where your horse previously spooked. 

You know the horse is going to stare at it. You can't really stop them from looking at it. But he suggested setting your horse up for a renvers, or haunches out. 

Putting the horse's haunches closest to the scary thing helps you maintain a bit more control and minimize the spook. The idea was if the horse got it's head between you and the spook object you were more likely to get a four foot stop, full drama spook. 

But if you could keep pushing their hind end towards the wall/spook area you'd have a good effort towards staying on your correct path, and the spook would be more likely to be a skitter/veer.*

*I think I have this right from what he was explaining? Of course all of this information is through the filter of did I understand, remember, and communicate it correctly, but this piece in particular I feel a little less confident that I have it 100% correct for what he was trying to teach. 

3 visuals to help with core over fence:

1. A machete coming out of the horses withers
2. Think of a leap-frog-like go up at release
3. Challenge yourself to get left behind by half a second

There were a lot of visual components to these 3 explanations and they were hard for me to transcribe properly. But I still wanted to try to remember these mental visualizations so this is what I wrote down. 

Speaking of mental visualizations, he also talked about imaging the standards mark the two sides of a stone tunnel you need to ride through. But the tunnel doesn't start and end where the jump is, it includes the whole turn up to the jump and the straight line after. 

He talked about how trying to avoid those mental walls through the turn helped to keep centered and balanced.  

"We are educating and training here, not just surviving"

"There is no such thing as straight-ish" 

I'm clumping these two together because they both caused me to think, lol, I ride like that all the time (just surviving, and straight-ish). The no such thing as straight-ish concept is pretty self explanatory.

I do think there are merits to survival mode at times, but only if that's your tiny step up from giving up or quitting. Of course educating and training are the actual goal.

Pondering Different Teaching Styles: A Tangent

Dom's teaching style was very horse-over-rider and horse-training centric. Which was kind of fascinating to listen to because it is a bit different than what I'm used to hearing, and what I do myself.

Dom taught riders how to help their horses and discussed what their horse physically needed to do to succeed at the given exercise. He did not teach much about what a rider should do with their position.

I wonder how much of it is the difference between riding your own horse/the same horse every time, vs the experience of riding a different lesson horse each ride. It's hard to be horse-training centric when there's not much continuity of horses, I would think.

I think it could also have a little bit to do with the clinic riders being a bit more advanced. They are here to fine-tune, which is different than learning how to ride (not to say any of us are ever done learning how to ride).

I also wonder if it is a bit because a clinic instructor is inherently temporary. He needs to give them tools to move forward with, which is different than a long term instructor who can shape and mold little bits at a time.

I got a chance to ask Dom about this too during our brief conversation. He said he wouldn't really critique position or equitation unless he saw something really glaring.

We talked about how even at pro-level there are so many different riding styles, it's hard to know who to watch and model yourself after.

He said to some extent because there are so many different ways that work, each rider has to find their own style and what works for them. He recommended looking up videos of Scott Brash and Mark Ehning.

On Eventing Horse Conformation:

"A sloping shoulder and equilateral hind end triangle are the two traits I look for in a high-end eventer over breed or height or anything else"

While there were of course a lot of TB and Warmblood looking horses there, it was really nice to also see a couple of ponies, a few drafty things, and some appaloosa spots made an appearance. The types of challenges changed from horse to horse, but the ability to succeed at the exercises given was universal. 

At one point Dom said he didn't look for a specific breed or height when finding a new eventing horse. But he referenced a study that was done (sorry I didn't catch the details of who, where, or when) that determined after studying a large number of 5* event horse conformations that shoulder and hind end were the two most common traits. 

The shoulder you wanted a good slope to it, plain and simple. For the hind end, if you drew a triangle from SI joint/point of hip, to point of buttock, to stifle, you should end up with equal lengths to those lines, and symmetrical angles in all 3 triangle points. 

The Last of the Notes:

"You've only got to make 1 thing 1% better each ride and you're golden"

Dom was a fantastic clinician. He was kind, thoughtful, and good at communicating. I would love to participate instead of audit some day. I have the most enormous respect for how well everyone rode and composed themselves.

This last quote I think speaks to the perfectionist in all of us. Exactly like how we train our horses, we have to set reasonable goals for ourselves. By repeatedly achieving these small goals, it's easy to feel confident and successful. Which leaves us eager to move forward even more.

1% is all it takes.