Latest / Live Free Ride Free with Rupert Isaacson / The Lost Art of Mounted Combat & Classical Dressage | Arne Koets | EP 57

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The Lost Art of Mounted Combat & Classical Dressage | Arne Koets | EP 57 · Live Free Ride Free with Rupert Isaacson

0:00
Rupert Isaacson: Thanks for joining us.
0:01
Welcome to Live Free, Ride Free.
0:03
I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson, New York Times bestselling author of
0:06
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0:08
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0:34
So now let's jump in.
0:36
Welcome back to Live Free, Ride Free.
0:38
What a treat.
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I've got Arne Kurtz.
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If you don't know him, you, you need to.
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And if you're a history nerd, if you are a dressage nerd, if you are a fantasy
0:48
nerd, if you are a kind of wanna feel better through horses nerd, if you are a
0:55
sort of everything cool around ponies nerd you need to buckle up and meet this man.
1:03
So without further ado, Arne, thank you so much for coming on.
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Please just tell us who you are and what you do and why you do
1:10
it, and we'll go from there.
1:12
Arne Koets: Well, thank you for having me on.
1:14
This is a, a rather sudden and hopefully beginning of a the
1:18
pleasure of chatting more often.
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At least I hope so.
1:21
I myself am I suppose these days mostly a, a dressage teacher.
1:26
I came to that from martial arts on horseback, so fencing on horseback became
1:30
my thing that got me into clinics, and now I'm giving clinics every weekend
1:35
in all over the world in riding.
1:38
And that is a very vague term, riding, but I usually say historical dressage.
1:42
Rather than classical dressage, long story as to why, but it's
1:45
like I wanna do it the very old-fashioned way for various reasons.
1:49
I come from martial arts background a, a reconstructing European martial
1:53
arts background from sort of the beginning of that movement, and thereby
1:57
the consideration of old books and what does that book actually say and,
2:02
and challenging our own historical prejudices to re- re- reconstruct that,
2:08
which is very useful in riding too.
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And I then started building, I have jousted a lot, you know, doing a
2:15
lot of shows and stuff like that.
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That was used to be most of my work.
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But then I managed to go to the FÃ¼rstliche Hofreitschule in BÃ¼ckeburg, the Princely
2:23
School for Riding Art in BÃ¼ckeburg, and then I got to learn to ride properly, and
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actually got to the point of the level of Hofberater, so courtly rider, I suppose.
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And yeah, so that's, that's sort of my background, and I've started getting
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a lot into biomechanics through the bio- through my dabbling in Argentinian
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tango, through my martial arts, and of course through the riding.
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And then all the mental and physiological things kind of became this sort of little
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nerding out investigation, and through friends I've started digging deeper
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and deeper to try and figure it out.
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Rupert Isaacson: You're being immensely modest and cryptic, right?
3:06
I'm gonna fill in some gaps here.
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All right.
3:08
So I first came across Arne Kurtz because if you float about on YouTube looking for
3:12
cool stuff like we all do and you're kind of into- dressage-y baroque-y stuff, then
3:23
this place, Bucherburg, will come up.
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And Bucherburg is really interesting because it's a, it's a s- it's a
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place in Germany that teaches and trains sort of in the manner of,
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like, really the early, early baroque.
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Most people think of baroque as, like, 18th century La GueriniÃ¨re.
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This is, like, e- earlier still, and they do a kind of amazing job at it.
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And so they have this sort of world and following of people that once you
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become aware of them, it's, it's hard not to keep following them because
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what they do is just really cool.
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Because it's not just extremely good horse training and riding, it's also, like,
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very, very, very historically accurate.
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So it's sort of a little bit like a living museum, which we can all benefit
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from because if these things die, well then they're not around anymore.
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But then I started learning, 'cause I was living in Germany, about this
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thing called Rossfechten and, and Arne just very, he probably even missed
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it when he said it 'cause he kind of went, "Who knows what we're doing
4:20
to like, fencing on horseback," and then blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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It's like, and I was like, "Hold on a second, mate.
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What's all this fencing on horseback malarkey then?"
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Because we know that, well, those of us sort of in the know of the historical
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thing, know that the collection in the in the combat sense is there so that you
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can a bit like a, a martial arts fighter or a boxer or a fencer or whatever,
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you can shift from foot to foot, have your center of gravity low, be in this
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sort of quantum state where your energy is almost in superposition anywhere.
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That's sort of what a piaffe is with a horse or a terre-Ã -terre, these, these
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sort of little land dolphin movements that are kind of in place and ready to
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go, and then boom, you can fire it out.
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There we go.
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And that was actually Arne yesterday, that picture there.
5:09
Yeah.
5:09
Yeah.
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And if you can do that, well, then you can probably stay alive and thrive in,
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you know, a medieval or renaissance or Bronze Age battlefield, 'cause this
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stuff goes back an awful long way.
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When I was living in Germany, I was wondering "Is there anyone still out
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there kind of really doing that stuff?"
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Because I've hung out a lot with the bullfighting community in
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Portugal, and in fact, I learned most of my craft with horses in the
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dressage sense down in Portugal.
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So although I'm not a bullfighter and I don't sanction bullfighting, you can't
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argue that the horsemanship is out of this world because the bulls are not joking.
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When he comes out, he's very intelligent, and if you can't dance around that bull,
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and if your horse isn't like, "Yeah" about it, you're dead, like very fast.
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So I knew that, okay, that tradition had continued of combat on horseback.
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Was anyone really doing the real thing?
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Not just jousting, not just running at each other in two
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dimensions, knocking each other off.
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Not that there isn't a lot of craft in that.
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There is.
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I know some jousters who would, who would very quickly jump all over me if I say
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there's not, 'cause we know that there is.
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However, we know that riding in three dimensions is tougher.
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And so then I came across through, I think a mutual friend of ours,
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a guy called Philip Wirtz Dr.
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Philip Wirtz, who is an old school chum of my wife's as it so happens, and then was
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the sort of historian librarian custodian up at BÃ¼ckeburg that we just talked about,
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but also worked with us extensively where we lived in Idenhausen 'cause in Germany,
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that's his hometown And we still know each other well, and we make some, we
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nerd out on YouTube together sometimes.
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We make some videos.
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He said, "You've gotta know, you've gottaâ¦
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Look at this guy Arne Kurtz.
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He is the one doing it."
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And Rupert, it, we call it in German Ross, which means, like, steed,
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old-fashioned word for a horse.
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Fechten, fencing on horseback.
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Not just slugging it at each other with heavy cavalry swords as we go
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past each other, but actually having to circle each other and look for
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the, look for the in, and so on.
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So, so of course I immediately get online.
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I find that this guy Arne is the real deal.
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He's been through BÃ¼ckeburg.
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He's got this kind of castle in Thuringen in central Germany where, like, hundreds
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of people show up and and they learn this old these, not just one, but they
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dive into the old Western martial arts on horseback, and they have a fabulous time.
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And I'm like, "Ooh, I want some of that."
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And then by hook and by crook I start putting some stuff on YouTube,
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and Arne starts to comment on the videos, and isn't a dick about it.
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Isn't like, "Ugh, you got that wrong, and you got that wrong."
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But he's like, "Oh, actually, and here, look, this is an interesting thing, and
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you might want to look deeper at this."
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I'm like, "I think this is that Arne Kurtz guy.
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I think it is, actually, and he seems like a really nice bloke."
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What a nice surprise because as we all know, in the horse
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world, it isn't always so.
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And just because somebody has a lot of, you know, knowledge doesn't necessarily
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mean they're someone who you might want to, like, hang out with in a pub.
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And it can be rather stressful.
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No, this guy's really amazing.
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And next thing you know, here we are.
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Okay, boom.
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Now, one of the things which I've noticed about you, and I want you to speak to
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this, Arne, you've created community.
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You've identified a sort of nerd niche which is actually shared by hundreds
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of thousands of people, if not more.
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Any of us who were, you know, sort f- sword and sorcery fantasy, medieval
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nerds as teenagers listening to too much heavy metal and all that while riding
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horses- We're your fanboys and girls.
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But because my background with the whole classical thing came through autism
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and finding out that a collected horse, especially in the terre a terre, the
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canter in place, the sort of piaffe in canter, fills somebody who doesn't
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want to speak with a hormone called oxytocin, which feels blissful and happens
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to be the hormone of communication, so then they start communicating.
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This happened with my son and then with many others.
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I have always known that this system that was designed to harm your fellow
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man can actually heal your fellow man.
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It's just a matter of how you want to approach it.
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So you, Ana, have taken that, I think, to the next level because what
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you're doing is you're saying, "Yes, let's actually look at the process of
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harming our fellow man, but let's stop short of doing that, and now let's
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do that to effectively build love."
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And I'm gonna take off my hat to you because that takes a certain kind of
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warmth of soul, which we need more of.
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So Can you speak to that?
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Arne Koets: That a very interesting way of putting it all together.
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Especially one of the things that I am fond of saying in a sort of a dry,
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functional way is that if you, if you lead a dance, like, like I said, I, I dabble
10:09
with Argentinian tango, you're using a mechanism to communicate body-wise, to
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make a movement work, to make to, to get information also, to have my pr-
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proprioception connected to my dance partner's proprioception so I know where
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her feet are and I don't step on her toes.
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And you build up an effortless motion in her, in whoever you're dancing with,
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by the way, because in tango it's very traditional for men to dance with men.
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And and so you, you, you build someone's balance, someone's carriage, someone's
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confidence someone's awareness.
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And that, of course also, as you are well aware, has all sorts of other effects
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within the system, human in their state of mind, in their health in s- general.
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This same set of mechanisms is also used in wrestling to destroy
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someone's balance, and there is no boundary between those two things.
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It's just you can go to the positive and you can go to the negative within
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a scale of using the, all those complicated little biomechanical
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reactions to either build someone's balance or destroy someone's balance.
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And this makes you very aware that it's very easy to mean to do one thing
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and end up doing the other thing.
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And this is a kind of an important reason why we have so much discussion
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in riding because everybody wants the best, but are they doing the best?
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Are they doing good enough?
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Are they actually having the duty of care towards their animal?
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And this has a lot to do with that you might use techniques that you don't
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realize are wrestling because you're supposed to put the horse's head in
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position A 51B, and yet you don't realize that you're using the, the wrestling
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version rather than the dancing version.
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What I think is really in- interesting about this building of a community
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and things like that, a thing that is very big in martial arts is also the
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control of yourself, the control ofâ¦
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You don't wanna become aggressive.
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You want to apply your techniques.
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You wanna a- but you don't wanna be aggressive necessarily.
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You want to be polite.
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A polite fighter is a more successful fighter.
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And that doesn't mean you go soft.
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It means you have a control over the situation and a control over yourself,
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which allows you to apply force when appropriate, and to withdraw
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force when it's inappropriate.
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And then you allow yourself to build this community in martial arts.
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In martial arts you do a lot of things about being able to deal with your
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psyche and to, to h- create a safe space to do this stuff, really, frankly,
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if you wanna call it that simply.
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But also when we're doing mounted fencing, we have a partner and we have an opponent.
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So I need to dance with my horse in the exact same time that I
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need to fight with my opponent, who is dancing with their horse.
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If I fight too effectively, or in certain ways effectively with my opponent, I
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make their dance with their horse worse.
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This is bad for two reasons.
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First of all, it's tactically bad for me.
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I don't win.
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But also, I don't want to do that to that animal.
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And the other thing is that you start learning to read.
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So sometimes my opponent might be thinking something, and if they're experienced,
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they won't let me know about it.
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They won't show me what their plan is with their weapon.
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But their horse will feel what their plan is, and their horse might
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tell my horse, which means I get to feel what he, they are thinking.
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And it's, if you get into that state, and this sounds far more unobtainable than
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it really is, it's really not that hard to get that kind of connection between
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multiple living beings in a space.
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That connection is kind of there whether you like it or not, and
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you better just tune into it and listen to it, 'cause it's useful.
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And then you can get into this point where the difference between
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destruction and, and creation kind of just disappears, and this is a
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beautiful thing to be able to do.
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If you've been through harder things in life maybe you know you get to this point
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where everything is terrible, everything's terrible, and at some point you just
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break through that and it doesn't matter anymore and you carry on for positive.
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Keep calm and carry on and, and onwards and upwards.
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And you, you find that space, and you can build from there,
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no matter how hard things are.
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And I think this is one of these things that has a lot to do with how I like
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to approach building communities.
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There's a lot of things that you need to bear in mind.
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You know, you're, you're, you're always on parade, as I tend to say.
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So when there's 100 people watching you sword fight, you, you might do a
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certain move and you kind of go, "This person over there is watching this,
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and when they do this, they might doâ¦
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I'll do this move this way so they know what to do next time."
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And when, when you can, when you can really- Move the whole
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community to build each other up.
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Like you were talking about how the- Mm â¦ the conversation can be so
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negative and so toxic in the riding world.
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Can we make a constructive co- conversation happen?
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Can we make a constructive community happen that maybe goes together
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with other constructive communities?
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Can we, can we kind of build something that as, as Christine would say, you
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decide to make something positive.
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And I, I think I also want to honor my teachers in that sense, that I
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want to bring the good riding into the world, as they say in Bucherberg.
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And this is inherent to good fencing.
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So if you want to fence at a, a serious level, on horseback in particular, you
15:32
have to be able to ride in a s- level of softness, yet a level of performance
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that is something that a lot of people don't even realize is possible.
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And it is far more obtainable for even grassroots people than people think.
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Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely it is, yeah.
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G- I don't, I don't mean to interrupt you, I'm just agreeing.
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Go ahead, finish the thought.
15:55
Arne Koets: Oh I d- I think I, I would like to start with a little anecdote.
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Th- of re- recently I started two new guys that are completely new to riding.
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They came from a sword fighting background.
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They came to my house.
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They're living here for a few years.
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And I have this one old stallion, which is a Rejane stallion, like y- you
16:09
were talking about the bullfighting, this is, it used to be a bullfighter.
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And I obtained him from from Wolfgang Klischka a- actually, and he has been with
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me for 15 years now, this, this horse.
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And he's 27.
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You know, he's still hot as anything, but he's a 27-year-old Lusitano.
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And I was giving this guy his first ever riding lesson.
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He had to ask me what the front side of the saddle was.
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He is that unfamiliar with horses.
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Which is this lovely experiment.
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And I put him on a horse, and made the horse in hand do side movements,
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and asked him to name which side movement he was sitting on.
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And then I asked him to feel which hind leg was stepping first, which
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is, again, something I didn't make up, that's in the old books.
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And then I made him sit piaffe.
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He didn't have a clue why that was int- interesting because
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he doesn't know anything.
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And then and I made him sit the terre a terre on his first riding lesson.
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We carried on a little bit.
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His 10th riding lesson ever, he was sitting riding one-handed on Blanca
17:09
Candara just on a curb bit, with a sword in hand, on a stallion, in an
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arena with no walls, riding against me on another horse, and we were
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fencing on horseback in canter.
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In 10 lessons
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Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
17:26
So you know and I know that in the old masters books, the good ones,
17:32
they, there is a ref- constant refrain that says, "Take your beginner
17:37
rider on the first day, put them on your best horse in the piaffe."
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Usually they say the piaffe, sometimes the terre Ã terre, sometimes they say
17:45
- Mm-hmm â¦ one of the school jumps.
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Arne Koets: Yeah.
17:47
Rupert Isaacson: But they always start with the piaffe.
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And let that human feel how it should feel, and then gradually over time,
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bring them up to the level of that horse, which of course is completely rational.
18:01
It requires two things.
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It requires a mental monkey, you or me, who knows how to produce
18:08
that horse, and then it requires that ment- more importantly, that
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mental pony that, that can do it.
18:15
And I, when I was doing my deep dive into all of this, read those statements
18:21
and went, "Okay, well if there's a real consensus here across centuries of these
18:26
old dead dudes saying, 'We gotta do this stuff,' so okay, I'm gonna do it.
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So let me first see if I can train the horse to do this, and then let's see if I
18:33
can get him safe enough to, and dependable enough, and, and affable enough."
18:38
That's also that, that sort of affability, that friendliness in the horse, to say,
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"I'll give you some fire, but don't worry, I'll look after you at the same time."
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And I found it to be completely true.
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I was thenâ¦
18:50
So rather like you, with these horses, you can bring people to- What feels
18:57
to be quite a high level quite soon.
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However, of course, if they were not mounted on that horse, that schoolmaster
19:04
horse, well then, of course, the learning curve is longer, and then what one
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has to say to that person is, "Okay.
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Look, it's great.
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This horse now you can sort of operate because he's also cooperating with you.
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Now let's look at what we do when we don't have a horse like this, and
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this will be a longer road, my friend.
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Are you down?"
19:24
And sometimes people say, "Well, actually, no, I just want to
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enjoy this fun experience."
19:27
And other people say, "Yes, I want to do the deep dive."
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And then you say, "Well, that's gonna be, you know, 20 years," because it's
19:32
20 years for everyone, "But don't worry, it's a fun 20 years, so let's go."
19:36
You know?
19:37
And so I absolutely agree with you that you can bring people with a
19:41
horse like this if they are trainable, teachable, and receptive, and open,
19:46
and curious quite far, quite fast.
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Of course, it is also you are there and you have created this environment,
19:54
including the horse that is part of this environment, and so on.
19:57
And of course, it's not that often that you find this anymore.
20:01
I wasâ¦
20:01
I once had a, a chap from the FN in Germany, you know, the Fahrrad-Nationale,
20:07
who y- are effectively the FEI in Germany.
20:09
For those people who are listening who don't know, it's like the
20:11
equivalent of the US Equestrian Federation or the British Horse
20:15
Society, but the German version.
20:17
And he was giving a clinic at our place in Texas when we were living
20:21
there and he was, you know, drilling us all in that form of dressage, and
20:26
of course, we were all more or less failing because that's what you do.
20:29
And then I had to run off and teach a lesson, and he saw me teach this
20:32
lady, again, who didn't know much, she's just beginning, on one of my
20:35
Lusitanos, starting in piaffe, and he said, "Where'd you learn that?"
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And I said, "Well, in Portugal, because with the bullfighting riders,
20:43
they need to get them to a l- a, you know, a functional level really fast.
20:46
So we found this works for us."
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And he said, "Well, that's the old way.
20:50
No one does that anymore."
20:51
And I said, "Yeah, I know.
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It's, it's weird."
20:53
And I said, "Why don't we do that at the FN?
20:54
Why doesn't the FN say to do that?"
20:55
He said, "Well, you know, it's not really in the books anymore."
20:55
And I said, "But the FN follows Steinbrecht, right?
20:55
Gustav Steinbrecht."
20:55
And he said, "Well, yes, absolutely."
20:55
You know?
20:55
I know, exactly.
20:55
And I said, "Well, what does Gustav
21:07
Steinbrecht say on page three?"
21:08
And he says, "Straighten your horse and ride him forward."
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I said, "No, he actually says that on page five.
21:13
On page three, he says 'Put your h- beginner rider on your horse in
21:17
piaffe and, you know, do what we're doing, what you just said to do.'
21:21
Why aren't we doing that, Mr.
21:22
FN dude?
21:23
Because, you know, you're, you're a decision-maker.
21:25
You're a policy maker.
21:26
You could be helping to create these schoolmaster horses in these riding
21:30
clubs all over Germany to help people.
21:32
Why does this not exist?"
21:34
So I'm gonna throw that question over to you.
21:36
I think a lot of people probably have their thoughts
21:38
about why that doesn't exist.
21:40
But why, Anna, do you have to luck into finding somebody like
21:45
you, finding somebody like me, finding someone like our teachers?
21:49
Why is it not universal?
21:52
Arne Koets: Well because there's a limit to how many people
21:55
that horse can really help.
21:56
So for instance, like I say my 27-year-old, well he's 27- Yeah â¦ so I
22:00
need to start looking after him a little bit, and he can only do so many in a year.
22:04
So that is very few students.
22:07
So, yeah.
22:07
Rupert Isaacson: Indeed.
22:08
Arne Koets: So if you have, like, 100 people of which only 10 are
22:11
serious, and you have, like, just some random child that just wants to
22:15
play a little bit with horses, I mean, that's valid, don't get me wrong.
22:19
But it means that are you gonna invest one of those slots that you have
22:23
with that animal into somebody that you don't know yet to be serious?
22:27
So I mean, that is one thing in the modern recreational world, if you run
22:32
a riding school and you need to pay the bills how much would they have to pay
22:36
per lesson and who is gonna do that?
22:39
And that is just, you can make the, the, the math.
22:41
You know, h- that horse eats, and it needs a stable and stuff, and, and it
22:44
just costs money, and it's money that people are not used to paying, and
22:48
you'll be undercut by a simpler system.
22:52
So that's one thing.
22:53
Mm-hmm.
22:53
And this also goes into, you know, if you think of 1912 this whole sort of
22:57
military riding in groups that became very, very indu- in- institutionalized
23:04
in the 19th century, and then- Mm â¦ onwards into the 20th century,
23:07
we have this sort of Abteilung, right?
23:10
And so, so to, to, to ride in a group it's 13 girls on Shetland ponies in- Yeah
23:14
the arena trying to not-
23:15
Rupert Isaacson: Hand around to the rear of the ride.
23:17
Yeah.
23:17
Arne Koets: Yes.
23:18
And, and this is a way of making a lot of people make hours in the saddle
23:24
And this has to do with a tradition.
23:26
So if you go to Portugal and Spain there's plenty of people in Portugal
23:29
who could never, ever ride because they just don't have the money.
23:32
It is a select few that ride compared to, say, the Netherlands, where
23:38
very many people get to ride a bit.
23:41
Yet the level that is, as an average available in terms of performance
23:45
of exercises is very, very distinct between these two countries.
23:50
So, there is a deliberate decision by Bouchet and to some degree by the
23:56
carpentry and, and various people like that to lower the level of expectation
24:00
because jumping is more important, and the level of collection is actively yanked
24:07
down even in the high level dressage.
24:09
So they talk about horizontal balance r- rather than uphill balance.
24:12
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
24:13
Arne Koets: And that they prioritize the series lead changes over collected
24:17
work, and they explicitly say this.
24:19
The carpentry says this in 1998.
24:22
So we start making a system that is easy to obtain, and so it's easier to teach.
24:28
It is basic and, and you see I do this because it's a basis of something else.
24:34
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
24:34
Arne Koets: Ratherâ¦
24:35
And this is the issue, is that are you making a foundation for a skyscraper or
24:39
are you making a foundation for a shed?
24:42
Those are not the same foundations.
24:44
And the, the thing is that because we, we assume that people are not
24:49
gonna get there, we teach them things that are inherently gonna
24:52
go against the high level stuff.
24:54
Rupert Isaacson: I think that's where you've put your finger on it, honestly.
24:57
We have this assumption that they're not gonna get there.
25:01
So why bother?
25:02
Arne Koets: Yeah, and, and I think one thing that you said a little bit before
25:05
is, is such a huge deal in the old Italian masters, this concept of unificare,
25:11
to unify the horse up into the saddle.
25:15
This is the exact opposite, if you hear it at first value, as
25:20
sit deep, even though they're both supposed to touch the same thing.
25:24
Create a connection with your seat to your horse.
25:27
But do you drive your seat bone down into the horse, or does the horse
25:31
gets invited to come into an embrace of your upper legs, your seat, into
25:36
the saddle, and unify with you?
25:39
And this is where people will say, like, "Oh, after 15 years, you might have
25:42
three seconds where you're truly together with your horse, if you're lucky."
25:47
What a load of rubbish.
25:48
Yeah, I agree.
25:49
You need to do that straightaway.
25:51
Go do it.
25:52
Enjoy it.
25:53
Indeed.
25:53
And then, of course, it gets easier to keep that for longer
25:55
and to have it more reliably.
25:57
Yes, that is practice.
25:58
However, you can teach people to do this within, well, technically, seconds.
26:04
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
26:04
Arne Koets: And this is one of these things, this, this setting up, You
26:06
know, if you learn body work or things like that, you need to learn to connect
26:10
to things to find subtle feelings.
26:14
You need to learn to assess things.
26:16
You need to give calm to your patient, it- whether it be
26:19
it a, a human or, or a horse.
26:22
And this is something that is taken for granted that you can
26:24
learn and, and it's sort of like a basic to even start doing the work.
26:28
And why don't we just do that with our horse straightaway?
26:32
And w- and I, frankly, I just do, and, and I think it's not hard.
26:36
Rupert Isaacson: Can I say why I think it's gone?
26:38
I think there's a lot of truth in what you say, but the, the one thing which I found
26:42
has not stood up is this economic model.
26:45
Mm-hmm.
26:46
Because most people I know who run riding schools really, really struggle.
26:49
And we, I suppose you could say, to some degree, run a riding school What
26:55
I do is I'll say to people before they start, "Listen, I'll absolutely
27:00
teach you whatever I can do, but here's how each lesson will go.
27:05
It will always be two-thirds on the ground.
27:07
You're always gonna do a certain amount with lunging and long reining to learn
27:11
how you're building the horse, or maintaining the horse, or rehabbing the
27:14
horse that you're gonna be operating.
27:18
Then you're gonna work in hand so that you're going to understand
27:21
how these exercises happen, and you can actually see them because
27:27
you're standing next to the horse.
27:28
You're not sitting in the blind spot.
27:30
And then you're going to ride with me at your shoulder, transferring the aid,
27:34
saying, 'When I do this with my stick, you do this with your leg,' effectively.
27:38
And then we call it ground monkey, sky monkey, but, you know.
27:41
And then for about 15 minutes at the end, I will begin to come away."
27:45
This doesn't include the times we spend doing trail riding and messing
27:48
about, but this would be like a lesson.
27:52
And I have found that that is a better economic model.
27:56
That actually, Because what happens is people are, as you say, experiencing
28:00
exactly what you just talked about with your, your friend who didn't know much and
28:04
came in within 10 sessions and was really effectively punching above his weight.
28:08
You know, having this, having a, an ecstatically wonderful, joyful time.
28:12
It's rather than saying to somebody, "You've got to break your heart for 15
28:17
years having a shit time being bounced around all over the place and being yelled
28:21
at for doing it wrong when you don'tâ¦
28:23
No one's telling you how to do it right."
28:25
No, no, no.
28:25
Let's go straight to the joy However, it does require d- so, so the only way I can
28:32
do that is 'cause I was given, like you were given, this technology of producing
28:38
a horse this way by certain teachers.
28:40
But I was curious.
28:41
I did go and seek them out, just like you did.
28:45
I was like, "You know, it's just, this just isn't good enough.
28:47
I need to, I need to find, like, who's that bloke that can reallyâ¦"
28:51
With you it was Bucherburg and with me it was Master Luis ValenÃ§a in Portugal.
28:54
Mm.
28:55
Arne Koets: Oh, yeah.
28:55
Okay.
28:55
Rupert Isaacson: Of course.
28:57
Yeah.
28:57
But, you know, 25 years ago, 30 years ago, we didn't really have
29:00
the internet like we do now.
29:02
It was hard to find these people.
29:03
They existed, you know, you're there in th- the wilds of Thuringia, you know.
29:08
Who would find you?
29:08
Well, every, every sucker can find you because you're all over YouTube.
29:12
So you just have to be a little bit curious, you know.
29:15
And they say, "Well, do I, can I really write to this bloke, you know?
29:18
Maybe he'll just blow me off."
29:19
Well, I'll give it a try, you know.
29:21
So, "Dear Mr.
29:21
Kutz," "can I," blah, blah, blah.
29:25
And you'll pro- you, because you're an affable dude and you believe in what you
29:28
do and you have a passion for it, would probably say, "Absolutely," you know.
29:31
"Here's what we could do."
29:32
If you were not, you might say, "Oh, I'm terribly sorry, but we gotâ¦"
29:35
But then the, the one who says, "Well, I'm terribly sorry," one
29:38
moves on until you find the human being that says, "Yeah, sure.
29:42
I would love to share this with as many people."
29:45
So I, I do hear you when you say each horse can only do a certain number,
29:50
and that's certainly true of mine.
29:51
But if one seeded, if you like, all the Reitverein, the, the, the riding
29:56
clubs in Germany, with three or four of these school master horses and
30:00
you showed the people how to produce them on the ground and da, da, da,
30:04
da, da, da, da, da, da, then ev- then it would democratize it a bit.
30:08
I do actually think that is possible, but I think it's a matter of imagination.
30:14
And it's very interesting to me, you know, like, the in-hand
30:16
work obviously is the key.
30:19
Some people just will reject it and don't want to, don't want to engage, and
30:23
it's like, "No, I just want to ride."
30:24
And then you can say, "Well, okay, fair enough."
30:26
But there's always that other group of people who say, "No, I
30:29
really do want to learn that."
30:31
And of course, if it was available for them, I think we'd have-
30:35
More people like you out there.
30:37
Do, do, do you think that with the kind of resource you put out there, and you
30:41
were talking about the Book of Bug, people saying, "We want this good writing to come
30:46
into the world and stay in the world."
30:48
You have a mission, I suppose I do to some degree too, to kind of
30:55
propagate this culture into the next generations, to not have it die.
31:00
So we can't just say, "Sorry, this has to be for an exclusive few,"
31:06
because then it probably will die.
31:09
So you have built a very successful community.
31:14
There are thousands of people who engage with what you do, and probably
31:18
some hundreds of people who come and engage directly with what you do,
31:21
like in your house, at your place.
31:23
Mm-hmm.
31:24
So what â¦ How can people find and build these communities as you have?
31:35
Arne Koets: There's, I think there's some technical parts that come into this.
31:39
I think what you're really touching on there is the, the s- the, the road of
31:45
suffering of learning to ride in a normal fashion is you get screamed at, you get
31:50
told you're supposed to achieve things.
31:52
Nobody tells you how to do it.
31:53
Nobody tells you what works, and you just go through the motions.
31:56
And the horses are not necessarily very cooperative because they
31:59
know that this is gonna be just as awkward for them as it is for you.
32:03
And that's sort of the regular riding school en- environment.
32:06
And part of that has to do with a lot of a lack of understanding due to,
32:13
I think, to a very large degree, to the the very confused definitions.
32:20
So in theory, the theory part of riding has been so confused by shifting
32:27
definitions that people that are not in the know can't understand what
32:31
anybody's saying, so you might as well stop talking, which is why they do.
32:35
You know, if you say, "Oh, you need to ride the horse forward into the contact."
32:38
Yeah.
32:38
Well, if you don't tell people what contact is- Mm â¦ how are they supposed
32:41
to understand what that is meaning?
32:42
Mm.
32:43
Let alone what forward is supposed to mean in that particular context
32:46
as opposed to other types of forward.
32:47
Does it mean from fleck?
32:48
Does it mean that it is willing to accelerate?
32:50
Does it mean specifically pushing from the hind leg?
32:53
Those are three different things.
32:55
Mm.
32:55
But we call them forward.
32:56
Does it mean fast?
32:57
Does it mean not sideways?
32:59
All of those things are used in terms of the word forward, and all of them
33:03
are potentially important things to say.
33:06
But if you keep using the same word, nobody knows what you're sa-
33:09
saying, so they don't learn because they're confused consciously.
33:13
Then if they're confused consciously, how are they gonna build confidence,
33:17
confidence of their achievement?
33:20
And if you don't have confidence, you'll get into fear, and fear is a huge,
33:26
huge issue in the riding world that is often kind of ignored a little bit.
33:31
But how many people have gotten to a point in their riding career that
33:34
they were genuinely, genuinely afraid?
33:36
And then how much of the behaviors that we all lament and things that people
33:41
do to horses are just because of fear.
33:44
If you're fearful of cantering your horse, which is plenty of people get to that
33:47
point, it's not to, to have a go at that.
33:49
But how do we avoid getting to the point that I have to be afraid?
33:54
How do I get that feeling of control and feeling of constructiveness
33:57
with my animal that allows me to be constructive to others around me,
34:02
that allows me to, to, to carry on?
34:04
And this has to do with starting off with understanding how things work.
34:08
If I don't understand which pedal in my car is which, then how
34:12
am I gonna be safe on the road?
34:14
And so we need to have theory, and we need to have clear theory that isâ¦
34:18
doesn't have to be hugely in sophisticated, just how do I steer?
34:23
Oh, it's a side movement.
34:24
It's always a side movement.
34:25
There is no way of going around a corner without some degree of side movements.
34:30
That's essentially what you're doing.
34:31
Riding through the corner In Travero and shoulder in.
34:35
Do tell.
34:36
And it's, it's one of these things.
34:38
It's like we, we try to use the wall to bend the horse.
34:42
Yeah, I get it, but that is a dumbed down version of a side movement.
34:46
That is why it is useful.
34:48
If you don't tell people that bit- Mm â¦ then they never understand
34:53
what they're trying to do.
34:54
So, the system of teaching has degraded due to the-
34:58
Mm â¦ confusion of definitions.
35:00
The the expectations have changed.
35:03
The order of exercises that you learn has changed, I think, for the worse.
35:08
The implements we allow ourselves to use have changed quite a lot, which
35:13
is not necessarily a good thing.
35:15
You know, we, we find it perfectly fine to give a, a little girl a pink, glittery
35:21
crop that she s- beats the snot out of her pony with, yet spurs, oh, my God.
35:26
Which is not the point.
35:28
The point is to learn to use a pressure implement in a constructive way.
35:32
Also, for a young person should also learn to have the tatsÃ¤chliche
35:39
Gewalt, is the German phrase.
35:40
The actual violence over the animal.
35:43
This is such an important concept.
35:45
You have a violence over the animal.
35:47
It's this very German way of saying it.
35:49
Rupert Isaacson: Well, Gewalt doesn't have to mean violence, right?
35:51
Gewalt can also mean,
35:52
Arne Koets: Control, yeah.
35:53
Yeah
35:53
â¦ Rupert Isaacson: control or even governance.
35:55
Arne Koets: Yeah, yeah.
35:56
Rupert Isaacson: Talk about Gewalt- â¦ you know, I, I, I th- I, it, that's,
36:00
it's such a weird word, Gewalt, in, in German- â¦ because it can have
36:03
a s- very negative conversation.
36:04
I'm gonna beat you up.
36:05
Or it can mean I'm actually- Yes â¦ gonna help build the roads
36:09
on which you drive, you know?
36:10
It, it yeah.
36:12
It, it-
36:12
Arne Koets: Yes, and
36:13
Rupert Isaacson: if you- It all depends on how you're using it.
36:14
Yeah
36:15
â¦ Arne Koets: if you have that thing, you- Yes â¦ you might be building roads- Yes
36:19
â¦ or you might be beating somebody up.
36:21
And- Yes â¦ very easy to slip between them without noticing.
36:24
Yes.
36:24
And even a young, young, young person needs to understand that they live
36:29
in this landscape, and they need to stick to the good side At the dark
36:33
side of the force, if you will.
36:35
Yeah.
36:35
A- and this is something that we shy away from telling young people.
36:40
We make life easier.
36:41
When the horse shies, it's because a bird flew up, not because you didn't
36:45
put the horse in a place where it was confident that it didn't mind the bird.
36:48
I- it's never our responsibility.
36:51
It's always the outside world's responsibility.
36:54
To some degree, we make the horse responsible, yet not give it any mandate.
36:58
So because we punish the horse for not having done something
37:00
correctly, but we never allow the horse to choose how to do anything.
37:04
So how can they be made responsible for something they don't have a
37:07
mandate to, to, to do anything about?
37:09
So they're not deutschstÃ¤ndig.
37:10
Ugh, just getting so German.
37:11
DeutschstÃ¤ndig-
37:13
â¦ Rupert Isaacson: for those non-German speaking they're, they're,
37:15
they're, they're not independent.
37:16
And they're not, they're not, they're not able toâ¦
37:18
They don't have agency.
37:19
Yeah, yeah.
37:19
Yeah.
37:19
Yes.
37:19
Yes.
37:19
And agency's
37:21
Arne Koets: such a big deal about these communities that we're talking
37:25
about, about the horse welfare, about the progress of learning, about the
37:29
progress of learning of the animal, about progress of learning of the student.
37:33
I mean, we're, we're kind of digging into some very sophisticated concept, but
37:36
I'm sure that you, you'll be interested.
37:38
But the, the- Well, yeah â¦ it, it's, it's this, why does this not work?
37:42
Because the whole system doesn't allow to accept the complexity that
37:47
they're inherently trying to teach.
37:49
Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
37:49
I, I think that, that there'sâ¦
37:52
I think everything you've said there is true.
37:53
One of the reasons, too, when, when you were talking about your
37:57
beginner friend getting quite good on this horse relatively quickly.
38:03
Okay, school master horse.
38:04
Okay, you're there too, but nonetheless.
38:07
There's a real problem, I think, when things are done in the abstract.
38:10
So when most people are presented with this dressing of the horse business and
38:16
dressage is such a funny word 'cause, you know, in, in English, you know, dressing
38:19
can mean, you know, the, your salad.
38:22
It can mean your clothes.
38:24
It can mean the ranks in the army.
38:25
It can mean your hair and makeup.
38:27
It can mean, you know, all sorts of things.
38:29
'Cause it actually means just to put together, and in this case-
38:31
Mm-hmm â¦ we're talking about a horse.
38:32
And what does that mean?
38:33
Well, I think that's a put together horse.
38:35
On the wall behind you, the hind legs are under the point of gravity.
38:37
He's in that short silhouette without being contracted.
38:40
He is put together.
38:41
He's dressed.
38:42
Okay.
38:42
Cool.
38:43
Nice to know that.
38:44
But unless someone explains that to you, how do you know?
38:46
You know?
38:47
So then you might just, like, pull the bridle and kick.
38:49
But the thing about doing things in abstract too, which is so hard the horse
38:52
doesn't see the point of why it's doing it I s- I lived in Texas for a long
38:58
time, and you watch people get quite good at cowboying quite quickly because
39:04
they and the horse both have a task to do that they really see the point of.
39:09
And the c- the, the cow is dodging, boom, boom, boom, boom.
39:11
So the horse dodges, boom, boom, boom, boom.
39:14
And it's much easier for the human and the horse to come into coherence together
39:18
because they are doing a thing together.
39:21
When I grew up in in England I grew up in the fox hunting world, and when I began
39:26
to whip in to packs of hounds, when I would help the huntsman, who's the one
39:30
who's in control of the hounds, as his assistant, I would find I could get into
39:34
coherence with a horse very fast because the horse and I would start caring about
39:39
which hound was going over there, and he was after that hound before I even was.
39:44
And if the hound went back, he'd collect instinctively, and I would bring my body
39:48
weight back and look for that hound.
39:50
And so therefore, I got to ride in a more dressed way than if I
39:57
was just in the field going behind with the task of jumping the fence.
40:01
But the thing about jumping, which is why jumping, I think, became so
40:06
universal, was because that's also a task.
40:08
It, it really makes sense to a horse.
40:10
Look, there's that thing.
40:11
I'm going to go to the other side of it, and it's kind of fun if I
40:15
happen to be a horse that enjoys it.
40:16
So yeah, let me do that.
40:18
Let me go for the cow.
40:19
Let me look after these hounds.
40:20
Let meâ¦
40:20
I want to do a job, and if I do this job, not abstract figures that I don't really
40:27
know what this monkey wants from me.
40:30
So, you know, so your horse, your schoolmaster horse with that chap on board
40:37
making the combat patterns with you, the horse sees the absolute point of that.
40:42
You know, the bloke sees the absolute point of that.
40:45
Together, you get coherence relatively fast.
40:48
I feel that if we were given moreâ¦
40:50
And that's why I think working equitation has come in so big, and it should, because
40:54
it gives people and ponies, monkeys and ponies, these coherent tasks to do.
40:59
I will pick up this thing, move it over here.
41:01
Then I'm gonna go round these barrels.
41:02
I'm gonna go then, I'm gonna ring that bell.
41:04
Then I'm gonna back out from ringing that bell and go over that bridge.
41:07
And the horse is like, "That makes sense.
41:09
Yeah, of course I'm gonna kind of collect a little bit at the top of that bridge
41:12
because I kind of don't want to slip.
41:14
Yeah, okay.
41:15
And yeah, I learned to back around the thing from the bell because
41:18
that's kind of where the poles are," and I kind of, you know.
41:20
So I do feel that, that, you know, in dressage, one sees this kind of hum-
41:26
monkeys and ponies being kind of lost because it's abstract right away, rather
41:31
than starting with, say, livestock work or fighting, and then saying, "Hey, we could,
41:38
we could turn this into a, a sort of a formal dance if we wanted to, and then
41:42
we could do a manÃ¨ge balletic version of this, but by then the horse and the rider
41:47
understand it As you know, if you followed any of my work, I'm an autism dad and we
41:54
have a whole career before this podcast in helping people with neurodivergence,
42:02
either who are professionals in the field.
42:04
Are you a therapist?
42:05
Are you a caregiver?
42:07
Are you a parent?
42:08
Or are you somebody with neurodivergence?
42:12
When my son, Rowan, was diagnosed with autism in 2004,
42:17
I really didn't know what to do.
42:19
So I reached out for mentorship, and I found it through an amazing adult
42:24
autistic woman who's very famous, Dr.
42:27
Temple Grandin.
42:28
And she told me what to do.
42:30
And it's been working so amazingly for the last 20 years.
42:34
That not only is my son basically independent, but we've helped
42:39
countless, countless thousands of others reach the same goal.
42:43
Working in schools, working at home, working in therapy settings.
42:48
If you would like to learn this cutting edge, neuroscience backed
42:53
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42:55
You can learn it online, you can learn it very, very simply.
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43:02
The important thing is to begin.
43:06
Let yourself be mentored as I was by Dr.
43:09
Grandin and see what results can follow.
43:13
Go to this website, newtrailslearning.
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com Sign up as a gold member.
43:21
Take the online movement method course.
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Let us know how it goes for you.
43:29
We really want to know.
43:30
We really want to help people like me, people like you, out there
43:34
live their best life, to live free, ride free, see what happens.
43:38
Arne Koets: It's interesting that you, you segue to dance because from
43:41
the point of view of a dance, and again, I'm coming back to Argentinian
43:45
tango if you're a good leader, you can take a completely green follower-
43:51
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah
43:52
Arne Koets: take her by the hand, give her a good time, and make her do fancy stuff.
43:57
And of course, you can then polish that until the cows come home.
44:00
You know, it's not gonna be a, a, an, a, a award-winning dance, no,
44:05
but you can dance within seconds.
44:08
Rupert Isaacson: And you can have joy while you do it.
44:10
Arne Koets: Yes.
44:11
Now, this can be done with horses and this has to do why I'm so hung up
44:16
about unificada, because it's creating the embrace of the dance and fil-
44:20
figuring out where their balance is.
44:22
Know where their axis of motion of, of gravity is and on their feet and,
44:26
and placing free foot and, and so the standing leg and the free leg.
44:31
And then you, you, you go from there.
44:33
And when she's ready to move, we move together.
44:36
Important one.
44:37
So this is something where you're using fascial reactions, for instance, in the
44:41
follower to make the movement happen.
44:44
And when they stop overriding with their neurological system trying to
44:48
stop their muscle set to fight you, if they don't do that, then you can
44:53
kind of remote control their body, which means that it's so relaxing when
44:57
somebody really knows how to lead.
44:59
Your brain just goes, "Ah, I don't need to do anything."
45:02
And there's still some neurological effects still happening, but for, to make
45:06
something very complex a bit simpler.
45:08
Now, this is also something we see in the horses, where there is natural
45:12
reactions to the aids, and then we don't have to teach a natural reaction
45:17
because it's naturally apparent.
45:19
It's already there.
45:21
And this is, for instance, why GueriniÃ¨re talks about the jarret and
45:23
the cuisse and the jambe and the talon.
45:25
He, he, he talks about the four parts of the leg.
45:29
Rupert Isaacson: Translate those for those who don't speak French.
45:32
Arne Koets: So the talon is like the talon.
45:34
It's like your
45:35
Rupert Isaacson: heel, I suppose.
45:36
Arne Koets: Your heel.
45:36
Yeah.
45:36
Yeah, and then the jambe is y- your, your calf.
45:39
Yeah.
45:39
That's the one we all know about.
45:40
The cuisse is also the name of the h- the armor on your upper leg.
45:44
Thigh â¦ that is your thighs, your upper leg.
45:47
And then the jarret, well, if you buy that in a restaurant in France or
45:51
Luxembourg or something, you get the bone with a piece of ham around it.
45:55
So it's the very top of your thigh.
45:58
And I, I'm always tempted to think that that's the way the word jarretelles
46:02
comes from garter, because it sits around that part of your leg.
46:06
And so it, they, he talks about a twisting motion of the muscles around the, the top
46:12
of the femur to send the horse forward.
46:14
So if you say to somebody, "Bend the horse around your inside leg,"
46:17
they would tend to think of calf.
46:19
Now, he distinguishes between the cuisse bending the leg and the
46:22
jarret sending the horse forwards, and then the calves and the spurs
46:26
and the talon used very sparingly.
46:28
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
46:28
Arne Koets: And von, von Eisenberg says this, and there's a few more.
46:31
And the thing is that when you start learning about these different
46:34
parts of your leg, the reactions of the horse become far more natural.
46:38
So the horse doesn't have to distinguish that there's one push of your calf meant
46:41
one thing, and the other push of your calf meant something completely different.
46:45
Does it mean go?
46:45
Does it mean bend?
46:46
Does it mean stop?
46:47
Does it mean collect?
46:47
Does it meanâ¦
46:48
What does it mean?
46:49
And by using different parts of your body, it becomes far more obvious and natural
46:54
for the horse to immediately react.
46:56
Now, this helps to know, and you can teach people to do this by means of
47:00
exercises that are first mentioned in the m- the fighting manuscripts.
47:04
The fighting manuscripts are something we are A little bit older than the
47:08
riding manuscripts because they go into the four- 14th and 15th centuries.
47:12
Whereas of course the Don Giovata and of course there's Xenophon, but they're
47:16
kind of a few and then the real treatises of riding starts sort of with Grigioni.
47:22
And the thing is that,
47:23
Rupert Isaacson: That's 16th century, yeah
47:24
â¦ Arne Koets: that's 16th century.
47:25
So 100 years before, we have exercises how to hold your lance
47:28
so your body will react, which then in turn makes your horse react.
47:32
And these are very simple.
47:33
Put lance over shoulder, look over there, go.
47:35
Works a treat.
47:37
And then of course the horse sees the stick and starts going, "Oh,
47:40
every time you do put that stick over there, we're going over there."
47:42
It, it's like pointing.
47:44
And the horse goes, "Okay."
47:45
And then they start filling in the gaps as well, which is leading into what you said.
47:48
So they see the purpose.
47:50
So what you want to not contradict that purpose, that understanding of
47:53
the environment, of understanding the behavioral idea, I need to do
47:57
this thing because there's a pole on the floor or there's a bell there.
48:01
That is an understanding of behavior, and then there's a biomechanical
48:04
reaction like reflexes and so forth.
48:07
They should talk the same language.
48:10
And if they are not contradicting each other, progress is rather fast.
48:14
Almost you get to the point where you need to slow it down a little bit because
48:17
the process, the focus is so fast, and then you kinda go, "Easy, boy."
48:21
And this, this has to do with body reactions, how to teach things,
48:27
learning to see how this particular student needs to hear things.
48:31
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
48:32
Arne Koets: Because that's different from person to person.
48:34
Are you a native German speaker?
48:36
Are you a native English speaker?
48:38
That means your sentence structure is different.
48:40
The way you connect facts and understandings is just differently
48:44
structured in your head.
48:46
And different cultures.
48:47
How long do you look somebody in the eye is different from country to country.
48:51
And there's all these things that as a teacher you can tweak to put somebody
48:56
in their optimal position to learn.
48:58
And this, again, you can try to explain this.
49:01
This gets very complicated, but if you're aware that you need to find
49:04
the sweet spot for that person, you don't need to know all the details.
49:07
You just need to find that sweet spot.
49:09
How do I make them feel confident and understanding and concentrated
49:13
and, and safe, I suppose, if you wanna call it that?
49:16
And make it, make it confident.
49:19
That same with the horse.
49:20
Where do I put this particular animal?
49:22
It's all the same me- variables that I need to adjust as any horse,
49:27
but this particular one has their setting where they're best, and
49:31
I put them in their happy place, and then we carry on from there.
49:37
Rupert Isaacson: The happy place.
49:41
It is why we all got into horses.
49:44
None of us looked at a horse when we were a kid and went, "Well, that sucks.
49:48
I don't want anything to do with that."
49:50
We looked at a horse and went, "That looks amazing."
49:54
First we responded to their beauty, and then we responded to the idea,
49:58
I think, that they carry us and make us superhuman and have a dreamlike
50:04
quality, and life is just in every way better on and around them.
50:11
And then at a certain point, we begin this suffering process and find that the very
50:16
thing that we had identified as the root of happiness is now a cage, admittedly
50:24
created by other monkeys of suffering.
50:26
And I think that that is the universal experience of most people
50:31
on their equestrian career, if they don't happen to luck into
50:35
some very, very functional tribe.
50:38
So I think you are in the business of, and I think I'm largely in the business too,
50:42
often of taking people who have had this experience or are having this experience
50:46
and saying, "Let's just go back to where we wanted to begin with this," that child
50:52
looking for that joy, and let's assume that that joy is our birthright, and let's
50:58
assume that the horse wants that joy, too.
51:01
How can we find it?
51:03
What are the mechanisms?
51:04
Now, we're fortunate that jolly clever dead dudes wrote it down for us, but the
51:11
following of that language is tricky.
51:13
And they were also aristocrats writing for each other, so there's
51:16
a lot of preparation done by armies of grooms that is not talked about.
51:21
So that when, particularly people like you talked about Baron von Eisenberg, you
51:24
know, he tells you how to do something.
51:26
He's like, "Yeah, great.
51:27
If the horse is already prepared by, you know, your, your
51:31
underlings, then fantastic.
51:32
Then that's probably gonna happen.
51:33
But if not, you have to be your own underlings."
51:36
And that's of course where we are in this more democratic age.
51:39
So it's very hard to filter that information.
51:42
I think you're in a unique position of really having done that deep dive.
51:48
When you were in BÃ¼ckeburg you had to be your own groom and equier.
51:55
You had to be both the gentleman rider, the court rider, and the
52:00
underling that was, or underlings.
52:03
M- So you had to actually be multiple people.
52:06
How can your average person Learn how to break it down and take on
52:16
those roles and in what order.
52:19
And how were you shown?
52:21
Arne Koets: Yeah it's a very interesting thing you take there because, for
52:23
instance, if you look at the, the, the nobility and their staff and things
52:27
like that, I think people have this very biased idea of how that actually works.
52:32
The Prince of Hessen lives just two kilometers that
52:35
way, over the little bridge.
52:37
Lovely chap.
52:39
I always run into him when he's walking his dog.
52:41
We have the same doctor.
52:43
And he still pays the, the the pensions that his father's staff
52:49
still owe, i- are owed because they were once his butler or whatever.
52:54
And it's, it's this whole thing of this, this relatively small group of people
52:59
running one of those estates, and I think people desperately underestimate how much
53:04
work that needs to be done, why there even is staff in one of those estates.
53:09
And it might sound utterly posh and having people at your beck and
53:13
call, and they're all rather busy.
53:16
And I, I, I'd like to point, say that, that I lived at court at Burgaburg.
53:20
I mean, for all intents and purposes, it is courtly.
53:23
It is officially courtly, and we were at court in that sense.
53:27
And the thing is that we were ruddy busy.
53:31
And did we prepare horses for the whole flight meister to ride?
53:36
Of course we did.
53:36
On occasion, we definitely cleaned a horse for him and madeâ¦
53:40
he had a lot to do, and he, he had to function, so we, we prioritized
53:44
cleaning his horse, and we would also clean our own horse.
53:47
Of course we did that because he had 26 horses to deal with.
53:51
He can't possibly go around and, and he needs to be clean.
53:54
You know, if you, if you wear a suit, you need to take the suit off to
53:57
clean your horse and put it back on.
53:59
So there's time involved in this.
54:01
So that is a reason why you might be the underling that
54:04
cleans a horse for someone else.
54:06
That is because you're a team.
54:08
That is not about hierarchy at all.
54:11
That is about getting shit done.
54:13
Mm.
54:13
And the thing is that and also getting, getting excrement out of the stable.
54:17
And the, the thing is that the the point where you, you have to clean
54:22
your own, that's partly, it's, it's a leisure to have few enough horses
54:26
to be responsible for, to be able to take the time to get them clean.
54:32
And again, the Hofreitmeister himself would absolutely clean his
54:37
own horse if it was so convenient.
54:39
He probably would prefer to be a bit closer to his animals in that sense.
54:42
It was kind of a sacrifice to make to not clean your own horse, but it had to
54:47
be done that way for practical reasons.
54:50
And he will make a point of taking some of his, his personal horses
54:54
and just taking the time to do it.
54:57
Somebody might already have started cleaning the horse, and
54:59
he would take it from them and go, "No, I want to do it myself."
55:02
And the point is not that it is something you're no longer bothered to do, it is
55:09
something that when you run out of time to do it, that is when your staff takes over.
55:13
Also, if I'm gonna get a horse ready for someone else, they need to tell me
55:18
what they want in minute detail somehow.
55:22
I need to do it their way.
55:24
I need to do it for that horse with that saddle, with that
55:28
setup for that day's performance.
55:30
And that means that there is this intimate connection to,
55:35
yes, somebody does this for you.
55:36
Your groom might be doing that for you, but being a good groom
55:41
is being connected as a team.
55:43
The team rider, groom, and horse together.
55:46
And to, to some degree, when we start talking about
55:48
armor, we also have a squire.
55:49
That is a unit, and they can't perform without one another at certain point.
55:55
And this is, this is something where, yes, you have grooms, yes,
55:59
you have people moving a horse.
56:01
That's because the, the, the horse trainers were, were maybe training fi-
56:04
25 horses in a row to produce animals, so they didn't have the time to also
56:09
go and get one from the paddock.
56:11
And that is a distinction, and I think people un- desperately
56:16
overestimate how many people would be standing idle at court.
56:20
It was relatively few, and if you go- No â¦ into this or that, it
56:23
was really, really rather few.
56:25
And they worked ruddy hard to together, and this is where
56:29
you specialize to some degree.
56:31
And, and I have a, a similar situation now at home.
56:33
I have my working students and on average, people will choose to get my horses ready
56:39
to make sure that I get to ride when I've just been flying in from wherever.
56:44
Yeah, that's very nice of them but it means that I have the time
56:47
to give them a lesson afterwards.
56:48
Yeah.
56:49
It means that we do more together.
56:51
Rupert Isaacson: But- Absolutely.
56:53
Go ahead.
56:53
Sorry.
56:53
Finish the
56:54
Arne Koets: thought and then I'll come back.
56:55
Yeah.
56:55
Well, well, what I wanted to say is just, like, if I have the chance,
56:56
I'll brush my own horse because I like
56:58
Rupert Isaacson: to.
56:58
Of course, yeah, because you also just wanna hang out with your pony.
57:01
Yes.
57:01
But it, but it, but it's, it'sâ¦
57:03
I think the point I'm, I'm sort of trying to make is that one,
57:06
one definitely understands why everyone needs to learn to groom.
57:10
You did, I did, you know, that's how you learn horsemanship.
57:13
But it'sâ¦
57:15
W- what I'm sort of driving at is that the, a lot of the old aristocratic dudes
57:21
that wrote the books- had other, had trainers under them that, that were doing
57:28
the in-hand work, that were doing the work in the pillars, that were doing a
57:32
lot of the lunging and the long rein.
57:33
And you sometimes see in the old plates people in the background doing those
57:39
things, and then a, a chap like La GueriniÃ¨re standing with his leg out,
57:44
resting his hand upon a cane, giving a lesson to another young gentleman.
57:49
And sometimes if you look closely at those plates, you'll see they give you
57:53
little clues about what was going on in the background, and actually this
57:55
very, very skilled work that was being done to prepare the horses as well.
58:00
It wasn't just, you know, the grunt work of shit shoveling or cleaning horses.
58:04
It was also training.
58:06
And I think that that is what is often not understood, and that that's
58:10
the gap that we all have to fill.
58:12
We have to learn to be the people that prepare the horse on the ground.
58:15
We have to be the, the people that prepare the horse in the pillars or
58:18
the, the horse on the lunge or whatever.
58:20
And sometimes that stuff's in the books and sometimes it isn't.
58:23
So it's difficult when you read an 18th century dude, for example to
58:28
know, oh, I see, you actually need to do all this stuff on the ground Before
58:35
you can put it together in the saddle.
58:37
These guys are just omit- omitting that because they were assuming that everybody
58:42
knew that because they were writing, to a large degree, for each other.
58:46
They weren't writingâ¦
58:50
writing for the bloke in the street.
58:52
He was writing for his fellow gentleman who had a similar sort
58:58
of an infrastructure, and he was saying, "I sort of have a mastery
59:02
of this, so if you want toâ¦"
59:05
Another one might w- write one about falconry, and another one m-
59:08
might write one about astronomy.
59:11
They w- would have these niches, but they had highly skilled backup.
59:16
So when I realized that, you know, that was lucky in, in Portugal, I
59:21
said, "Oh, the key is all of these horses are prepared on the ground.
59:25
Got it.
59:27
All right, there's a system here, and I can learn the system, and
59:31
then if I learn the system, then the stuff in the saddle will follow."
59:35
So when I first went down to Master ValenÃ§a, for example, I said,
59:38
"I don't want riding lessons.
59:39
I mean, I'm veryâ¦
59:40
I'd love to ride, but what I mean is I want to learn the system.
59:43
How is the horse produced?
59:45
How does it all fit together from the ground up?
59:48
Can you please show me that?"
59:50
And he said, "Oh, you're serious then."
59:52
I'm like, "Well, yes.
59:52
Yes, I am," 'cause I've, I have a job I, I need to do.
59:56
And he absolutely showed me that system, but Iâ¦
1:00:00
It took me a while to know that I needed to ask for the system,
1:00:04
and I think this is not common knowledge and communicated enough.
1:00:09
So at what point did you realize that there was a system?
1:00:13
I mean, there are different systems, but you know what I mean.
1:00:14
That there's a systematic approach which if you sort ofâ¦
1:00:18
Which involves a lot of work on the ground.
1:00:20
And then to know, okay, I need to l- I, I need to learn this.
1:00:24
I need to find a mentor who can teach me this.
1:00:27
I think it's going to be that mentor over there do you see what I mean?
1:00:32
That it, it, it's that process which is often missing from the books.
1:00:35
So when one just opens an 18th century book, they don't
1:00:38
necessarily tell you to go do that.
1:00:40
But you and I both know that you kind of have to go do that.
1:00:43
So how did you tumble into that hidden technology, if you like?
1:00:49
And how do we help other people to do the same?
1:00:55
Arne Koets: Yeah.
1:00:55
So if you, if you look at the sources, like Xenophon says that you should
1:00:59
let someone else train your horse.
1:01:00
Xenophon says that.
1:01:02
But Pluvinel talks about the in-hand work at length already.
1:01:05
Yeah.
1:01:06
There is Leonarda talks about it.
1:01:09
Gesualdo technically, too.
1:01:10
I mean, there's â¦ And especially some versions of Gesualdo.
1:01:12
But there is a lot of this stuff in the sources.
1:01:15
Now, they might not all tell you the whole story, because
1:01:18
they only have so many pages.
1:01:19
That's it.
1:01:19
So they pick some things, but if you put them all next to each other,
1:01:23
you go like, oh, he talks about A, B, C, D, and he has E, F, and G.
1:01:27
Right.
1:01:28
And then the other guy picks up from there and carries on.
1:01:30
So, oh, hang on, this, this is a system that they're mostly agreeing
1:01:35
on, and they have a few details where they disagree, like don't we all.
1:01:39
And this is interesting in and of itself.
1:01:41
So it is in the sources that theyâ¦
1:01:43
And, and this still is the training of the horse.
1:01:45
So there's the teaching a horse to lift its feet, and accepting a
1:01:48
blanket, and, and stuff like that.
1:01:51
That's more groom stuff.
1:01:52
Getting the horse ready is groom stuff.
1:01:54
They talk at length on how to saddle a horse, how to mount a horse.
1:01:59
They, they put that in the books, and they make this huge song and
1:02:01
dance of it, and then they go, "Oh, yeah, and the lead changes.
1:02:03
Yeah, whatever."
1:02:04
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
1:02:05
Arne Koets: Just don't care.
1:02:06
And and this is funny where the emphasis is lie, but it is in there.
1:02:10
And sometimes it's a sentence, but it is in there.
1:02:12
Rupert Isaacson: But it's very easy to miss.
1:02:14
Absolutely.
1:02:15
And you talk about Pluvinel.
1:02:16
Frankly, you and I both know Pluvinel's un-fucking-readable.
1:02:20
It is.
1:02:20
Even, even La Gueriniere says that.
1:02:22
I mean, that's why La Gueriniere says, "Actually, lads, I'm gonna write this
1:02:25
book because all these other guys, they've written these books that
1:02:28
you just can't read them, you know?
1:02:30
So I'm gonna try and produce something that is readable."
1:02:33
But even La Gueriniere doesn't give it All the way on the ground
1:02:39
Arne Koets: Mm-hmm.
1:02:40
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah â¦ you have done that piecing together exactly as you say.
1:02:45
Yep, yep, yep â¦ you really dived into all the sources.
1:02:47
So guide us through Arne Kurtz's system.
1:02:51
All right, so-
1:02:52
Arne Koets: Right, yeah
1:02:53
Rupert Isaacson: that horse behind you, we want that horse.
1:02:55
Arne Koets: Yeah.
1:02:56
Rupert Isaacson: How we produce that horse?
1:02:58
Arne Koets: So, it's kind of funny because of course I do in-hand work, obviously.
1:03:01
Obviously, I do, and I start with in-hand work obviously.
1:03:05
I might use a bit less than some.
1:03:07
You know, for instance, I don't do a lot of lung- la- long
1:03:09
reining or long double lunging.
1:03:10
I don't do as much, mostly because I'm not producing school jumpers necessarily.
1:03:14
No, but
1:03:14
Rupert Isaacson: just tell us what you do do, because I think this
1:03:17
will be really helpful for people.
1:03:19
Arne Koets: Okay.
1:03:19
I, I just f- I follow what I understand from Bucherberg, basically.
1:03:23
So I would take a horse, and I would first want to lead it.
1:03:27
Now, this doesn't have to be a big song and dance.
1:03:30
Iâ¦
1:03:30
And I mostly use a, a degree of a slight shoulder in, either towards
1:03:37
me or away from me, and I want to be able to take a stallion, not let
1:03:42
him get my clothes dirty by snapping at me all the time, and be able to
1:03:45
control his front feet so he doesn't accidentally kick me or shit like that.
1:03:49
And I just want to do a figure of eight.
1:03:52
And once I can do a figure of eight, I start doing side movements in hand.
1:03:57
Shoulder in usually.
1:03:59
I then might teach it a travers away from me.
1:04:02
I also do this very, very modern thing of teaching a horse to
1:04:06
come towards you in the travers.
1:04:07
This is a modern thing, but I think it's very useful.
1:04:10
I teach them both.
1:04:11
I do revers in hand, all then walk for so far.
1:04:14
I teach the horse to stop and to start, and to stop and to start,
1:04:18
and this is really important.
1:04:19
This is where the dancing comes in, this lifting effect that you
1:04:22
can help the horse to do this so you don't just- And we're all
1:04:25
Rupert Isaacson: on the ground at this point.
1:04:26
Arne Koets: This is all on the ground.
1:04:27
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
1:04:29
Arne Koets: I'll teach it to lunge in a square.
1:04:32
I find the square really useful.
1:04:34
It doesn't have to be that way, but that's what I do.
1:04:36
I like to have that corner, and then sending the horse out of the corner.
1:04:40
This will help me get a counter transition on the lunge.
1:04:43
I like to have a canter transition on the lunge, so when I actually teach the horse
1:04:47
to have a rider, that I have that option.
1:04:50
Y- there's a few ways of going about that.
1:04:51
That's the one I usually r- default to.
1:04:54
I teach the horse half-passes in hand.
1:04:56
I, I forgot to mention that.
1:04:57
Then we teach them to trot transition, and we do the side movements that we
1:05:01
just mentioned, all of them, in trot.
1:05:03
So circle shoulder in, circle travers, circle rond vers, half-pass to change the
1:05:06
rein, so, and do the same thing again.
1:05:08
And-
1:05:08
Rupert Isaacson: No, no, no.
1:05:09
That's too fast, my friend.
1:05:10
Say all of that slowly- â¦ for the people that don't know this.
1:05:14
We'll be
1:05:14
Arne Koets: here all day.
1:05:15
Yes,
1:05:15
Rupert Isaacson: that's the point.
1:05:15
Circle.
1:05:15
Yes.
1:05:16
Tell us.
1:05:16
Cir-
1:05:18
Arne Koets: circle of shoulder in.
1:05:20
Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
1:05:20
Arne Koets: Usually 12 meters.
1:05:22
Circle of travers.
1:05:23
Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
1:05:24
Arne Koets: Circle of rond vers.
1:05:25
Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
1:05:26
Arne Koets: Half-pass to change the rein, huh?
1:05:28
Changement de main.
1:05:29
Yes.
1:05:30
Then do the same thing on the other, other side.
1:05:31
Circle of shoulder in and walk.
1:05:33
Circle of travers and walk.
1:05:36
Circle of rond vers and walk.
1:05:38
Half-pass to change the rein.
1:05:40
Rupert Isaacson: Very good.
1:05:41
Arne Koets: Then we usually would halt for a moment, back up Just a few strides.
1:05:48
Halt again.
1:05:49
You might take this point if it's still a young horse in the walk Are you at the
1:05:52
Rupert Isaacson: shoulder w- walking parallel at this point?
1:05:55
Are you at the head walking backwards?
1:05:57
Or will this vary from horse to horse?
1:05:59
Arne Koets: Both are possible.
1:06:00
I much prefer to be at the shoulder because I work with stallions a lot.
1:06:04
Okay.
1:06:04
So I don't want to be in kicking range- Got it â¦ in case he's difficult.
1:06:07
Most of the time it doesn't really matter because a lot of stallions
1:06:10
aren't actually that hard.
1:06:11
Can you do it in front of them?
1:06:12
Absolutely.
1:06:13
I'm very good at walking backwards because I do tango, so I can
1:06:17
probably be out of his way.
1:06:18
A lot of people walk slower than the horse would like them to.
1:06:21
Mm-hmm.
1:06:21
And then you're very restricting by just being in their way.
1:06:24
Some
1:06:24
Rupert Isaacson: horses get claustrophobic, yeah.
1:06:26
Arne Koets: Yeah, I mean, it, it has pros and cons.
1:06:28
Rupert Isaacson: Right, but you'd-
1:06:29
Arne Koets: It's an option
1:06:29
â¦ Rupert Isaacson: you, you, you would, you would see what the horse liked
1:06:31
and you have your own preference, which happens to be- Yeah â¦ the
1:06:34
parallel position at the shoulder.
1:06:35
Okay.
1:06:35
Arne Koets: And also, that's what I've practiced most, so
1:06:37
thereby I'm just better at it.
1:06:39
So because I'm better at it, that makes, that makes it the better option, right?
1:06:43
Rupert Isaacson: It, eh.
1:06:43
Got
1:06:43
Arne Koets: it.
1:06:43
Yeah.
1:06:43
Rupert Isaacson: You're, you're, you're more comf- comfortable there.
1:06:45
Arne Koets: Yeah.
1:06:46
It's just, it's, it's a- Makes the horse more comfortable â¦ taste choice.
1:06:48
I'm on the shoulder.
1:06:49
Okay.
1:06:49
So I've done this in, in the walk.
1:06:50
So now what?
1:06:50
I've done it in trots, and then, and then we've done a bit of backing up.
1:06:54
Rupert Isaacson: So you're going to do theâ¦
1:06:54
Then you're going to do the same patterns in a gentle trot?
1:06:57
Arne Koets: Yeah, yeah.
1:06:57
Rupert Isaacson: That you've done.
1:06:58
So the, the same lateral patterns in the curves.
1:07:02
Arne Koets: Mm-hmm.
1:07:04
Rupert Isaacson: Circles or curves.
1:07:05
You're going to do them in the walk, then you're going to do them in the
1:07:07
trot with the stops and the backups.
1:07:09
Arne Koets: Yeah.
1:07:10
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
1:07:10
Now what?
1:07:12
Arne Koets: So once I've done that, if the horse shows a propensity for
1:07:15
piaffe, I might actually ask for piaffe.
1:07:18
This is provided the horse is old enough, but I want the horse to be
1:07:21
old enough to work with to begin with.
1:07:23
So this is kind of one of these things.
1:07:25
But if- And what is
1:07:26
Rupert Isaacson: old enough?
1:07:27
Arne Koets: We always used to say five.
1:07:29
Five is a point where they can start working.
1:07:31
This isâ¦
1:07:32
I mean, people always talk about the growth plates, and it's not
1:07:35
that that is not significant, but it's not the whole story.
1:07:38
So much of it is mental maturity.
1:07:42
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
1:07:42
Absolutely, and whether or not they're carrying weight while they're doing it.
1:07:45
So what one teaches in hand is they don't have to carry- So
1:07:47
Arne Koets: much of
1:07:47
Rupert Isaacson: that
1:07:47
a monkey.
1:07:48
Yeah.
1:07:48
Arne Koets: Yeah, exactly.
1:07:49
Yeah.
1:07:49
So, and how much, how long does it take?
1:07:51
How much weight do you do?
1:07:53
How much do you force them?
1:07:54
If the horse can say no, this helps a lot-
1:07:57
Rupert Isaacson: Yes
1:07:58
â¦ Arne Koets: to reduce the strain on the body.
1:08:00
So but usually five is a good rule.
1:08:03
It's a very much a rule of thumb, but it's, it's a good rule of thumb.
1:08:07
So w- we've done that.
1:08:08
I might do a few steps of piaffe in hand if it comes up.
1:08:11
If the horse offers it, I will reward it.
1:08:14
It's kind of that simple.
1:08:15
Now- Yeah â¦ when you get more used to doing piaffe in hand regularly,
1:08:20
and you've done this with a few dozen horses, sometimes you just
1:08:23
stand there and you just build up the horse, and it just starts.
1:08:26
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
1:08:26
Arne Koets: And you kind of go, "What did I do?"
1:08:28
And- There is a way to learn to get to that point, but once you are in
1:08:32
the habit of producing horses, this starts happening relatively quickly.
1:08:37
I agree.
1:08:37
And this is not a finished product.
1:08:38
That takes far longer, but the fact-
1:08:40
Rupert Isaacson: It's a concept.
1:08:42
Arne Koets: Yeah, the fact that the horse can think up to slow down-
1:08:45
Rupert Isaacson: Yes
1:08:45
Arne Koets: that's important.
1:08:46
Yes.
1:08:46
And it's more like a half halt than anything else.
1:08:48
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
1:08:49
Arne Koets: And, and then I like
1:08:51
Rupert Isaacson: the- So we've got some steps of piaffe-like
1:08:52
concepty thing- Hopefully.
1:08:54
Hopefully â¦ in a perfect world maybe, and we- we've, we've come out of these
1:08:58
lovely in hand lateral patterns, which have put together the horse's hind
1:09:02
legs under the point of gravity, and they've done all these lovely things.
1:09:04
Now what?
1:09:06
Arne Koets: I would start ex- getting the horse used to equipment, like the saddle
1:09:11
and things like that, and see how they do.
1:09:12
When you've taught the horse to get in an outline, the chances of them
1:09:16
accepting a saddle, that hopefully fits by the way is gonna be far,
1:09:21
far higher that they just go, "Okay, sure," rather than when they're hollow.
1:09:24
So the in-hand work will already teach them to raise.
1:09:28
So I deliberately do in my in-hand work things where I- I'm actively
1:09:33
teaching the horse to use its shoulder sling and things like that.
1:09:36
This makes a saddle more comfortable.
1:09:38
It makes the rider more comfortable.
1:09:40
What we doneâ¦
1:09:41
I like to do this with multiple people.
1:09:43
I like to start mounting the horse, so you get the whole stepping next
1:09:46
to the mounting block getting, getting on the horse, and you
1:09:49
go through a few stages in that.
1:09:51
And this is very regular stuff.
1:09:54
I try not to chase the horse when it needs to get used to something, when
1:09:58
something might scare it, like the flapping of stirrups or something.
1:10:02
I want movement, but I do not want to chase the horse.
1:10:06
I want to guide and lead the horse, and this is mentally drastically
1:10:13
different, even though the movement in and of itself can be a good thing.
1:10:17
And so once we're in, inâ¦
1:10:19
Once I mount the horse the first time, I choose to get on the horse the first
1:10:23
time, I usually have somebody still on the ground, maybe with a cap sound.
1:10:26
I then, before the horse moves, do what LÃ¶wenstein says, is to tell
1:10:32
your servant to take the withers and rock them from side to side.
1:10:36
Rupert Isaacson: Ooh, this is good.
1:10:38
Arne Koets: It's super important.
1:10:39
It's so simple.
1:10:39
Why
1:10:39
Rupert Isaacson: is this important?
1:10:41
Arne Koets: Because it teaches the horse to engage the shoulder sling.
1:10:43
The first thing that might happen, because I sit on the horse, how this
1:10:46
is new to the horse, the horse might go clunk between its shoulder blades,
1:10:49
and it will just drop, drop right down.
1:10:52
And I need the horse to coordinate using its shoulder sling to carry me before we
1:10:57
start moving, if I can get away with it.
1:10:59
And this is not hard, it's just bothering to do it.
1:11:02
And it's the base of the neck, the very front of the wither, and you just gently
1:11:06
rock it from side to side, and you just let it get bigger and bigger and bigger,
1:11:10
and see how far you can move the, the chest between the shoulder blades.
1:11:14
Once you've done that, you move the with- wither over with your groin,
1:11:18
your seat, the, the front of the saddle, and the outside rein on the
1:11:21
neck, and you just ask the horse over.
1:11:23
Now, this rein on the neck they know from the in-hand work.
1:11:26
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
1:11:26
Arne Koets: They, they usually don't take long to, to learn it
1:11:28
in the in-hand work either, and you just move that wither over.
1:11:31
Once you have the wither in a shoulder fore type of position, sometimes people
1:11:37
call this first position, I would like to step the outside front leg in front.
1:11:41
So I'll start the horse forward in an attempt at some degree of
1:11:46
shoulder in, in walk straight away.
1:11:50
The chances of the horse freaking out at that point on that first step, have
1:11:55
that first movement under the weight of the rider, is a critical decision.
1:11:59
If the horse is on a specific leg, it's standing on one leg and it
1:12:03
has the other leg free, I know which one is gonna move first.
1:12:06
I can predict what the horse is doing much better because I know where I am.
1:12:11
So can the horse.
1:12:12
The horse can sort of think about it a little bit, and then you
1:12:15
lead them like a dancer and get them into a walk shoulder-in.
1:12:19
And then you might not do much.
1:12:20
And then you might want to lift them into a halt again, that
1:12:22
you have a halt to work with.
1:12:24
You might already get off at that point if the horse is a little
1:12:26
bit freak-- you know, more or less overwhelmed, then you just, just get off.
1:12:32
And if the horse feels confident and builds confidence, then you might
1:12:34
continue a few m- a little bit more.
1:12:36
And this first session doesn't take long at all.
1:12:39
And then you build day by day from there.
1:12:43
So the, the mounting the second time, don't take it for granted,
1:12:46
but you kinda go through the same routine and you build it up.
1:12:49
And again, you just take a routine and you put another building block on it.
1:12:52
You build that same routine and you put another building block on it.
1:12:54
And at some point, some of the beginning bits you might neglect
1:12:57
and, but you still have that chunk of routine that you work from.
1:13:00
And again, what we, we do in Buckeburg, we teach the horse on the rider,
1:13:04
shoulder-in on a circle and walk, travers on a circle and walk, renvers on
1:13:10
a circle and walk, then the half pass.
1:13:12
So you need to do a few days to get to that point, and of
1:13:15
course you do this on both sides.
1:13:17
Then you might put the horse into a trot, and you might doâ¦
1:13:21
You could do some circles and those straight lines like you see in
1:13:23
de la Brue and, and Grignard just to, to steer a little bit with.
1:13:27
Again, main thing, shoulder-in and walk, travers and walk and
1:13:31
then you do that all in trot.
1:13:33
So the same sequence, shoulder-in, travers, renvers.
1:13:35
Rupert Isaacson: Quick question.
1:13:37
Are you using, this is what I do a ground monkey in the initial
1:13:41
stages with the Sky Monkey?
1:13:45
Arne Koets: Yeah.
1:13:45
Rupert Isaacson: Because w- generally what I'll do is I'll put a, a, a Sky
1:13:48
Monkey on top, and then I'll say to the Sky Monkey, "Hey, when I do this with
1:13:51
my stick, you do this with your leg."
1:13:53
And the horse kind of goes, "Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, oh.
1:13:57
Ah, right.
1:13:58
When Sky Monkey does this thing with his leg, it means the same thing as this
1:14:02
thing I already know from ground monkey.
1:14:04
Okay, I accept."
1:14:05
Arne Koets: Absolutely.
1:14:06
I, I did- Okay â¦ kind of touch on that briefly, but yeah, I do that
1:14:09
Rupert Isaacson: and also- 'Cause I think that's a crucial piece of
1:14:10
information for people is- Absolutely
1:14:12
effectively don't do it alone.
1:14:14
Arne Koets: And this, this is something that you need to
1:14:15
really learn to do together.
1:14:17
Yeah.
1:14:17
Because for instance, if you do a transition, we know it's hard enough
1:14:20
to do a transition properly, right?
1:14:22
Yeah.
1:14:22
To do this together with the horse, but then you need to do it with
1:14:24
three beings at the same time.
1:14:26
The horse needs to do it at the same time as Sky Monkey and ground monkey.
1:14:29
Absolutely.
1:14:29
Historically, they had multiple ground monkeys That if you have
1:14:34
that team, it is so effective.
1:14:37
Yeah.
1:14:37
But you need a team of people that dance like a whole unit,
1:14:42
and this is part of that We speak
1:14:43
Rupert Isaacson: the same language, my friend.
1:14:46
Tribe, tribe, tribe.
1:14:49
And, and competition with the- It comes out of the steppe where there
1:14:51
were multiple people living in yurts, getting together on the horses.
1:14:55
We, we go to the top places in the world that we think of as top places like Jerez
1:15:00
or- Mm â¦ Vienna or what do we see?
1:15:02
Bunch of blokes and, and, and bloquettes.
1:15:06
Working together with horses, and because they know what they're
1:15:08
doing, they support the horses.
1:15:10
They don't overwhelm them.
1:15:12
But as you say, it, it, it's m- much more effective and safer
1:15:15
and to collaborate like this.
1:15:18
But you do need a mental monkey such as yourself to-
1:15:22
Mm-hmm â¦ direct the other monkeys.
1:15:25
Without that, it's tricky.
1:15:27
Okay.
1:15:28
Arne Koets: One, one of the other things that I think is really important
1:15:29
is that I to, as early as I possibly can, is put the horse in an arena
1:15:34
with another ridden horse that is an uncle horse, as we tend to call it.
1:15:39
Indeed.
1:15:39
So you want to try to put the horse in a social environment as much as
1:15:44
possible, as much as reasonable.
1:15:46
Mm-hmm.
1:15:46
And this has to do with how many riders do you have available, how many
1:15:50
in-hand workers do you have available.
1:15:51
If my current working student is great at in-hand work, I
1:15:54
might ride the horse first.
1:15:57
If he- be the f- the sky monkey first, so to speak.
1:16:00
Mm-hmm.
1:16:00
If they are great riders, but perhaps not as established in in-hand work,
1:16:04
then I will do the in-hand work.
1:16:05
I'll fill the gap- Right â¦ that it most needs filling, right?
1:16:08
Because or if somebody's just less confident, you know, on a young
1:16:11
horse, that takes, that takes you g- pulling yourself together.
1:16:14
It is dangerous to some degree.
1:16:16
So that is one of these things that you need to also choose which role who does on
1:16:20
that particular animal, what is optimal.
1:16:23
And then, of course, you get your first canter.
1:16:25
I'd like to do walk pirouettes before I do canter.
1:16:27
I like to do this thing, Wolfgang's standard.
1:16:30
Walk pirouette, or half a pirouette, walk pirouette, canter.
1:16:33
So that it actually comes from the hind leg from the get-go, not
1:16:36
this rolling into canter rubbish.
1:16:38
Right,
1:16:38
Rupert Isaacson: not falling off balance into canter.
1:16:40
Yeah.
1:16:40
Arne Koets: Exactly, because that's what- Right â¦ most people
1:16:42
think they're supposed to do.
1:16:43
Yeah, true.
1:16:43
And the people don't realize that even pretty canters can actually still be that.
1:16:48
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
1:16:48
Arne Koets: And then canter pirouettes are not as far away as you might
1:16:51
think because the horse never learned to do the wrong thing first.
1:16:53
They just keep on doing their natural right thing and then just improve on that.
1:16:57
And then in Bukeburg we usually had this sort of ballpark idea of you know, this
1:17:03
sort of w- walk and trot side movements on a green horse, three and a half weeks.
1:17:09
Now, that's not to say that that was a forced time.
1:17:13
It is the however long it takes, but if it takes longer, we would like to know why.
1:17:19
Mm.
1:17:20
Is there something going on?
1:17:21
Does he need an osteopath?
1:17:23
Is there something wrong with his teeth?
1:17:23
Is the saddle fitting?
1:17:24
What, what's going on?
1:17:26
Why did this take so long?
1:17:28
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
1:17:28
Arne Koets: Take your time.
1:17:29
Take your time, but don't waste time.
1:17:33
And this, this whole thing ofâ¦
1:17:35
That, that sort of thing with experienced people that have done it before- Mm
1:17:39
usually there is a reason there is a roadblock, and you want to observe
1:17:44
what the reason of the roadblock is.
1:17:47
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
1:17:47
Arne Koets: And then take your time to solve the roadblock.
1:17:50
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
1:17:51
Arne Koets: And then of course, by the time you â¦ The, the canter work takes
1:17:54
time to build muscle and whatever.
1:17:56
A- and so it will take â¦ The, the old masters say six to
1:17:59
eight months to train a horse.
1:18:00
Unless it's a Friesian, then it will take longer According to the Italians.
1:18:05
I don't agree, but never mind.
1:18:07
But, and, and it's, again, I usually take longer because I'm a bit rubbish, but-
1:18:12
Rupert Isaacson: Well, I think, too, that there's, there's something which
1:18:15
they don't say with that, which i- and like for example, when you say,
1:18:17
"Well, I could bring the horse to that point in three weeks," yes, but
1:18:21
neither you or I would ex- would expect the horse to be confirmed in that.
1:18:26
That, of course, takes longer.
1:18:28
That, yes, for the horse to accept a concept and say, "Oh, I sort of understand
1:18:33
this, and I can kind of replicate this to some degree if you put it together
1:18:37
in a way that it's safe, but if we go out there in the town square with the
1:18:41
fireworks going off and people drunk running at me and then I, I might not be
1:18:46
able to do it quite like that yet, no."
1:18:48
But give me some time and I might.
1:18:50
Yes.
1:18:50
Arne Koets: And in particular, confirmed also means can you put a complete
1:18:53
beginner on it- Indeed â¦ and can they, that horse teach that beginner?
1:18:57
Mm.
1:18:57
Never, ever in those three and a half weeks.
1:18:59
No.
1:18:59
Not even close.
1:19:00
So of course it's not confirmed in that sense at all.
1:19:02
Yes.
1:19:03
And, But it's
1:19:04
Rupert Isaacson: begun.
1:19:04
The work- Yeah â¦ has begun s- meaningfully, let's say.
1:19:08
Arne Koets: Yes.
1:19:08
And i- if the riding master says, "Oh, just do a shoulder in because we need this
1:19:11
for this other thing," you can just do it.
1:19:14
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
1:19:14
Arne Koets: I mean, you're riding it.
1:19:15
You're riding every step.
1:19:16
You're leading the dance, but it's available to be used as
1:19:20
a tool for something else.
1:19:21
Got it.
1:19:22
And that is, that is kind of the sort of thing where you kind of go, you
1:19:24
want to have that in three weeks.
1:19:26
Now, and of course, there were plenty of horses where it took longer,
1:19:28
and we never sweated over that.
1:19:30
The point-
1:19:31
Rupert Isaacson: And this is also you, 'cause this is your job.
1:19:34
This is what you do every day.
1:19:36
This is not you working 9:00 to 5:00 in some job in Amsterdam and you then
1:19:41
having to get the hour a day that you've got at your observe before
1:19:45
you go home and cook for the kids.
1:19:47
Obviously, if your time is split up like that, it's going to take longer.
1:19:52
Arne Koets: Yeah.
1:19:52
And it's, and it's a team effort.
1:19:53
And this- Yeah â¦ this team effort thing is what you mentioned before is such a
1:19:57
big deal why it speeds up dramatically.
1:19:59
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
1:20:00
Arne Koets: Because if the horse goes, "I don't understand," well, if
1:20:03
I don't get it across, maybe my monkey on the ground will get it across.
1:20:06
Well, then it got across.
1:20:08
Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
1:20:08
Arne Koets: Then heâ¦
1:20:08
A- and once he understands, he understands.
1:20:10
Yeah.
1:20:10
So, if you're clearer, it goes faster.
1:20:14
And if you have more ways of explaining, it's easier to be clear.
1:20:18
And if you're, you have the patience to let it take as long as it takes,
1:20:23
let's keep, really important, as long as it takes, but let's be efficient
1:20:27
with being clear, and then it doesn't necessarily take that long-
1:20:32
Rupert Isaacson: Mm
1:20:32
Arne Koets: to get to that point.
1:20:34
And then I had a horse that we rescued from from Portugal.
1:20:38
I mean, it was a long story, but came over, and my, my student wanted a horse
1:20:42
at the time, and I said like, well, I was in Australia, and I went like,
1:20:45
"There's a horse coming out of a truck.
1:20:47
This is your horse.
1:20:47
Congratulations."
1:20:48
Yeah.
1:20:49
And he had this five-year-old stallion that hadn't been u- handled really, and we
1:20:53
worked like this, and that horse in hand offered Piaffe very quickly because it was
1:20:57
Lusitano, and it was talented for that.
1:20:59
And we just gave it a cookie because it did it once and didn't bother with it.
1:21:04
We didn't push the matter.
1:21:05
That was it.
1:21:06
We just gave him a little, the little kissing noise that we tend to use for
1:21:09
piaffe, and then we're like, "See?
1:21:10
Okay."
1:21:10
You know.
1:21:11
And then at some point to get him to canter, he did this weird dolphin
1:21:14
canter, so we kind of didn't touch it and we just rode him in trot.
1:21:18
And then I was piaffing my horse in the same arena, and then the o- the
1:21:22
horse heard the kisses from my horse, and he started doing the same thing.
1:21:25
And I went, "Ride that piaffe."
1:21:27
And then the phrase, "Stick a cookie in it."
1:21:29
It's, it's this whole thing, reward that behavior.
1:21:32
And then we went from piaffe to canter, and that means that the, the whole
1:21:35
struggle of getting a good transition was just out of the window- Yeah â¦ because
1:21:39
we had that option to take what the horse needed to get to the canter
1:21:43
that it happened to find difficult.
1:21:45
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
1:21:46
Arne Koets: And then it was just the problem was solved, and then we
1:21:48
could just do canter transitions, and it was really easy from there.
1:21:52
And it's, it's one of these things of having a broad set of options
1:21:57
in the interest of the horse.
1:21:59
Mm.
1:21:59
Not in the interest of your own ambition.
1:22:03
So if I go like, "I must have the flying lead change because that's the
1:22:07
coolest thing in the world, so I'm gonna beat my horse until I get that,"
1:22:10
that is not the right attitude at all.
1:22:12
No.
1:22:12
The thing is, like, what can it â¦ when â¦ what can get it across?
1:22:17
What if I try this?
1:22:17
Oh, you find that hard?
1:22:18
Never mind.
1:22:19
What if we try this?
1:22:20
Oh, never mind.
1:22:21
Oh, this one works for you.
1:22:22
Great.
1:22:23
Then we get to the point, and then you take the boundaries away
1:22:27
for the animal's progression.
1:22:30
Similar for your students in in, in human sense.
1:22:33
And and you want to be flexible in the order of exercises, but you have this
1:22:39
standard idea of where you would start trying, and then if you find that this
1:22:44
horse is distinct in some way, you then change that plan for the animal, but
1:22:50
you start off with your standard plan.
1:22:52
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
1:22:53
Arne Koets: And, no plan ever survived contact with the enemy.
1:22:56
And this, this thing is this, this whole thing of where you, we wouldâ¦
1:23:01
I've seen a horse that literally had to learn canter pir- walk pirouette
1:23:05
to canter pirouette before it could canter because it would just do
1:23:08
weird things, and just didn't want it to run around and disunited.
1:23:12
We didn't wanna go there.
1:23:13
Now walk pirouette, canter pirouette.
1:23:15
Thank you.
1:23:15
Walk pirouette, canter pirouette.
1:23:16
Thank you.
1:23:17
Just a stride or two, and then from there we just carried him out into
1:23:20
the canter, and this worked great, and that horse was, that, that
1:23:23
horse was really good after that.
1:23:25
So y- that, that's just a way of being creative with the
1:23:29
patterns and the sequences.
1:23:31
Rupert Isaacson: Well, what you've, what you've touched on there is
1:23:33
that, of course, each of the m- the movements Are really just tools.
1:23:39
So you know, you've got La Garenne who says, "Well, horses have
1:23:42
changed since my grandfather's day.
1:23:43
It used to be that we could train them in all the cool stuff just by working
1:23:47
them in, on two tracks in a circle, but now the horses have gotten bigger
1:23:51
and weirder, so now I've got to do this rondver thing with this shoulder in thing
1:23:55
and to get more or less the same effect."
1:23:57
And okay, so do this, lads, and this will give you a piaffe, and if you get
1:24:01
this piaffe, then you can use that to get a very nice sitting canter because
1:24:05
that's kind of what we'd like to get to.
1:24:07
And so really this, these things are just tools to get to these other things.
1:24:11
And I think when people begin to have that familiarity, that the movements are not
1:24:16
ends in themselves, they're just simply a set of tools that people can give you
1:24:22
and then over time you learn to use them.
1:24:24
But it's sure helpful if you have a mental monkey that shows you how they're
1:24:29
using them in a systematic way horse after horse We were lucky, you and I,
1:24:37
and we were also curious because we, our curiosity drove us to find these mentors
1:24:44
that had this technology, and now you have that technology and you go around
1:24:49
and you show people, and I have that technology and I show people as much
1:24:52
as I can, and you have school master horses at home that you help people
1:24:55
with, and I do the same thing and so on.
1:24:57
We know we're a niche.
1:24:59
So one of the things which I try to do when I go and clinic is I won't give the
1:25:06
standard clinic, like where you, someone comes in for a ride for an hour and you
1:25:10
talk about something and you do something and they go out, and 'cause I just don't
1:25:13
feel that that's really giving tools.
1:25:17
So what I'll tend to do is I'll always do it workshop style-y,
1:25:20
and I'll say, "Okay, all y'all are gonna work with all y'all's horses.
1:25:24
So if you don't want other people touching your horses,
1:25:26
please don't come to my clinic.
1:25:27
But you're all going to team up, and we're going to show you and
1:25:32
the horse some of these tools.
1:25:34
And then when you go home, hopefully you can apply them.
1:25:37
But before you go home, guys, create a WhatsApp group and get together once
1:25:43
a month and practice together and be friends and support each other, and
1:25:50
from time to time, Auntie Rupert or Auntie Anna will come through town
1:25:55
and try to give you some more stuff or give you some stuff online or whatever.
1:25:58
But in the meantime, you can actually do a lot with each other,
1:26:00
and you will become that team.
1:26:02
You will become that buck-a-buck in time.
1:26:04
You will if you keep practicing it.
1:26:06
The only thing that will stop you from doing that is if you stop doing it.
1:26:09
If itâ¦
1:26:10
But if you keep going and you keep looking for the mentors, you know.
1:26:13
So do you have means of supporting people when you go out in the po- For them to
1:26:19
sort of find and pursue this technology?
1:26:23
And if so, how do you do it?
1:26:24
'Cause it's not an easy thing.
1:26:26
Arne Koets: Yeah.
1:26:27
So, of course, a lot of people also come to me because of the mounted
1:26:31
fencing or the jousting or things like that, so they're usually
1:26:33
already in groups because you can't fence without an opponent, right?
1:26:37
So you need to create this community already to just do that.
1:26:40
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
1:26:41
Arne Koets: So that makes it a little bit easier in, in clinics.
1:26:43
I try to bring- Oh,
1:26:45
Rupert Isaacson: because most of your clinics are teaching the mounted fencing.
1:26:47
Arne Koets: At least it's part of it.
1:26:49
Okay.
1:26:49
So there's at least a few people that do that.
1:26:50
So people are coming with that
1:26:50
Rupert Isaacson: paradigm.
1:26:51
Arne Koets: Yeah, and then usually there's some tools around and some
1:26:53
people go like, "Oh, I'm interested."
1:26:54
And I might do these little things where, for instance, I help somebody
1:26:57
seat by giving them a sword in their hand, and then giving pressure on the
1:27:01
sword to make their hip do certain things so the horse does stuff.
1:27:04
Interesting.
1:27:05
And then they be- become very fascinated by it.
1:27:06
This is mostly a dancing exercise that just happens to use a sword.
1:27:10
It's not really fencing.
1:27:11
And, and the thing is that you, you can use these little tricks to
1:27:15
get people interested in like, hey, one-handed riding has a benefit.
1:27:18
Usually you would think that it's just an added c- complexity, but it's actually
1:27:22
making things better, and why is that?
1:27:25
Why does that work?
1:27:26
How do you And then people get interested and they kind of spark off each other.
1:27:30
I don't tell them they should fence.
1:27:31
They ask me if they can fence, or they can do garrocha, or they can do
1:27:35
things like that, and then I'll, I'll try to help them with that and try to
1:27:38
give them the tools that they need.
1:27:40
This is stuff that is hard to find by yourself.
1:27:42
This is stuff that is easy to oversee.
1:27:44
This is stuff you can find on a YouTube clip.
1:27:46
Go do that by yourself.
1:27:47
And I try to, to tell people that, and I try to make sure that when there's
1:27:52
a, when there's a clinic, somebody might be riding, somebody might be
1:27:55
watching, and you try to also point out why somebody makes a mistake.
1:28:01
Not just that is wrong, but also this is a result of that.
1:28:05
And that makes it easier for them to be in front of one another and to think of
1:28:08
each other in a constructive fashion, and to thereby already become a, a,
1:28:13
a better community as a, as a whole.
1:28:16
And then from there, people it's just very organically they start
1:28:19
doing these things where they meet up for, for for hacks together and
1:28:23
what have you, and trips together.
1:28:25
And if, you know, if people get invited to my place for my events that I do, they
1:28:29
need to travel, they travel together.
1:28:31
I might suggest them to travel together.
1:28:34
And it's so much of that is I, I do it a little bit sneakily like
1:28:37
that just to get everybody to, to, to be constructive to one another.
1:28:41
And partially because I teach people from so many different backgrounds
1:28:44
they might be completely Western, like com- competition reiners or,
1:28:49
and the next person might be a dressage competition person, the
1:28:52
next person is purely a jouster, and that might be the same clinic.
1:28:56
So, it, it's sometimes a little bit more tricky to get these people
1:29:00
to really realize that actually they all want the same stuff.
1:29:03
And this might take a few goes for them to really realize
1:29:06
you're not all that different.
1:29:08
And horses have four legs, and you all want to work with a horse.
1:29:11
And then to build that community and that productiveness and
1:29:16
and suggest one another.
1:29:17
So that's one thing I do.
1:29:18
I think the resource that BÃ¼kerburg shows that they've gone very digital since
1:29:22
COVID all in German, but it is very good.
1:29:27
You know, the, this, these, these endless theory talks I think are
1:29:30
very useful because you can only ride so many hours in the day anyway.
1:29:33
I wish they would do more in English because that, that is so much wisdom
1:29:39
and experience in there dumped into these these seminars that they do.
1:29:45
And I like to try and let people read the, the, the, the, the old masters.
1:29:50
I think that is veryâ¦
1:29:51
Something we should just do.
1:29:52
Just read the old books.
1:29:54
But you need to learn to read the old books, which is another- It's not easy
1:29:57
Rupert Isaacson: to, yeah
1:29:57
â¦ Arne Koets: it's cross-reading.
1:30:00
Reading clubs can be a thing that some of the Americans are set up.
1:30:03
Mm-hmm.
1:30:03
And it, it's, it is important to, to do all these things.
1:30:07
And to some degree, it's nice if everybody has a slightly different thing so that
1:30:10
they all kind of contribute to each other-
1:30:13
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm
1:30:13
â¦ Arne Koets: and cross-reference with what is Philippa Carl doing with his students?
1:30:18
What isâ¦
1:30:18
You know, if, if you, if youâ¦
1:30:20
They, they all have slightly different ways and different emphasizes,
1:30:23
but is it really that different?
1:30:24
Is it contradictory?
1:30:25
You know, it's like if you read Boucher and read Steinbrecht,
1:30:28
are they contradicting?
1:30:29
Well, Steinbrecht thought so.
1:30:31
I don't think so.
1:30:31
I think they're complementary.
1:30:33
Y- you see, and, and this is- No, that's
1:30:35
Rupert Isaacson: what Oliveira said.
1:30:35
Yeah,
1:30:36
Arne Koets: yeah.
1:30:36
Yes, absolutely.
1:30:37
Yeah.
1:30:37
Abs- It's fa- I think it's fairly obvious.
1:30:39
Yeah.
1:30:39
And and, and this is kind of one of these things where you want to embody
1:30:46
constructiveness, and I think that will lead to various things that you do
1:30:52
with your communities to bring those, your community together, and then those
1:30:56
communities hopefully together as well.
1:30:58
And, and just have a, an international conversation because of the communications
1:31:02
we have now with the internet and things like that available, with
1:31:05
video being so everywhere, you know?
1:31:08
That's not, that's not old, you know?
1:31:09
We- even just a few years ago, it would be very, very difficult to
1:31:14
get a video made of your riding.
1:31:15
Now you can just put your phone up, and you can check what you did.
1:31:19
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
1:31:19
Arne Koets: And that means you can compare and you can learn, and it's
1:31:21
so much easier than it ever was
1:31:26
Rupert Isaacson: As you may know, if you've been following my work,
1:31:28
we are also horsey folk here.
1:31:31
And we have been training horses for many, many years in the manner of
1:31:35
the old classical dressage masters.
1:31:39
This is something which is often very confusing for people.
1:31:42
We shine a light on that murky, difficult stuff and make it crystal clear.
1:31:47
If you'd like to learn to train your horse in the manner of the old masters and
1:31:52
really have fun and joy for you and your equine, go to our website, heliosharmony.
1:31:58
com Sign up as a premium member.
1:32:01
and begin to take the Helios Harmony course, which will take you from zero
1:32:05
to the Piaf, where the horse is dancing on the spot in hand on the ground.
1:32:11
And then from there, you can develop out to anywhere you want to.
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Heliosharmony.
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com to unlock the secrets of the old masters.
1:32:21
I li- you made a really good point about the fact that if you're going to learn the
1:32:24
horsefecing, if you're going to learn to fence on horseback, you, the dressage is
1:32:28
just the, the tool by which you can learn, do that with your horse, to dress yours.
1:32:33
But you're gonna actually need a person to engage with.
1:32:35
So as opposed to how most people think of as dressage, me and
1:32:39
my horse and against the world.
1:32:42
No, I actually need a partner for this.
1:32:44
When, which is, I think, wonderful because it breed, it
1:32:47
breeds community from the get-go
1:32:51
Do you find, interestingly, that when people start doing the fencing, they get
1:33:00
less tied up with their ego around riding than they would if they were just riding?
1:33:08
And does it, to some degree, release people from that torture?
1:33:14
Like, "Is my riding good enough?"
1:33:17
Because I'm sort of concentrating on doing this fencing thing, which, sure,
1:33:24
requires me to be the best rider I can be, but nonetheless, I also want to
1:33:30
be the best fencer I can be, so I'm not putting my entire self-worth on
1:33:37
whether or not I got this PF, right?
1:33:39
Or this flying change.
1:33:40
Do you think that that actually liberates people, to some degree, from that little
1:33:46
private hell that we get stuck in as riders, particularly dressage riders?
1:33:51
You know.
1:33:53
It stops you diving up your own ass, basically
1:33:55
â¦ Arne Koets: both.
1:33:56
I mean, some people get so worked up that they, they lose all, they
1:33:59
throw all caution to the wind.
1:34:01
And this is obviously a thing where that is something that we, we as
1:34:05
a community are very aware of.
1:34:06
You know, people that go, "Rah, finally," and then they, they start riding rough.
1:34:10
Now, we are very aware that this is what the first attempt at ro-
1:34:15
at mounted fencing at Roosrechten were very much were like.
1:34:17
People were far too harsh on the horses, and just blasting around, and also hitting
1:34:23
horses when they were not supposed to.
1:34:24
So this is this huge thing in the community that we do not want that.
1:34:28
And that means that th- that's kind of already beaten out
1:34:31
for people when they start.
1:34:33
And I kind of set up the exercises to introduce people in a way that
1:34:36
they never get to that point.
1:34:38
That's the idea.
1:34:40
And then, of course, because they need to do two things at once, they kind of
1:34:43
have to let go a little bit, and start noticing how quickly the horse fills in
1:34:48
the gaps that they were leaving because they were i, i- out of the depths.
1:34:52
And then this is an opportunity for them to notice how much their horse
1:34:58
is attempting to help them all along.
1:35:02
And if you point that out to people- That's interesting â¦ they very, very
1:35:05
quickly become much more aware of how positive their horse is towards them.
1:35:10
The
1:35:10
Rupert Isaacson: horse is trying to help you out here.
1:35:12
Yeah.
1:35:12
Arne Koets: But there's a little bit of a process to guide
1:35:14
that in the right direction.
1:35:15
Mm.
1:35:15
And now, by now, it's sort of become this sort of set thing
1:35:19
within the community because we kind of f- Figured our way there.
1:35:22
And now, yeah, that is very much the, the reality of it.
1:35:25
But there is a risk for people getting very gung-ho and just wanting to bash
1:35:29
people, and that's something that we very quietly try to get rid of and and
1:35:35
kind of guide in the right directions.
1:35:37
And then there's the safety rules with weapons, which can be very, very useful.
1:35:40
You know, like- â¦ "When you want to swing a sword, you
1:35:43
must listen to the rules."
1:35:45
And then really what it's about is don't use your bit wrong.
1:35:47
But it, it allows you an authority as a teacher to- Right â¦ make people listen
1:35:53
that might not otherwise have listened.
1:35:55
So that, that is a little bit of a backdoor, again, in people's
1:35:58
mindset because once you can get a start of that mindset, that
1:36:02
mindset starts to grow by itself.
1:36:04
And the Sittlichkeit, the, the, the, the, the, the, the nobleness of riding.
1:36:10
They call it nobleness in Wallenstein.
1:36:12
And it's the head, like spessartura, the position of the rider.
1:36:16
This idea of the, the, the virtues of nobility are practical things you have to
1:36:21
do on a horse to get to the right place.
1:36:23
And so they're very, very practical things.
1:36:25
So we do those.
1:36:26
And I think having a practical thing and having a bit of fun
1:36:31
Well, if you think of Pony Club.
1:36:33
Yeah.
1:36:33
There is such a thing as the Pony Club kick, though.
1:36:36
You know?
1:36:36
Rupert Isaacson: There is.
1:36:37
Oh,
1:36:37
Arne Koets: yes.
1:36:37
There is such a thing, and we need to worry about that.
1:36:39
There is.
1:36:39
Rupert Isaacson: Legs flail at our legs, and you see the kids b- Oh.
1:36:42
'Cause they only did that, they only did that 'cause they were
1:36:43
told they had to, to be fair.
1:36:45
Arne Koets: Yeah, but also- But yes, yes.
1:36:46
Yeah â¦ yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:36:47
But it's one of these things, you know.
1:36:48
Yeah.
1:36:48
It's like, it's y- you c- rough play can go rough.
1:36:52
Rupert Isaacson: Indeed.
1:36:53
Arne Koets: But play is such a big deal in interaction with horses.
1:36:58
Rupert Isaacson: Like, it's so true.
1:36:59
You know, we haveâ¦
1:36:59
Thank you for bringing this up, because again, yeah, it's not just the task, the
1:37:06
focus task, it's the element of play.
1:37:09
Do you find that most horses actually take to this really well
1:37:14
because there is an element of play?
1:37:16
Arne Koets: Yes, and it's variable.
1:37:18
So, like we have with the mo- with the working quotation, they learn
1:37:22
the pattern, they learn- Yeah
1:37:23
the obstacle, and at some point they know the obstacle by heart.
1:37:26
With fencing, everything is constantly changing, but there
1:37:29
is overriding principles that the horses start understanding.
1:37:34
They start understanding how they have an aggressive moment that suddenly
1:37:38
turns into a yielding moment, and then becomes aggressive moment again.
1:37:41
Th- this switches very quickly.
1:37:42
They start looking for that moment.
1:37:44
They start inter-- They see what's happening, and of course, the vision of
1:37:48
a horse, very complicated, but they don't really see the sword very clearly because
1:37:51
it's out of their sharpn- they have this horizontal sharpness field of vision.
1:37:55
But they see it, but they feel stuff you do with your sword.
1:37:58
So sometimes they feel it better than they can see it, yet they, they are
1:38:02
understanding the sword fight and making decisions on where to be, what is
1:38:07
going on with the weapons in real time.
1:38:10
So there's this very, very complex situation that becomes this game of
1:38:16
chess to them, and they are playing the game of chess as much as I am
1:38:21
playing the game of chess upstairs.
1:38:23
And that is very fast.
1:38:27
They tend to figure this out within five to 10 minutes usually.
1:38:32
Rupert Isaacson: Do they figure out the defensive moves as
1:38:35
easily as the offensive moves?
1:38:37
So say, for example, we're fencing.
1:38:40
You see a gap.
1:38:41
Yeah.
1:38:41
You want to exploit that gap, so you go in-
1:38:44
Arne Koets: Yeah
1:38:45
â¦ Rupert Isaacson: to exploit that gap.
1:38:47
Does my horse instinctively, at a certain point, know how to avoid?
1:38:52
Or do they tend to, do they tend to favor the active, the, the, the, the offensive
1:38:58
role rather than the defensive role?
1:39:00
Arne Koets: Really interesting question.
1:39:01
So this depends on how you d- you introduced it.
1:39:04
So if you introduce the attack in travers, they become much more akin to attacking.
1:39:11
For instance, if you have a rejoneo horse, they know to go close, close,
1:39:14
close, close, close, away, and they- Yeah
1:39:16
they jump past the bull, but they mo- they yield their croup whilst
1:39:20
they move their shoulder over.
1:39:21
Yeah.
1:39:21
And that allows you to do the bullfighting thing, right?
1:39:24
That's a very specific bullfighting thing, but bullfighting is, is, is hit and run.
1:39:29
That is what bullfighting does, and then there's a lot of yielding and dragging
1:39:32
the bull along and then doing these, these spins and stuff, and there's a
1:39:35
very specific moment when the bull is just far enough away and just letting
1:39:39
go of the push, and then you do your thing, and you do your, your 360 spin
1:39:44
or whatever, or you, you might drag the bull away from the wall and then go
1:39:47
between the wall the bull and the wall.
1:39:49
There's all these specific things they wanna do.
1:39:51
So they're, they, they're yielding to the bull.
1:39:54
They're drawing the bull towards them by yielding with the horse whilst
1:39:57
having the weapon still coming in.
1:39:59
In mounted fencing, we're acting with a horse, and a horse is taller.
1:40:04
So to the horses, this is a different game.
1:40:07
So cattle work, the, the bulls are down there with their head, and with,
1:40:12
with two horses, they're up there.
1:40:14
So this is much more like two stallions fighting each other.
1:40:18
So, this means that actually a bullfighting horse can be quite tricky
1:40:21
to mount a defense on initially until he realizes that he shouldn't yield
1:40:24
at the last moment automatically.
1:40:26
It's kind of really funny, and this, this is something I really had to deal with.
1:40:29
And they can learn to yield in multiple directions, including cantering backwards.
1:40:35
My riding master, Wilco Kerschke, is very famous for doing this canter
1:40:38
backwards thing with multiple horses.
1:40:40
Well, as they are backwards.
1:40:41
But I've managed it three times in a sword fight in, you know, when it actually
1:40:46
tactically worked in my life because that's really hard, and usually you kind
1:40:52
of yield past in a similar way to the bullfighter, but it's usually closer.
1:40:57
I got to the point though, at some point we did a group fight in armor
1:41:00
with clubs, and I was coming into this one rider myself, and I was
1:41:04
about to, to to hit them, and then my horse saw somebody coming from
1:41:08
behind, and the horse just wentâ¦
1:41:12
And I just went, "Oh my God."
1:41:13
So I just pulled up my stomach, and the horse did a 360, one
1:41:17
of those bullfighting 360s.
1:41:18
I've never taught him this move.
1:41:20
He just did it, and he placed my club in the oncoming path of the enemy
1:41:25
weapon, which broke off and then turned around, and then I hit the g-
1:41:30
person I wanted to hit in the first place, and the horse just did this.
1:41:34
Completely their idea.
1:41:36
But he asked for permission.
1:41:37
He went like, "Shall I?"
1:41:38
And I went, "Let's."
1:41:40
And it just happened.
1:41:42
And, and they aim, they learn to aim the lance or the sword.
1:41:48
And once you get to the point where this, this surge, how the swing of the back
1:41:53
goes into your weapon, the more you do this with all your practice, as you become
1:41:57
more sophisticated, these oscillations become more precise and more connected.
1:42:03
And then they start seeing, you know, like just the horse strides before a jump?
1:42:06
That horse strides before you enter the, the, the mensur of the fencing.
1:42:11
So they, they stride and stride, and then they, they shorten the stride by raising
1:42:15
up rather than just shortening their body.
1:42:18
They, they, they raise themself up into this more collected canter, and
1:42:23
then you can launch out of there.
1:42:26
So, some horses are more aggressive, if you will.
1:42:29
Some horses are more dodgy, but they, they play the game they're good at.
1:42:34
But they play the game.
1:42:36
They're invested in the game regardless.
1:42:39
Rupert Isaacson: To get to the point where your horse made that suggestion- Mm-hmm
1:42:43
â¦ and then executed that to put you in those positions, how long had you been building
1:42:48
that relationship with that horse?
1:42:51
Arne Koets: That was three years.
1:42:53
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
1:42:54
That's relatively short.
1:42:55
I mean- Yeah â¦ one, one would expect, you know, oh yes, this is a horse
1:42:58
I've had for 15 years, and, you know.
1:43:01
So the, the, theâ¦
1:43:02
I'm s- I'm hear- I'm thinking a, a lot of crossovers with polo as well.
1:43:06
Mm-hmm.
1:43:06
Arne Koets: Mm-hmm.
1:43:06
Rupert Isaacson: You know, polo gets a, a lot of stick, pun
1:43:09
intended because they often put, you know, not so good riders on.
1:43:12
And the reason they can put the not good, so good riders on, of course, is
1:43:15
because the horses will play the game, and the only reason they'll play the
1:43:19
game is because they love the game, even when they're being ridden not well.
1:43:24
And then of course, you see someone who's a really good polo rider ride a
1:43:27
horse, and it's, it's very beautiful.
1:43:29
But the horse either way is playing that game.
1:43:32
It's interesting to me that you, that they'll do this with this weapon work
1:43:37
though, because in polo, I haven't done much of it, but, you know, when
1:43:42
I was a teenager I did a little bit.
1:43:44
You'd notice that the f- horse follows the ball.
1:43:46
You know?
1:43:46
They can really see the ball, and wants to ride another horse off the ball,
1:43:50
and looks for the ball or whatever.
1:43:51
But as you say, with the, with the weapon, they're looking for something that's,
1:43:55
might be outside their peripheral vision, and okay, the proprioception, they're
1:43:58
creating a brain map and a body map.
1:44:00
Mm-hmm.
1:44:01
Yes.
1:44:02
But at the same time, it's not quite as obvious as a ball or a hound or something
1:44:08
like this, or even a long lance- Yeah
1:44:10
That they, they can see.
1:44:11
So how do you think this sense of be- knowing and being able to sense where
1:44:17
the weapon is and place themsel- whatâ¦
1:44:20
How do they arrive at this?
1:44:23
Arne Koets: Unificatus, to unify the horse up into the saddle.
1:44:26
I see â¦ so this connection through your seat gives them so much information,
1:44:31
so they know where your hand is.
1:44:33
Now, I had this one, again, anecdote, but I did this one tournament
1:44:36
where we had these helmets on the horses for safety reasons but they
1:44:40
were hidden under the caparison.
1:44:41
So there's this huge blanket over the horse, and it has these eye holes.
1:44:45
The problem was that the, the, the shaffron, the helmet over the
1:44:48
horse, had slipped down and the, the caparison had slipped up.
1:44:52
I never noticed.
1:44:53
The horse didn't put a foot wrong, did everything I wanted, played the game.
1:44:58
And then I watched the photographs afterwards, and on
1:45:00
every single photograph, this horse had no vision at all.
1:45:04
It was completely blinded by the cloth in front of his face.
1:45:08
Maybe he could see a little bit through the fibers, but not much.
1:45:11
He did not care, because I could see And now that was a few years down the line.
1:45:17
We were a bit more together, but I could ride that horse just as well.
1:45:22
And there's this, one of these things is horses also hear a lot.
1:45:26
So they hear you know, blind horses can function very well, and they canâ¦
1:45:30
If you make noise, they know where you are.
1:45:32
They can hear their own footfalls.
1:45:34
They can hear the reverb on the wall of their footfalls.
1:45:37
They can deal with that through those kind of things.
1:45:40
So they have all sorts of ways of understanding their friend's
1:45:43
environment that are other than just their eyes, and they see
1:45:46
very differently to humans anyway.
1:45:48
And that means that you get to this point where you you can get together
1:45:53
that, that they feel things you do with your shoulders, and they,
1:45:57
they, they notice patterns much more than we give them credit for.
1:46:01
Horses understand each other's language by means of interpretive
1:46:05
dance, if you wanna call it that.
1:46:06
You know, in the herd, that's their communication, and these
1:46:09
sympathetic muscle reactions are part of dancing, and they will feel
1:46:14
this with touch much more loudly.
1:46:17
So it's like speaking their language really loudly.
1:46:21
So if you start doing that consistently, that's not just gibberish and
1:46:24
contradictory, then they start making a conscious effort to figure it out.
1:46:31
And I think we, we don't give them enough credit for their level of
1:46:34
intelligence and their level of analytical and pattern recognition
1:46:39
ability that I think is very evident
1:46:43
Rupert Isaacson: Okay, this is fascinating.
1:46:45
Now, you've talked about how you prepare the horse as the riding horse.
1:46:50
Now let's talk about how you prepare the horse and the rider with the weapon.
1:46:55
So there has to be a way in, right?
1:46:59
So I'm gonna come to, I am gonna come to your place, and you're gonna say,
1:47:03
"Okay, I don't know this bloke, he doesn't know me, he knows nothing."
1:47:06
Right.
1:47:06
Perfect.
1:47:07
Blank slate.
1:47:07
So what are the first exercises, the de facto exercises
1:47:12
you're gonna put me through?
1:47:14
Arne Koets: So usually you do this in a double lesson because
1:47:16
you need an opponent, but it, there's a few ways of doing that.
1:47:18
With me standing on a stool with a sword in the middle of the arena,
1:47:21
that you can do that as well.
1:47:22
But usually you start out with two horses, and you just need to
1:47:25
first, I tend to call it approaches.
1:47:27
You need to approach another horse, and there's sort of
1:47:30
etiquette to this, if you will.
1:47:31
That you need to get that other horse to want to be close enough so
1:47:34
you can hit them with your sword.
1:47:36
So this has a lot to do with one-handed half-pass, walk pirouette half-pass.
1:47:42
So it's just a half walk pirouette.
1:47:44
And so you go shoulder in through the corner, half-pass towards the other horse,
1:47:48
then you half pirouette, and then you go half-pass again, and you meet each other
1:47:51
again, and you do this on both sides.
1:47:53
Rupert Isaacson: And we're going to do this one-handed, by the way.
1:47:55
Arne Koets: Well, yeah, of course, because you need a sword in the other
1:47:57
Rupert Isaacson: hand.
1:47:57
Right.
1:47:57
Soâ¦
1:47:58
So you're gonna, you're gonna put me on a schoolmaster horse that even if
1:48:03
I mess up my weight aids and I'm not impeccable with my contact he's gonna be
1:48:08
like, "Rupert, just let me do my thing.
1:48:11
I'm gonna show you how to do this."
1:48:13
Arne Koets: If, if I'm at home- Or
1:48:14
Rupert Isaacson: how, how dependent will it be on my good riding?
1:48:16
Arne Koets: It will be dependent on you using your legs rather than your hands.
1:48:20
So if you ride primarily from the bridle-
1:48:23
Rupert Isaacson: Mm
1:48:24
â¦ Arne Koets: it will be difficult.
1:48:25
Okay.
1:48:25
So it is, it, this is partially a vehicle for people to understand that
1:48:29
they need to have a giving hand, and a deliberate giving hand, a directional
1:48:33
giving hand, a timed giving hand.
1:48:35
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
1:48:36
Arne Koets: And what a giving hand even means.
1:48:37
Rupert Isaacson: Now, would you, would you test that on me first?
1:48:39
Would you say, "Okay, Ru, get up here and do a couple of these things," and
1:48:42
then you could say, "Oh, Ru's hand is 75% as giving as I would like,
1:48:47
or 35% as giving as I would like.
1:48:49
Let me prepare him with these exercises so that he can have this more giving hand"?
1:48:54
Arne Koets: Yeah, and, and I usually let people just do a few figures of eight.
1:48:57
How do you change your bend?
1:48:58
How do you can you do shoulder-in traver renvers?
1:49:01
A lot of people n- never have ridden renvers.
1:49:03
They might not even know- Mm â¦ what a renvers is.
1:49:05
Mm-hmm.
1:49:05
And we're gonna spend half an hour to try and explain to
1:49:07
you, no, the other, other way.
1:49:09
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
1:49:09
Arne Koets: Yeah, I mean, because this is consciously hard for people,
1:49:11
so you might need to leave that out, lovely as a renvers is but you
1:49:16
don't have the time in the lesson.
1:49:17
But-
1:49:17
Rupert Isaacson: Or they might only know how to ride it
1:49:18
with two hands, for example.
1:49:19
Arne Koets: For instance.
1:49:20
Or, yeah.
1:49:20
So you, you pick your battles.
1:49:21
Yeah.
1:49:22
One of the things that is really, really important, can you aim the inside front
1:49:27
leg of your horse with your hip fold?
1:49:31
Now, once you teach people that your hip fold moves the
1:49:34
inside front leg of your horse-
1:49:36
Rupert Isaacson: Your hip fold?
1:49:38
Arne Koets: Yeah.
1:49:38
This is such a Leiste in German.
1:49:41
What's a hip fold?
1:49:42
Yeah, hip fold is the muscles in front of your hip joint.
1:49:44
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
1:49:45
Arne Koets: And in, in, in Dutch we call it lies.
1:49:48
In Germany you call it Leiste.
1:49:50
In Norwegian it's called lyske.
1:49:52
In Dane- Swedish it's called ljumskar.
1:49:54
In Finnish it's called nivus.
1:49:57
In English, took me years to figure out it's called the hip fold
1:49:59
because nobody ever talks about it.
1:50:01
Rupert Isaacson: No, they don't.
1:50:02
They don't.
1:50:02
They might tell you, they might maybe tell you, 'cause E- English
1:50:06
is not a language of dressage.
1:50:08
They, they might tell you to put your inside hip a bit forward in a flying
1:50:11
change or in a so- you know, but that's about as much as you'll get.
1:50:15
Yes.
1:50:16
Arne Koets: And that is- They- â¦ that is a few that know that to be that detailed.
1:50:19
So I will talk about the back of your inside seat bone governing the inside
1:50:23
haunch, and the front of your hip, in front of your hip, you govern the
1:50:28
inside front And, and that means that, and this has to do with muscle chains,
1:50:33
it has to do with fascial lines, this has to do with your posture.
1:50:37
This has to do with allowing the physical, allowing the motion
1:50:41
of the horse through your body.
1:50:42
We talk about following the horse.
1:50:44
I tend to say really it's not following.
1:50:46
You should be leading.
1:50:48
You should be first, and the horse gets given space to move
1:50:51
in the back, in the saddle.
1:50:54
And I might talk about your pelvic floor.
1:50:56
I might talk about muscles at the back of your hip joint.
1:50:59
I might talkâ¦
1:51:00
And it depends.
1:51:00
If you know the n- Latin names, I'll talk about that.
1:51:03
If you've never heard of those, I'm not gonna bother you with that.
1:51:06
And it's one of these things of learning to turn your hip joints in
1:51:09
the socket, of managing your pelvis.
1:51:12
One of the things you can do with a sword is by aiming the sword and
1:51:16
making the monkey work with their hands, and aiming the sword's edge,
1:51:20
that they learn to ride around a post.
1:51:23
You take a jump post and you make them ride around that post.
1:51:25
Put the sword on the, with the tip on the post, and go, "Do a circle."
1:51:30
The tip's not allowed to slip off.
1:51:32
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
1:51:32
Arne Koets: And that is far more round a circle than anybody ever bothers
1:51:35
to ride, because your, your arm can reach out a little bit, but not
1:51:40
much, and the sword is only so long.
1:51:42
And then you start realizing how egg-shaped your circles are.
1:51:45
Sure.
1:51:45
Now, I don't normally care.
1:51:46
I
1:51:46
Rupert Isaacson: only ride potatoes myself, honestly.
1:51:48
Arne Koets: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
1:51:49
Yeah.
1:51:49
But, but you know how we all get told, like, "Oh, a circle must be a circle."
1:51:52
Well, why?
1:51:52
Yeah.
1:51:52
Because you need to start learning to these little deviations.
1:51:55
You need to start noticing them.
1:51:57
And once you start noticing them in their beginning, it's much easier to
1:52:01
correct them in your seat w- rather than starting to use the mouth.
1:52:05
This whole idea of if I steer with the inside rein, so if I take the inside rein
1:52:09
and I apply the inside rein, what I'm actually doing is sending the croup away.
1:52:13
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
1:52:13
Arne Koets: This might make me face right, but I'm traveling left.
1:52:18
In combat, we tend to want to actually travel to the right if
1:52:22
we want to steer to the right.
1:52:23
That's usually what we require, and that means that you're
1:52:26
riding much more travers.
1:52:28
Like, everything is to some degree a half-pass, in a way.
1:52:32
And this makes your canter work much better, and things like that.
1:52:35
One of the things I also do with the other, with the other horse is
1:52:38
make sure the horse's face is never actually pointed at the other horse.
1:52:42
It's always just narrowly missing, and that means that the horses
1:52:46
know 20 meters away that they're not on a collision course.
1:52:50
So they're very happy to come together.
1:52:52
If you point them at each other, they know 60 meters away.
1:52:58
And so there's this whole thing of how do the horses interact, that they
1:53:01
can miss each other, if you will, and th- that they learn to do this.
1:53:06
And then you learn to gain the croup, as we call it.
1:53:08
We learn to ride around the croup of the other horse.
1:53:13
And so you, you ride a half pass and then you do a walk pirouette and
1:53:16
carry on, and then you're behind them.
1:53:19
One of the other things I try to do is w- approach each other and walk, and
1:53:22
once the horses' heads have passed each other, you transition to a higher gait.
1:53:26
First trot and then later canter.
1:53:29
And that means that the horse learns to canter away past the other horse, and
1:53:33
learns that that's where freedom is.
1:53:36
And that makes the, the, the approach can be very, very narrow,
1:53:40
but the horses always know that they're not gonna hit each other.
1:53:43
So that's one of the first things, and then of course you start noticing how
1:53:46
people can even exercise those exercises.
1:53:48
Do they know where their legs are supposed to be?
1:53:50
Do they know where their hands are supposed to be?
1:53:52
Do they know where their shoulders are supposed to be?
1:53:53
Correct them a bit, maybe mold them a bit into the right shape using sword
1:53:58
exercise to kind of sneakily trigger them into doing the right thing
1:54:01
without bothering their brain too much.
1:54:03
And then from there, you start playing games where you circle around each other.
1:54:07
W- In, in Buckeburg we used to call the Fechtvolte, so it's a
1:54:10
fighting volt where you, youâ¦
1:54:12
It's like yin and yang, where you ride around each other.
1:54:15
And then you start playing games with feeling through the sword, and this
1:54:18
is a concept called Fuhlen, where you cross the swords and you need
1:54:21
to feel what the other one is doing.
1:54:23
Keep contact with the swords and try to touch each other
1:54:25
with the tip whilst, whilstâ¦
1:54:27
In martial arts, it's very similar to sticky hands, but with swords.
1:54:31
And that means that you start feeling stuff, and a lot of people don't
1:54:34
even realize they start becoming far more aware of their horse when
1:54:37
they're starting to, to register a feeling in their hand of the sword.
1:54:43
They don't even realize they're improving their seat when they do that exercise.
1:54:48
And it's, it's kind of letting people let go of a thousand
1:54:53
checklists and riding in the moment.
1:54:56
It's not about a list of everything that is wrong.
1:54:58
It is about formulating what should be right right now.
1:55:02
Have inneres Bild, the inner image of what is correct right now, and next second
1:55:07
something new might be correct, and might be the next thing we're looking for.
1:55:10
But instead of criticizing yourself to death and criticizing your horse
1:55:14
to death, you don't use your brain space to make lists of mistakes.
1:55:19
You can do that in bed afterwards.
1:55:22
What you wanna do is formulate what you do want And use your
1:55:28
brain space to formulate that.
1:55:30
I have an im- image of exactly this right now is my plan.
1:55:33
And then the horse very quickly starts filling in all the
1:55:36
gaps to make that plan work.
1:55:39
And then, of course, you need to learn to formulate this very fast
1:55:41
because fencing is very fast.
1:55:44
And this positivity is the only reason to criticize, is to make a better
1:55:49
formulation of what you do want.
1:55:52
If you say that horse is not rhythmically correct in that
1:55:55
transition, okay, then therefore what would be rhythmically correct?
1:55:59
Let's focus on how that therefore should now be executed.
1:56:03
But the only reason to make that criticism is to formulate a better way.
1:56:08
If you don't bother with the second bit, all those criticisms are just gonna
1:56:12
take you down, take your horse down.
1:56:13
So it's, it's learning to be positive in the moment.
1:56:18
Rupert Isaacson: If you made it this far into the podcast, then I'm
1:56:21
guessing you're somebody that, like me, loves to read books about not
1:56:26
just how people have achieved self actualization, but particularly
1:56:30
about the relationship with nature.
1:56:34
Spirituality, life, the universe, and everything.
1:56:38
And I'd like to draw your attention to my books.
1:56:41
If you would like to read the story of how we even arrived here, perhaps
1:56:46
you'd like to check out the two New York Times bestsellers, The Horseboy
1:56:51
and The Long Ride Home, and come on an adventure with us and see what engendered,
1:56:56
what started Live Free Ride Free.
1:56:58
And before we go back to the podcast, also check out The Healing
1:57:02
Land, which tells the story of.
1:57:05
My years spent in the Kalahari with the Sun, Bushmen, hunter gatherer people
1:57:10
there, and all that they taught me, and mentored me in, and all that I learned.
1:57:15
Come on that adventure with me.
1:57:16
You can't think, I presume, like, I don't know, if Arno is coming bearing
1:57:22
down on me with a sword, I'm much more thinking about, "Shit, Arno's
1:57:26
bearing down on me with a sword," than I'm thinking about my riding, right?
1:57:30
I c- there's got to be a bit of a limit surely to how much I can think aids
1:57:36
or whatever when I'm thinking, "Ooh, big bloke with weapon coming at me."
1:57:43
So at what point does the thinking about how to ride subordinate itself and then
1:57:53
become I suppose automatic to the fencing?
1:58:02
Arne Koets: It must be almost immediate.
1:58:04
And the thing is that what you wanna do is do the motions with the sword that you
1:58:10
then tell somebody, "You need to do this with your hand, this with your shoulder,
1:58:12
this with your back, this with your hip, this with your foot," because sword.
1:58:16
And if they're already a sword fighter, they might already
1:58:19
have some ideas of that.
1:58:20
You might use specific terms that they're used to.
1:58:22
And then the horse all of a sudden does bada boom, does a stride.
1:58:25
They kinda go, "Oh, yeah, those two things go together."
1:58:28
And then what you wanna do is to make every move of the sword, every
1:58:31
move of your body, every move of the horse's body one and the same so that
1:58:36
I only say five, and then my sword does five, my body does five, my horse
1:58:42
does five, and there's no distinction.
1:58:43
And my brain just goes that one thing.
1:58:46
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
1:58:47
Arne Koets: And then of course as I'm doing that, I need to
1:58:49
then adjust the little details.
1:58:51
But the main idea needs to be as simple as possible.
1:58:55
Mm-hmm.
1:58:56
And that is by making the horse do something that is almost exactly the
1:58:59
same as what my body needs to do in order to put the sword in the right place.
1:59:03
Can you
1:59:03
Rupert Isaacson: give us a concrete illustration?
1:59:05
This is really fascinating.
1:59:06
Arne Koets: When I do swords te- you know, I have a, a, a ballroom next door
1:59:11
here, and, and we do swords techniques.
1:59:13
And I might say like, "Okay, so we're doing this diagonal cut with
1:59:15
the sword, so you do this wind, and then you make sure that your foot is
1:59:18
pointing in a specific direction," yada, yada, detail, detail, detail.
1:59:21
And then everybody goes, "You mean like a right lead canter?"
1:59:24
I go, "Yes, exactly like a right lead canter."
1:59:27
And, a- and so the, people comment that they notice these,
1:59:32
these overriding similarities.
1:59:36
So one of the obvious things to do is if you want to do a canter
1:59:39
pirouette, if you're doing a sword movement where you strike from your
1:59:43
right and then you cross the swordsâ¦
1:59:46
I have two swords, yeah.
1:59:48
Mini swords.
1:59:49
So you're coming with your strike from here.
1:59:51
I'm coming with my strike from there.
1:59:53
And then now we've crossed the swords, so both of us didn't hit.
1:59:56
I can carry your sword around, and then as I ride past you, hit from behind.
2:00:02
In doing that rotational momen- motion, which has a name, umschnappen,
2:00:08
I'm doing this rotational thing.
2:00:10
I'm using my shoulder blade, thereby I'm using my back, thereby I'm starting to use
2:00:13
my groin, my pelvic floor, my hip joint.
2:00:17
Then it becomes very easy in this upwards motion to move the horse up and over
2:00:22
and do a stride of canter pirouette.
2:00:26
And the horse quite often just goes, "That makes sense.
2:00:28
Here, have it."
2:00:30
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
2:00:31
How muchâ¦
2:00:32
Okay, let's say I'm, I'm at your place.
2:00:33
How much, I don't know sword.
2:00:35
You're gonna presumably also need to introduce me to sword-
2:00:39
Mm-hmm â¦ without pony, right?
2:00:41
Arne Koets: Right.
2:00:41
Rupert Isaacson: Do, do I need first to understand thing-
2:00:44
Arne Koets: Yeah
2:00:45
â¦ Rupert Isaacson: and then thing with pony?
2:00:47
Arne Koets: Yes.
2:00:48
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
2:00:48
Arne Koets: But, but, but usually, I mean, if, if you're at my place, I
2:00:50
have all the time in the world, so I don't have a, a clinic schedule to- Mm
2:00:54
to fit it in.
2:00:56
Then we'll probably put the sword in your hand or a lance in your hand and
2:00:59
give you, I don't know, 10 minutes-
2:01:03
Rupert Isaacson: Really?
2:01:03
â¦ of
2:01:03
Arne Koets: basic stuff.
2:01:05
Because if I were to do it the sort of standard martial arts way, we
2:01:09
would be there for three months before you even start using the
2:01:11
Rupert Isaacson: horse.
2:01:11
Yeah, absolutely.
2:01:11
Absolutely.
2:01:12
Arne Koets: And, and that's just not something people are
2:01:14
investing in in the modern world.
2:01:15
So I'll stick to, okay, I know that I'm gonna do these three exercises today
2:01:20
because- Mm-hmm â¦ you're on that horse, and it's this weather and whatever.
2:01:23
Mm-hmm.
2:01:23
So I'm just gonna show you those three things, nothing else.
2:01:25
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
2:01:25
Yeah.
2:01:26
Arne Koets: And then, and then you can apply that, and then tomorrow
2:01:29
I'll give you a few new things with the weapon, and then you'll
2:01:31
get you on the horse and thenâ¦
2:01:33
And, and just cut it into chunks, very haphazardly on the moment.
2:01:37
And so many things like, I mean, there's these concepts that have
2:01:41
all names and that nobody will be able to, to necessarily refer to
2:01:45
and your audience won't know the literature and the vernacular.
2:01:48
But the how do you defend an attack at the same time?
2:01:51
It, it is actually not that complex.
2:01:54
It is, you know, pointy bit goes in the enemy.
2:01:56
Is, is genuinely very easy.
2:01:59
And then to some degree it is also teaching by showing.
2:02:04
So, so much of it is if you've never swung a sword and you see somebody
2:02:08
swing the sword three times in exactly the same way, you assume that's how
2:02:11
it's done, and you don't question it, and you just start trying to copy it.
2:02:15
If you've done it in 15 other ways, then I have to explain
2:02:18
why I want that specific one.
2:02:20
This takes much more time.
2:02:21
Yeah.
2:02:22
So again, just want to see monkey see, monkey do is such a
2:02:25
powerful thing, also for horses.
2:02:28
So there is a little bit of a knack to, to selecting those things for
2:02:33
the individual, for their background.
2:02:36
"Oh, you've never hi- held a sword, but you're a fighter pilot."
2:02:38
Well, in that case there's a little bit of a gain in finding the
2:02:42
most efficient way of doing that.
2:02:46
Rupert Isaacson: It's interesting that the literature is largely Germanic
2:02:55
Given that, is that because, is it not there in English because we were using
2:03:06
more the longbow and other forms of military technology in the Middle Ages?
2:03:13
Or did- was there in fact an entire English vocabulary
2:03:17
around this that got lost?
2:03:19
Like for example, I know why we went away from dressage in England.
2:03:22
That's a really easy one.
2:03:24
18th century British Empire, we suddenly don't need it anymore.
2:03:28
Ships and infantry, if we want good cavalry, we'll hire
2:03:32
the locals like the Rajputs.
2:03:34
We're not gonna put 50,000 horses on a boat to go to
2:03:37
India 'cause they'll all die.
2:03:38
And we invent the Thoroughbred horse, at the same time get a, a, a fascination
2:03:45
with speed and gambling, and we cut down the forest to make ships and enclose
2:03:50
the land and sell it off to the wealthy peasantry to create a tax-paying, very
2:03:55
useful, loyal to the crown, won't do civil wars anymore rural upper middle class.
2:04:00
And because it's now, the hunting changes from hunt big game in forests that goes
2:04:06
slowly, to small game, fox and hare, going very fast across these newly enclosed
2:04:12
areas on these Thoroughbred horses.
2:04:13
And so we go in, like under 100 years from the Duke of Newcastle abandoning
2:04:20
everything he did, and we d- we invent hunting and racing, and our cavalry's
2:04:25
frankly a bit shit but we don't care because we got great infantry, and if we
2:04:28
want good cavalry, we can hire the King's German Legion and we can hire the Rajputs
2:04:34
That's easy to get your head around, yeah
2:04:37
Arne Koets: It's very concise.
2:04:38
But w-
2:04:43
to some degree in, in the British.
2:04:45
You know, I'm thinking about times of like the English Civil War-
2:04:48
Arne Koets: Mm
2:04:49
â¦ Rupert Isaacson: you know, which was why Newcastle ended up having to flee.
2:04:52
Part- We were fighting on horseback with swords.
2:04:54
W- where did it go?
2:04:55
Why don't weâ¦
2:04:56
Are there books?
2:04:57
Arne Koets: Are there- Well, first of all, the Duke of Newcastle originally
2:04:59
wrote in French, and then it became
2:05:01
Rupert Isaacson: related to- Indeed, and he learned his stuff at Antwerp, yeah
2:05:03
Arne Koets: Yes.
2:05:03
Yeah And from, from a German guy, I think.
2:05:06
Anyway, or at least partially from a German guy
2:05:07
Rupert Isaacson: But he still came out of an aristocratic tradition of hand-to-hand
2:05:10
fighting on horseback in the UK, which they did because they killed each other in
2:05:15
vast numbers during the English Civil War.
2:05:18
Admittedly, medieval wars, we don't seem to have been as
2:05:22
good horsemen as the French.
2:05:23
We, but we certainly were horsemen.
2:05:27
Yeah â¦ so w- is there a lost literature in the U- in Brit English, or?
2:05:32
Arne Koets: So first of all, there's not that much literature before a
2:05:34
certain point, and a lot of the, there is literature that is maybe anecdotal,
2:05:38
that just mentions people doing things that apparently they could do.
2:05:41
They don't tell you how they got to that point.
2:05:43
Mm-hmm And so some manuals become they're fairly late in- Is
2:05:48
Rupert Isaacson: it just because the Germans like rules
2:05:50
and like to write manuals?
2:05:52
Arne Koets: But also the Germans- Or- â¦ used the Tr- the Italian tradition.
2:05:55
Right â¦ so the Italian tradition is very influential in Germany and-
2:05:59
Rupert Isaacson: The Condottieri, all of those
2:06:00
Arne Koets: Yeah, and but around that time you already have
2:06:03
riding at a very high level.
2:06:05
When we first see that people say there is riding of a high level-
2:06:08
Rupert Isaacson: Yes
2:06:08
â¦ Arne Koets: and then they say there is these specific things that are
2:06:11
high level riding, and then you start having these treatises that explain
2:06:15
to you how you should be doing so.
2:06:17
Rupert Isaacson: Right
2:06:18
Arne Koets: And that comes in in the 1550s, and of course in Portugal,
2:06:21
yeah, the 1430s where somebody starts writing this book and then- Yeah
2:06:24
dies and doesn't finish it.
2:06:25
But he talks about seats, which is very interesting.
2:06:27
You're talking
2:06:27
Rupert Isaacson: about Edward Duarte
2:06:28
Arne Koets: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
2:06:29
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, but he says we learned it from the Moors, right?
2:06:31
He says-
2:06:32
Arne Koets: Yes, yes, because Portugal had very little war horses-
2:06:36
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah
2:06:36
â¦ Arne Koets: in the Middle Ages.
2:06:37
They had some And but again, aristocratic, but there was very few horses in Portugal.
2:06:43
Mm.
2:06:43
And again, the Moors and the, the sort of Spanish and the Reconquista and that
2:06:46
whole bunch, that is really important.
2:06:49
And the Portuguese mostly fought on ships in that sort of general era as well.
2:06:55
And so they were very much a seafaring country.
2:06:57
So what we think now of the, the bullfighting Lusitano, that is
2:07:02
almost something that, that comes over from Spain to some degree-
2:07:06
Rupert Isaacson: Mm
2:07:06
Arne Koets: when it comes to medieval history.
2:07:08
I know there's a few hundred years- All the, all the
2:07:09
Rupert Isaacson: Portuguese viewers
2:07:10
Arne Koets: like- Yeah, they don't like to hear this, but this- You better put
2:07:12
Rupert Isaacson: up an umbrella right now, is
2:07:14
Arne Koets: right?
2:07:14
Yeah, but it, but it's not medieval.
2:07:16
I mean, there was, of course- Okay â¦ some kings that rode horses.
2:07:18
Don't get me wrong.
2:07:19
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, yeah.
2:07:19
Arne Koets: But they were in the minority.
2:07:22
And that means that their ability to build up a a good system of building
2:07:28
these horse, these horse communities was more constrained because they
2:07:33
had fewer people to work with.
2:07:35
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
2:07:35
Arne Koets: And to some
2:07:36
Rupert Isaacson: degree- But like, why aren't all, why
2:07:37
aren't all the books in French?
2:07:38
Because the, the, the French had the sort of high chivalric thing.
2:07:42
They were always trying to beat the English on horseback and getting
2:07:46
killed with longbows, you know?
2:07:48
And so, yeah, wh- wh- why, why is it so German?
2:07:53
Arne Koets: So the fencing stuff is coming down from a guy called Liechtenauer, and
2:07:58
this guy called Liechtenauer com- combined knowledge of fencing in the 14th century.
2:08:06
And he then had this, this whole series of schools that branched out of these, these
2:08:11
different masters that taught this style, and they used a very specific mnemonic.
2:08:17
Like, there's this thing called Merkvers und Glosa.
2:08:20
So you would learn a verse and then you'd learn all these little lessons
2:08:24
that are stuck to a verse you'll know.
2:08:27
Okay.
2:08:27
And because they use that thing, it is very easy to say this verse
2:08:31
is not my thing, that's myâ¦
2:08:32
That's somebody more great than me, and thereby they are
2:08:36
connected with the same verse.
2:08:37
So because of that tradition of this Merkvers und Glosa and how these books
2:08:41
are written, it's very easy for them to keep mentioning they're of one tradition,
2:08:46
and they have this comm- And that's why they're traceable and that's why we, we
2:08:49
know that they did very similar things.
2:08:50
There's also the Italian tradition of s- of fencing, which also includes mounted
2:08:54
pieces, and this is 1410-ish, and then we're talking about Fiore dei Liberi.
2:08:58
Is that even Italy at the time?
2:09:00
And there, there's a few, the Bolognese tradition.
2:09:02
So there's some traditions of fencing that start mentioning stuff you
2:09:06
do on horseback because fencing is done on horseback as well, right?
2:09:09
So you need to know this stuff, and then the actual act of riding
2:09:13
is only really mentioned later.
2:09:17
So that comes almost 100 years later.
2:09:19
So we know people did these things.
2:09:20
We know that Henry VIII did sauts on his horse.
2:09:24
How he learned, where he learned where the horse came from-
2:09:27
Rupert Isaacson: What's
2:09:27
Arne Koets: sauts?
2:09:27
What's sauts?
2:09:28
Those are the, the school jumps.
2:09:29
Okay.
2:09:29
But there's a French word for school jumps.
2:09:29
Oh, le saut.
2:09:29
Le saut.
2:09:29
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
2:09:29
That the jump in French.
2:09:32
Yeah.
2:09:32
Yeah, so but that is mentioned about Henry VIII.
2:09:35
Rupert Isaacson: Oh, I didn'tâ¦
2:09:36
God, he must have been a bit younger
2:09:38
Arne Koets: when he was- But he was, he was very sporty when he was young.
2:09:40
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah,
2:09:41
Arne Koets: yeah.
2:09:41
And he loved to joust and stuff like that.
2:09:43
He- Yeah â¦ and he went to war all the time.
2:09:44
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
2:09:45
Arne Koets: So we know this existed in England.
2:09:47
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
2:09:47
Arne Koets: But the, the vernacular's probably almost exclusively
2:09:51
French because- Mm â¦ the aristocracy was so French still.
2:09:54
Rupert Isaacson: Indeed, indeed, indeed.
2:09:54
Arne Koets: And, and then of course there's the Dutch influence which is
2:09:57
very complicated with the influence over across the, the pond from the Dutch to,
2:10:02
to the, to the aristocracy to some degree.
2:10:04
And so the, the English, yeah, the long bowman is alwaysâ¦
2:10:09
The long bowman is a rider, by the way.
2:10:11
Let's not forget that.
2:10:11
Well, he's
2:10:12
Rupert Isaacson: a mounted, mounted infantryman, right?
2:10:14
Arne Koets: Yes, yes.
2:10:15
He's not a cavalryman.
2:10:15
Yeah.
2:10:15
And this is a key thing to understand- Yeah â¦ is that what makes the English
2:10:19
archer better than everybody else's archer is that he's mounted and heavily equipped.
2:10:24
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
2:10:24
Arne Koets: And, and that- But
2:10:25
Rupert Isaacson: he's not shooting really from the saddle.
2:10:26
He's gonna get to the battlefield on horseback, get off Do his thing,
2:10:31
get on again, go somewhere else.
2:10:33
Right
2:10:33
Arne Koets: Preferably.
2:10:34
Although they say- Yeah â¦ that they can lose three arrows when they're
2:10:37
on foot, as opposed to two arrows when they're on the horse back.
2:10:40
Okay.
2:10:40
Okay.
2:10:40
Okay This is mentioned at the time.
2:10:41
Is it?
2:10:42
This was something that was known, that was possible.
2:10:44
They just didn't want to- Is this from Froissart's
2:10:46
Rupert Isaacson: Chronicles or something, or where's this from?
2:10:47
Arne Koets: This is an Italian source.
2:10:49
They also say that- Interesting â¦ you should always make sure that when they
2:10:52
dismount, that an Italian is holding their horses, because otherwise they will
2:10:55
leave the battlefield haphazardly so, so w- when they dismount, their horses
2:11:01
are held by the guy who pays them- Okay
2:11:04
so that they don't just bugger off.
2:11:06
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
2:11:08
Arne Koets: I mean-
2:11:08
Rupert Isaacson: I fired me arrows, mate.
2:11:09
That's your lot
2:11:10
â¦ Arne Koets: yeah, exactly.
2:11:11
They're mercenaries, right?
2:11:12
And I'm off down the pub.
2:11:12
Yeah.
2:11:13
And it's a dist- That's so British.
2:11:13
Y- yes, yes.
2:11:15
But also, it is, it is a very big distinction if the Britain, the
2:11:18
Britons are fighting for Britain-
2:11:20
Rupert Isaacson: Mm
2:11:20
Arne Koets: or if they're fighting for someone else who pays them.
2:11:23
It is a big distinction.
2:11:24
Rupert Isaacson: Indeed.
2:11:25
Arne Koets: It's a big distinction.
2:11:27
Indeed.
2:11:27
Anyway so it, it's kind of funny.
2:11:29
So and of course, if you think of The Black Prince, he did famous
2:11:32
cavalry charges out of the Wagenberg, and actually wins- Yeah â¦ the
2:11:35
battle on a cavalry charge.
2:11:37
Rupert Isaacson: I mean- Right.
2:11:37
But again, there's a difference between charging and using heavy ca-
2:11:41
shock value cavalry, and what you're talking about, which is working
2:11:45
three dimensions very finely around another mounted opponent, right?
2:11:50
I mean, it's one thing to have, let's take 1,000 guys and run
2:11:55
them really, really, really fast.
2:11:56
It'll be make or break, but if they hit in the right wedge form, they can blast
2:12:02
through that opposition and cause mayhem.
2:12:05
But let's say they can't do that, and let's say they have
2:12:08
to r- ride in the melee, andâ¦
2:12:11
Or let's say that they're doing that charge and some flanking cavalry come
2:12:15
in and engage them before they can, their charge can come, and now they've
2:12:19
got to fight hand-to-hand or something.
2:12:21
Mm-hmm.
2:12:21
Mm-hmm.
2:12:22
Were, was somebody like The Black Prince as able to do that, or would
2:12:25
that have been a continental horseman?
2:12:28
Arne Koets: Well, one of the issues with the Hundred Years' War army of
2:12:31
The Black Prince is that we don't know how many of his knights were Gascons-
2:12:34
It's true â¦ and were both French.
2:12:35
It's true.
2:12:36
So-
2:12:36
Rupert Isaacson: It's
2:12:36
Arne Koets: true
2:12:36
'cause- Let
2:12:37
Rupert Isaacson: alone
2:12:37
Arne Koets: Germans â¦ England.
2:12:38
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah
2:12:38
â¦ Arne Koets: y- yes.
2:12:39
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
2:12:39
So this is always very mixed- Yeah, that's true â¦ and very haphazard, and
2:12:42
it's, it's very tricky to know- That's true â¦ exactly who was in which block.
2:12:45
Half of
2:12:46
Rupert Isaacson: them were mercenaries, and yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
2:12:48
Arne Koets: Yeah.
2:12:48
So, so, and, and however mounted combat was very dominant.
2:12:54
So if you have one soldier, how much can that one soldier do if you have a trained
2:12:59
horse, trained rider, equipped dude?
2:13:02
They do the most for the one guy, but the one guy can only do so much.
2:13:06
Right.
2:13:06
Now, one of the things you see is, for instance, like, the Napoleonic
2:13:09
sort of mass charge or the, the, the, the slightly earlier Swedish, where
2:13:13
they ride knee and knee and they make this wall, and they just hit.
2:13:17
They literally just ride into things in a straight line.
2:13:20
The medieval units of attack tend to be smaller, because they can't
2:13:26
marshal such large regiments and, and feed them in the same place.
2:13:30
So hence, you have all these little blocks that are all kinda
2:13:33
stuck together like Lego bricks.
2:13:35
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
2:13:35
Arne Koets: Like 25 dudes from here and 24 dudes from there, and they're
2:13:39
supposed to be together with about 300 And they learn these wedge charges.
2:13:44
Now a wedge charge is perhaps more technical than you might assume.
2:13:49
And, and we literally play with this kind of stuff.
2:13:51
I have events where we do where we have, like, 200 infantry here in the hills, and
2:13:55
we have about 48 cavalry, and we literally go like, "Let's see what happens."
2:13:58
And we have lances and swords and war hammers, and we just go for it.
2:14:01
And, I do not
2:14:02
Rupert Isaacson: get killed?
2:14:03
Arne Koets: Well, you, you, you just hit each other soft
2:14:06
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, but also don't horses run into people?
2:14:09
Arne Koets: Well, we, we deliberately place them next to them
2:14:12
Rupert Isaacson: Okay
2:14:13
Arne Koets: So you, you literallyâ¦
2:14:14
And they have medieval shields, so- If
2:14:15
Rupert Isaacson: I'm, if I'm on the bl- if I'm on the ground with a
2:14:16
grounded pike and you ride at me- Yeah.
2:14:18
Yeah â¦ I can, I can bonk you with that pike, and even a small-
2:14:21
Arne Koets: Yeah
2:14:22
â¦ Rupert Isaacson: thing can knock you off your horse, no?
2:14:23
Yeah,
2:14:24
Arne Koets: so, so they're allowed to bonk the g- the rider.
2:14:26
They- Okay â¦ they, we agree that they don't bonk the horse.
2:14:29
Rupert Isaacson: Okay
2:14:30
Arne Koets: And, but I have a lance and I can parry your pike,
2:14:33
and then it's more likely that you come off your feet than I am
2:14:35
Rupert Isaacson: Okay
2:14:36
Arne Koets: By far.
2:14:37
And then I need to figure out where you're falling so I don't ride out on top of you.
2:14:40
So- Okay â¦ and that is up to the riders to then place the horse in a safe place
2:14:43
Right And and we do this in mass things, in terrain and things like that, and then-
2:14:48
Rupert Isaacson: Brilliant fun
2:14:49
Arne Koets: It, it, it
2:14:50
Rupert Isaacson: is But, but you've got to have a certain, you've got
2:14:51
to have a certain standard of rider and horse, and you've got to have a
2:14:54
certain understanding standard of the blokes on foot with this, too, no?
2:14:58
Arne Koets: Yeah, yeah
2:14:58
Rupert Isaacson: Otherwise it could go pear shaped very quick
2:15:01
Arne Koets: Y- yeah, yeah, of course we need to really consider what we're
2:15:03
doing, and of course we go a bit slower.
2:15:05
And one of the things, of course, y- it is very easy to dump your horse's
2:15:09
front hooves on an infantryman, and that will seriously injure them, obviously.
2:15:13
So that's something we negl- neglect to do because we don't
2:15:16
wanna actually injure our mates.
2:15:17
Okay And but we also do cavalry versus cavalry charges and things like that.
2:15:21
We have a few videos up where you have like literally somebody with
2:15:24
a GoPro and we're just going for it and you just see how that works.
2:15:27
And we usuallyâ¦
2:15:28
It's mostly a wedging effect like that.
2:15:31
Rupert Isaacson: Rupert up to 3:00 AM checking out Arne GÃ¶tze's videos, yeah.
2:15:34
Sorry
2:15:35
Arne Koets: Yeah, it's in all sorts of channels, though.
2:15:37
But it's it's one of these things where you where we fence with the lances,
2:15:40
and I think this is the key thing that people don't realize is how much you
2:15:44
use the lance like an absolutely massive rapier, and then fence with it, and
2:15:48
also use the backside to hit e- each other with Okay And, and that is, you
2:15:53
do this with pikes as well, really.
2:15:54
And once you start doing that you can literally peel, peel open a pike
2:15:59
formation, and then there's this hole, and then the horse goes into the hole, and
2:16:02
all the other horses go into that hole.
2:16:04
And, and then, and then they speed up by themselves.
2:16:08
And this is a way that we have lots of descriptions of people breaking
2:16:12
into pike formations- Interesting
2:16:14
but whether the pike formation is just simply too large to
2:16:17
defeat is a different matter.
2:16:19
Because historic pike formations are up to 11,000 men in one block
2:16:24
Rupert Isaacson: Hmm
2:16:25
Arne Koets: That's like a, a metal concert, literally.
2:16:28
That's how many people are standing there.
2:16:31
Just give you some idea of just how huge this stuff is.
2:16:34
Hmm So anyway, so, so one of the things you see with the, the, even if you're in
2:16:39
formation, you need to ride to a certain level of accuracy, and you might still
2:16:43
want to wobble within your formation.
2:16:46
So somebody might attack my horse's head when I'm in formation.
2:16:50
I can't just jump to the side like a bullfighter can, but I
2:16:53
can bend my horse so his horse's head goes this far to the side.
2:16:57
I then parry hit, hit him in the face- Then as he, as I push his
2:17:02
face over, he moves his horse.
2:17:04
That means the horses' heads are apart.
2:17:05
I put my horse's head in between so that my horse's shoulders
2:17:09
are gonna make them go away.
2:17:10
Then I need to make sure that I don't get stuck in their stirrup, and then
2:17:13
hit them like in the back of the head, parry something else, carry on through.
2:17:16
So the amount of precision and immediacy is very, very high.
2:17:21
So you use all the tools from the fancy dressage in simple ways,
2:17:27
but it's, it's like you might not be able to see your horse's head.
2:17:30
You need to know where it is, and there's a moving thing coming at it, and you
2:17:34
move the horse's head out of the way.
2:17:36
You might put a, a chamfron, a h- horse helmet on the horse, which might not
2:17:40
allow it to see in front, but you wanna move it so that it doesn't end up in in,
2:17:45
in contact with anything it shouldn't.
2:17:47
So, and they talk about this because, of course, historically
2:17:49
the horses were fair game.
2:17:51
With us they are not, but at the time they were.
2:17:53
Yeah.
2:17:53
So you had to learn to ride your horse so that you could keep it.
2:17:56
And there is techniques like, and th- those are all come down to travers
2:18:00
shoulder-in, revenre shoulder-out.
2:18:03
And canter pirouettes, transitions, transitions, transitions.
2:18:06
Right.
2:18:07
The transitions need to be very good to keep formation.
2:18:10
If you say, "Company prepare to canter, canter march," everybody
2:18:14
needs to do a transition at march, and not like five strides later.
2:18:18
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
2:18:19
Arne Koets: That's not an option.
2:18:21
So same stuff- Yeah â¦ different flies.
2:18:27
Rupert Isaacson: Would you say just historically from a total just
2:18:30
chronological point of view you are mostly doing your stuff in the
2:18:35
style of the early 16th century?
2:18:39
Arne Koets: I mean, the fencing stuff is very clearly 15th century.
2:18:44
Okay.
2:18:44
And what I'm trying to use is 16th century sources to kind of fill in
2:18:48
the gaps that the 15th century sources leave us about 15th century riding.
2:18:51
We have depictions of horses doing the things.
2:18:54
And they might have a picture akin to what, what's behind me,
2:18:57
but they don't tell you the, the manual of how to do this.
2:19:00
That manual comes 100 years later.
2:19:02
Rupert Isaacson: Got it.
2:19:02
Arne Koets: But it does show the same movements so that
2:19:04
I kind of feel okay at that.
2:19:06
And sometimes they give us some details that could be congruent.
2:19:10
Like for instance, we have medieval sources saying you train a horse
2:19:13
in a plowed field, and then we see that in Leonais, and we see
2:19:15
that in Arizona, we see thatâ¦
2:19:15
So we see that there's a connection, and then
2:19:20
we feel free to kind of superimpose that a little bit.
2:19:22
I also actually do a lot of very baroque things because I find them convenient.
2:19:28
So like Pluvinel and Guerinere are slightly different- Mm â¦ and I err
2:19:31
towards the Guerinere a little bit.
2:19:34
I really like this, do the, had the epaule en dedans coupe en l'air exercise.
2:19:38
Mm.
2:19:38
I love doing that.
2:19:39
Mm.
2:19:40
You know, even though it's in Guerinere, I just kind of use it as a tool to get
2:19:43
the horse to look like that, you know?
2:19:44
Rupert Isaacson: Sure.
2:19:45
No.
2:19:45
Arne Koets: Sure, sure, sure.
2:19:46
And so it's, it'sâ¦
2:19:47
And to some degree we use saddles that are specifically reproduced from 15th
2:19:51
century, which really helps the rider seat and thereby to be able to ride more
2:19:55
independently from the reins in general.
2:19:57
And makes it easy to transition to riding on the belt or just throwing your reins
2:20:01
away and using two hands to fight with.
2:20:04
Rupert Isaacson: Riding on the belt, that means putting the reins on your belt?
2:20:07
Arne Koets: Yes.
2:20:08
And if there
2:20:08
Rupert Isaacson: is- If the horse does something funky, 'cause of course, like
2:20:10
you once sees the bullfighters do this.
2:20:12
Arne Koets: Yeah.
2:20:12
Rupert Isaacson: You can get your back broken that way.
2:20:15
How do you- yeah â¦ how do you not get your back broken that way?
2:20:18
Arne Koets: Well, first of all, it first turns up in fencing manuscripts again,
2:20:22
where they talk about the rÃ¼sthaken, so the, the, the, the armor hook.
2:20:27
And one is up here for your lance.
2:20:29
That is the obere rÃ¼sthaken.
2:20:30
Yeah.
2:20:30
And then there's the untere rÃ¼sthaken, which is on your belly
2:20:33
button So they have hooks on belts that they drop the reins on.
2:20:38
So you're, you're riding along and you go, "Oh, this, I'm gonna parry, riposte thing.
2:20:44
This is not going well.
2:20:45
Drop my reins.
2:20:46
Go."
2:20:48
And that decision to put your rein onto that belt, onto
2:20:51
that hook, is extremely quick.
2:20:54
Mm-hmm.
2:20:54
And then you grab their wrist, and then you pummel them in the
2:20:57
face and drag them off the horse.
2:20:58
And you drop it on there, but that hook is open enough to just dump it on there,
2:21:04
but it means it flips out very quickly.
2:21:06
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
2:21:06
So it's
2:21:06
Arne Koets: not- So it-
2:21:07
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah
2:21:07
â¦ Arne Koets: it's not attached very- It's not a fixed thing.
2:21:09
No, it's not a fixed thing.
2:21:10
And also, if you fall off in full plate armor, your back
2:21:14
is braced by the armor anyway.
2:21:16
So the first mentions of this is armored riding specifically.
2:21:19
Got it.
2:21:20
Now,
2:21:20
Rupert Isaacson: okay, I've got a question about armored riding, but keep going.
2:21:23
Arne Koets: So, so but, but riding on the belt is something that you also
2:21:26
see in the 13th century where they have this ring at the end of the reins, and
2:21:28
they just loop it through their belt.
2:21:30
They have a belt on, they just loop it through.
2:21:32
If you were to fall off, it just slips right out.
2:21:34
I see.
2:21:34
It's not held on very hard at all.
2:21:37
So, there's, there's a friction amount that is very, very limited,
2:21:40
so they start slipping very quickly.
2:21:43
So you're, you're looking at maybe at most a maximum force you can apply in
2:21:49
that belt position originally, maybe a pound, and that is the absolute maximum.
2:21:54
Yeah.
2:21:54
Then it will just slip out, which is good because you don't wanna be using
2:21:58
any more force than that at any point.
2:22:00
Rupert Isaacson: No.
2:22:00
Arne Koets: So itâ¦
2:22:00
And forces you to ride with a soft enough contact or whatever you wanna call that.
2:22:05
And and that's a peak value, not a, not an average.
2:22:08
And and that's one of these things, like if you measure, you know, like,
2:22:11
Olympic dress- dressage riders, they go up to 18 kilos of rein.
2:22:16
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
2:22:16
Arne Koets: They publish this measurement themselves.
2:22:19
I would say that's a bit much.
2:22:21
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
2:22:21
I don't think anyone's having a good time at that point, monkey or horse.
2:22:25
Arne Koets: No.
2:22:25
Exactly.
2:22:25
Yeah.
2:22:25
And and then of course, you, you start looking, okay, what is the system that
2:22:29
made that level of force necessary or just occurring accidentally- Mm-hmm
2:22:34
or anything of that sort.
2:22:36
And what we see is that they use systems where that cannot be the
2:22:39
case because the reins will just slip out of your belt, and you wouldn't,
2:22:42
they wouldn't be there anymore.
2:22:44
Rupert Isaacson: Got
2:22:44
Arne Koets: it.
2:22:44
So they can't have possibly exceeded this number.
2:22:47
And so we see that this, this using a seat position, using the saddles how
2:22:52
they are designed, is specifically designed to make sure that your, your
2:22:56
horse comes up to you and carries you, carries you for longer, easier, carries
2:23:00
you in armor easier, and things like that.
2:23:03
Rupert Isaacson: Okay, listen.
2:23:04
So many questions come up.
2:23:05
Like, so, We are gonna have to do a second, third, fourth, fifth gig, right?
2:23:11
So listen, I'm talk- talking to the, the viewers and the,
2:23:14
and, and the listeners now.
2:23:15
Listen, lads, with Ana's permission, we're gonna extend this conversation.
2:23:22
We, we are heading towards the Over two hour mark.
2:23:26
So we have to, we're gonna have to end this one quite soon, but there are
2:23:31
some questions I know you'll all have.
2:23:32
I'm gonna promise you that I'm gonna hold a gun to Auntie Anna's head, and
2:23:37
what we're gonna do is we're gonna do, like, a series of, Like I've done with
2:23:42
Auntie Richard on- on Xenophon Press.
2:23:44
We're gonna do a series of, like, 20-minute vids, but you and I can
2:23:48
actually talk for much longer.
2:23:49
We'll just cut them into 20-minute vids, right?
2:23:52
And go into a lot more of this stuff that I know you've got questions.
2:23:55
For example horse welfare including carrying armor an armored person
2:24:02
and how you build the back for that.
2:24:03
And of course, if the person on top makes a p- not so great move, how do
2:24:08
we stop the horse from getting some sort of negative thing in the back?
2:24:11
I- I know you'll have answers for that.
2:24:14
I also want to talk about therapeutic use.
2:24:16
So for example, I've done a lot with in my ham-fisted way, with just riding
2:24:21
with an autistic child in front of me or another child in front of me, and I'll
2:24:25
go hand over hand with them with a, with a foam-type sword and knock cabbages
2:24:31
off a thing in a slalom as we go by.
2:24:34
And they, their experience, 'cause they're sitting here, is that they're doing it.
2:24:40
And this, I could even do this with, like, a non-verbal kid, and it's so amazing what
2:24:44
it does for the brain, and they love it.
2:24:46
And then they start taking over, and then we getâ¦
2:24:48
So I'm g- I want to ask about the therapeutic uses of what you do in
2:24:52
terms of empowerment, confidence.
2:24:55
You know, people who are neurodiverse coming to you and what, which
2:24:58
I know, I know is a huge thing because we're in nerd, major nerd
2:25:03
territory, so we're gonna see huge neurodiversity there, and probably
2:25:06
including you, probably including me.
2:25:08
And then more specifics on how it's done.
2:25:14
So my promise to the viewers and watchers is that we- we are
2:25:19
going to go into all of this.
2:25:21
But quickly, though, I know some people will be asking, what do you
2:25:25
do to make sure that the backs or the bodies of the horses are up to
2:25:30
the thing of having a mounted person in armor sometimes, you know, doing
2:25:36
some sort of movement which the horse has to ac- you know, accommodate?
2:25:40
I- I've seen your horses on videos.
2:25:42
I know that they're all beautifully prepared.
2:25:44
But what's your, yeah, what's your one, two, three with this?
2:25:47
You- you clearly do have a system.
2:25:49
Arne Koets: Yeah.
2:25:50
Well, first of all, it's probably not as heavy as people think.
2:25:52
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
2:25:52
Arne Koets: That helps a lot.
2:25:54
It's For instance, the medieval saddles are very light, so you save some
2:25:57
weight on the saddle and put it in armor on your body, stuff like that.
2:26:00
Even my o- one horse has a full armor of its own, so then the
2:26:05
whole horse is covered in steel.
2:26:07
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
2:26:07
Arne Koets: That's weight as well.
2:26:09
But the thing is that this whole horse armor, including the saddle- Weighs
2:26:14
roughly as much as a Western saddle
2:26:17
Rupert Isaacson: Is that so?
2:26:18
Arne Koets: Yes.
2:26:19
And it's about 25 kilos.
2:26:20
And Western- Even made
2:26:21
Rupert Isaacson: of s- even made of steel?
2:26:22
Arne Koets: It's original weight.
2:26:24
Yeah.
2:26:24
How interesting And we, we've, we've How do
2:26:25
Rupert Isaacson: they get it to be so light?
2:26:27
Arne Koets: It's very thin
2:26:27
Rupert Isaacson: And yet effective?
2:26:28
Arne Koets: It's just very thin.
2:26:29
It's hardened and tempered carbon steel, and it's just very thin.
2:26:32
And the leather ones weigh the same.
2:26:34
We also have leather ones.
2:26:35
Rupert Isaacson: How
2:26:35
Arne Koets: interesting And, but they're thicker and, in order
2:26:38
to protect as m- anyway, so, so it's not as heavy as you think.
2:26:41
That's one thing.
2:26:42
So there's, there's just how much weight does the horse even need to carry?
2:26:46
So there's one thing.
2:26:47
We, we tend to pick the largest horse we can reasonably find historically,
2:26:52
so they topped out at 15 hand 2.
2:26:55
That was the very largest horse known archeologically in the 15th century.
2:27:00
So all my horses happen to be exactly 15, 15 hand.
2:27:03
Rupert Isaacson: But people today are much bigger.
2:27:04
You're probably bigger than the blokes were back then.
2:27:08
So-
2:27:08
Arne Koets: Not necessarily the case for nobility.
2:27:11
Mm â¦ so, so, and I am six foot three, six foot four,
2:27:16
I don't know, in, in inches.
2:27:17
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, you're tall.
2:27:18
Yeah
2:27:18
â¦ Arne Koets: 193.
2:27:19
Yeah That's
2:27:20
Rupert Isaacson: a lot of monkey.
2:27:21
Yeah.
2:27:21
Arne Koets: That's a lot of monkey.
2:27:22
Yeah.
2:27:22
And that means that, you know, I am not very big, but I do weigh
2:27:26
something just by being so tall.
2:27:27
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
2:27:28
Arne Koets: And so learning to sit makes that burden less.
2:27:32
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
2:27:32
Arne Koets: So the better your seat is, the less you force the horse's body.
2:27:37
That's one thing.
2:27:37
Mm.
2:27:37
Learn to sit Secondly make sure the saddle actually fits- Mm
2:27:42
and fits with that weight, not just when the horse is standing still.
2:27:45
When the horse is bent- Mm â¦ things like that, that the saddle actually functions.
2:27:49
That the saddle is stable and is in the right place when it matters, so that has
2:27:53
to do with girthing and things like that.
2:27:56
And this is much easier to do with some styles, types of saddles than others.
2:27:59
So just that all those really things that should be basic are in place
2:28:05
because we are going closer to the edge.
2:28:08
So those things are important.
2:28:10
Obvious thing is do loads of dressage.
2:28:14
So I do dressage five times a week with each horse.
2:28:19
I ride in armor.
2:28:21
If it's a busy season, I personally put armor on myself on a horse
2:28:27
maybe 30 days a year, if that.
2:28:32
So it's something you decide the horse is in a place to do.
2:28:36
If that horse is okay but not right, I pick another horse or I just
2:28:42
say no and don't put my armor on.
2:28:44
You know, if it's for instance my own body weight, I can't just
2:28:47
take a bit of my body weight away.
2:28:50
I can't do that because the horse requires it today.
2:28:52
I can take my armor off today.
2:28:55
So that is something that you only do when everything is in the green.
2:29:00
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
2:29:00
Arne Koets: So that makes a huge difference.
2:29:02
It's optional.
2:29:02
It's modular.
2:29:04
We can actually adjust what we wear and how much it weighs, so we can even
2:29:07
play with that within the armor weight.
2:29:10
And then the main thing is make sure your horse can do good half-passes.
2:29:16
Make sure your horse can do good half-passes during a, a canter
2:29:19
transition during a half-pass.
2:29:21
If he can do that, he won't care about the armor at all.
2:29:23
Okay.
2:29:24
He don't care aboutâ¦
2:29:24
I- it's just the horse is just gonna take it in his stride.
2:29:27
And we've done a series of things where we filmed stuff that we did that was
2:29:31
a, a little bit more demanding like, for instance, full armor, full horse
2:29:34
armor, going up in the hills here doing, and there's gravel and there's
2:29:38
slopes and there are hills and whatever.
2:29:40
And I filmed the horse going out.
2:29:41
I filmed the horse throughout with a drone, filmed the horse going back, and
2:29:45
I sent this independently to several specialists to an- analyze the gait.
2:29:50
How good was the gait going out?
2:29:51
How was, was the gait going in?
2:29:53
Did my horse get better or worse?
2:29:56
And five different specialists said that the horse was slightly
2:30:01
better when he came back home.
2:30:03
Rupert Isaacson: So you're doing a lot of fitness work, you're doing a
2:30:05
lot of balancing work, and I presume you're also building the back.
2:30:08
You're building the back in your dressage rides, but you're also- Yeah
2:30:10
I presume you're doing a certain amount of lunging and other things that put
2:30:15
back muscle on horses, I presume.
2:30:17
You know?
2:30:17
In
2:30:17
Arne Koets: hand work.
2:30:18
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, in hand work.
2:30:19
Exactly.
2:30:20
Okay.
2:30:20
Arne Koets: Deliberate hacking.
2:30:21
I mean- Yeah â¦ deliberate hacking is such a big deal.
2:30:24
Rupert Isaacson: Tell us what you mean by deliberate hacking.
2:30:26
Arne Koets: Well, you can, you can sit on a horse and enjoy the countryside and let
2:30:29
the horse plod with no outline whatsoever.
2:30:31
Or you can you can choose, you know, I'm on a hill, I'm going
2:30:35
that direction, am I gonna go in a left bend or in a right bend?
2:30:38
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
2:30:39
Arne Koets: Do I make that decision?
2:30:40
Do I set up my horse to getâ¦
2:30:44
You know, when its feet are offset- Yeah â¦ if I'm out in the terrain,
2:30:47
do I do a little back up up a hill?
2:30:49
How steep, how far?
2:30:50
Yeah â¦ do I canter this slope or do I walk it?
2:30:54
Of course you can canter down hills, obviously.
2:30:56
We've all seen the, the Man from Snowy River, right?
2:30:58
Sure.
2:30:58
That's, that's possible.
2:31:00
Rupert Isaacson: If the horse is fit, if the horse is balanced, yes.
2:31:02
Yeah.
2:31:02
Arne Koets: If the horse is experienced.
2:31:04
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
2:31:04
Arne Koets: But for instance, I would generally canter uphill and walk downhill.
2:31:10
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
2:31:10
Arne Koets: Generally.
2:31:11
And depends a bit of how steep it is.
2:31:13
Mm-hmm.
2:31:13
But when it gets steep, I just don't canter downhill.
2:31:15
Could you?
2:31:15
Yes.
2:31:16
Do I bother?
2:31:16
No.
2:31:17
Yeah.
2:31:17
And, and it's one of these things where, where i- is, is like making these
2:31:22
choices deliberately- Mm â¦ consciously, and then the horse really, you
2:31:27
know, learns to sit on its haunches.
2:31:29
If you can't quite collect a horse like that easily-
2:31:32
Rupert Isaacson: Mm
2:31:32
â¦ Arne Koets: well, if you can't move the horse, why don't you move the earth?
2:31:35
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, absolutely.
2:31:37
Arne Koets: I mean, that will help you, and then the horse builds muscles, and
2:31:40
it becomes easier to ask it to do that.
2:31:42
Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
2:31:42
Arne Koets: So, that has a lot to do, you know, are you holding
2:31:44
onto the horse's mouth because it constantly wants to trot home?
2:31:47
Well, then your outline is gonna be rubbish.
2:31:49
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
2:31:50
Arne Koets: So you need to find ways of making sure you have a
2:31:52
soft contact throughout your ride.
2:31:55
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
2:31:56
Arne Koets: And you wanna be able to go a bit faster, and not
2:31:59
relinquish your softer mouth.
2:32:01
Stuff like that.
2:32:02
Deliberate hacking.
2:32:04
Rupert Isaacson: Very good.
2:32:05
I can't wait to learn more and do more.
2:32:09
So â¦ Oh, and the one thing I haven't asked you is how do you
2:32:12
make a living doing all this?
2:32:14
Arne Koets: I, I, I teach clinics, and I
2:32:16
Rupert Isaacson: ride- Yeah, but that's not, that's notâ¦
2:32:18
I mean, this is a labor of love that requires- Great expense.
2:32:24
You've, you've put together an economy around this.
2:32:29
You don't just do that by riding lessons.
2:32:32
Arne Koets: I literally fund me and my household and my horses-
2:32:38
Rupert Isaacson: Through teaching?
2:32:39
Arne Koets: Through teaching only.
2:32:40
Rupert Isaacson: And has that always been the case, or did you
2:32:43
have to have a day job that you, that you financed it through?
2:32:46
I'm ju- the reason I'm asking, Arne, is that a lot of people, people ask
2:32:50
me this question too, you know, and I, because I had well, so I write books.
2:32:56
I, you know, s- make the odd film sometimes.
2:32:58
I, I do do other things.
2:33:00
So it's not my sole economy, but it's Major chunk of it, the horses, yes.
2:33:07
But it wasn't always so.
2:33:08
You know, it, it took me a while to get there because it's also, you know, you're
2:33:12
not frankly worth paying, you know, until you've been around for a bit, right?
2:33:16
I mean- Absolutely â¦ so your journey a little bit there, I know I said we'd end
2:33:23
the podcast and you'd have to answer them, but could you just give us a rough poss-
2:33:26
because I think, I think it's useful for people when they have a dream and they
2:33:30
think, "Well, I, I can't quite do that.
2:33:31
I can't quite do what Arne did," or, "I can't quite do what Ru did."
2:33:35
And you might say, well, you might not do it to the full extent that they did it
2:33:38
because you might not be as obsessive as them, but you might do it to this degree.
2:33:42
You know, i- i- there, there was a time when you were not
2:33:46
where you are now, right?
2:33:47
Arne Koets: Right.
2:33:47
Right, right.
2:33:48
No, I, I, I was on the streets when I was 16 literally homeless.
2:33:51
But so it's a long story.
2:33:53
So but I I did a deal with a theme park to keep my first horse that I
2:33:59
ever bought so that we could stable it for free by doing shows for them.
2:34:03
I was a gladiator sh- fighter show performer.
2:34:08
And but this is all paying peanuts, so I just- Indeed â¦ I, I just, I just
2:34:12
lived very frugally for a very- Yes
2:34:14
long time.
2:34:15
Yes.
2:34:15
And then from there I went and win- won a couple of tournaments.
2:34:19
So I started going on a tournaments like a jousting spree, which at the time
2:34:25
still paid something that was able to survive off, not really have a living.
2:34:31
That has become much more difficult in the later years, but at the time
2:34:35
it was still available, so we would travel to England in particular and
2:34:37
do the English Heritage Circuit.
2:34:39
Okay.
2:34:39
And then I was more or less asked to apply for a job at the Royal Armouries.
2:34:44
So I was a rider interpreter at the Royal Armouries.
2:34:47
Again, that's a job with a paycheck, but especially the
2:34:50
horses are paid for by the museum.
2:34:52
So I didn't have my own horse at the time.
2:34:54
I rode the horses from the museum.
2:34:55
This has now also become a little bit of a different construct since then.
2:34:59
I then moved back to the Netherlands.
2:35:01
I was headhunted to become a, a staff member at the Dutch Army
2:35:05
Museum, and I did sh- events.
2:35:07
So I did stuff on the side and then I got asked to organize again tournaments.
2:35:14
And then I was a- at the same time asked to come and ride at the Hofvijver.
2:35:17
So then I became- Right â¦ a, a staff member at the Hofvijver, then
2:35:20
I became self-employed and did some events, organization stuff, jousting.
2:35:26
But again, we're talking about- My yearly income started off at 6,000 euros a year,
2:35:33
and then, some years ago, but still.
2:35:36
And then by, by the end of it when I was at the Hoofdschool, I
2:35:41
did, like, 12,000 euros a year.
2:35:43
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, no, I, I agree.
2:35:44
It's, it's n- no one gets into this for the money.
2:35:49
Arne Koets: But- No, if, if you're honest- But- â¦ I was below the poverty line-
2:35:53
Rupert Isaacson: Yes
2:35:53
â¦ Arne Koets: for most of my career.
2:35:55
Rupert Isaacson: Indeed, and I think that's true for mo- for
2:35:56
most people outside the sport world who aren't on sponsorships.
2:36:00
Definitely, yeah.
2:36:01
But, but itâ¦
2:36:01
but what's interesting to me as a journalist, that's the journalist in
2:36:05
me, is the work that you did in museums.
2:36:09
And I think that's, that kind of thing is just really useful for people to
2:36:12
say maybe you do want to do mostly this for your career, but there are some
2:36:18
parallel things you can do alongside it which enhance actually the learning
2:36:23
that you need to do this thing in your career that you could also get a job at.
2:36:27
Yeah â¦ and it's interesting that you, you have that thing on the streets.
2:36:30
I, I spent a bit of time on the streets too, and did not
2:36:33
come from a horsey family.
2:36:34
Did you come from a horsey family?
2:36:36
Arne Koets: Not at all.
2:36:36
Rupert Isaacson: No.
2:36:38
All right.
2:36:39
We're gonna have to go into all this.
2:36:41
And actually, that's exactly what this podcast was supposed to be.
2:36:43
I was supposed to ask you your whole life story, and I just got
2:36:46
totally into nerding out because it was just- â¦ so interesting.
2:36:49
So can we do it again?
2:36:51
Arne Koets: Thank you for so many things.
2:36:53
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'd love to.
2:36:53
Yeah.
2:36:54
Okay.
2:36:54
It's quite enjoyable.
2:36:56
Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
2:36:57
It's, it's, Well, it's one of the great joys in life, is to talk to
2:37:02
interesting people about what interests them when they've really, really,
2:37:09
really, really, really gone for it.
2:37:11
And of course, we also share the same interests.
2:37:13
But, you know, it's a real inspiration how deep you've dived,
2:37:20
and how available you make this to people, is somewhat astonishing.
2:37:27
And I do feel it's a realâ¦
2:37:30
The, the, what, the, the skein that goes through the whole thing
2:37:33
for me is a sort of a kindness.
2:37:36
You take the thing that is designed to kill your fellow man in a lordly way,
2:37:42
and you turn it into something which is about community and community support.
2:37:50
It's beautiful.
2:37:51
It's beautiful.
2:37:52
And I remember the, theâ¦
2:37:53
When, when I first saw the vids of what you were doing, I remember
2:37:57
thinking, "That's beautiful."
2:37:59
And I could just see how the people were interacting with
2:38:01
each other in these videos.
2:38:03
It wasn't a bunch of assholes being assholes.
2:38:07
It wasn't an exclusive thing.
2:38:08
It didn't feel like an exclusive club.
2:38:10
It really feltâ¦
2:38:11
You could s- you could get the vibe immediately, like if you were up for it,
2:38:17
that community was going to welcome you.
2:38:20
So with that in mind, how do people contact you?
2:38:27
Arne Koets: I do have a website.
2:38:28
Www.arnekoets.com.
2:38:31
Yeah.
2:38:31
Rupert Isaacson: English-speaking people won't know how to do Arne Koets.
2:38:34
They-
2:38:35
Arne Koets: Oh, okay
2:38:35
Rupert Isaacson: Can you spell it please?
2:38:36
Arne Koets: It's such a boring name because it just means
2:38:38
carriage in, in, in, in Dutch.
2:38:41
So Arne is A-R-N-E, alpha rome- November Romeo November Echo.
2:38:47
And then Koets is Kilo October Echo Tango Sierra.
2:38:52
Rupert Isaacson: C-O-E-T-S.
2:38:55
Arne Koets: K-O-E-T-S.
2:38:55
Rupert Isaacson: K- sorry, K-O-E-T-S.
2:38:56
K-O-E-T-S, yeah.
2:38:57
A-R-N-E- A-R-N-E â¦ K-O-E-T-S.
2:38:59
K-O-E-T-S.
2:39:02
Dot-
2:39:02
Arne Koets: If you Google that, you'll find loads of stuff.
2:39:04
Rupert Isaacson: Indeed.
2:39:06
And they can, they can contact you for education courses, training.
2:39:12
Arne Koets: Mm-hmm.
2:39:12
Rupert Isaacson: You got books?
2:39:14
Arne Koets: I've n- I've not got books yet, and it's like even my riding master
2:39:18
said, "Everything's already been written.
2:39:19
What do I have to write?"
2:39:20
So, so if he says that, what am, who am I?
2:39:23
I, I've got a couple- Ah,
2:39:23
Rupert Isaacson: but it has to be, it has to be represented for
2:39:25
every generation, as Lagetnia said.
2:39:29
Arne Koets: You might very well think that.
2:39:30
I could not possibly
2:39:32
Rupert Isaacson: comment.
2:39:33
You gotta write a book.
2:39:35
Arne Koets: People keep saying that.
2:39:36
Rupert Isaacson: I'm, I'm gonna make you write a book.
2:39:37
I'm gonna talk to Auntie Richard about it and say, "We need,
2:39:40
we need Arnie's, Arne's book.
2:39:41
We do.
2:39:42
We do.
2:39:42
Come on.
2:39:42
Of course, we need the fucking book."
2:39:45
Arne Koets: I've started on something, but, Yes
2:39:47
we'll, we'll see.
2:39:47
We'll see.
2:39:49
We
2:39:49
Rupert Isaacson: can't all go around reading 15th century German.
2:39:51
We just can't, you know?
2:39:52
So-
2:39:54
Arne Koets: Yeah.
2:39:54
It's, it's one of these things.
2:39:55
Yeah, yeah.
2:39:56
Handwrite- handwritten as well.
2:39:58
It's like Yeah â¦ it's so funny.
2:40:00
So, so, yeah.
2:40:02
I do clinics in Britain.
2:40:04
I do clinics in all of, all of Europe, but also in the US.
2:40:09
I've not been to Canada for a while.
2:40:10
Rupert Isaacson: Where do you go in the US?
2:40:12
Arne Koets: I go to Washington State.
2:40:15
I go to occasionally California.
2:40:18
I go to Oregon.
2:40:19
I go to Virginia.
2:40:20
I go to- Right â¦ Colorado.
2:40:22
Oh, you
2:40:22
Rupert Isaacson: go a lot then, a lot of different places.
2:40:24
Arne Koets: Yeah.
2:40:24
It's usually just one big-
2:40:26
Rupert Isaacson: How often do you go?
2:40:29
Arne Koets: Currently we're trying to do once a year.
2:40:31
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
2:40:31
Arne Koets: But it's it's it's one of these things of how things
2:40:34
develop, as I'm sure you can imagine.
2:40:36
Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
2:40:37
Yes, yes, yes.
2:40:38
In this c- this current- â¦ this current iteration ofâ¦
2:40:43
Indeed.
2:40:44
It's all gotten a little more complex.
2:40:46
Yeah.
2:40:46
If people want to come to your amazing place in Germany-
2:40:49
Mm â¦ how do they do that?
2:40:50
They just email you?
2:40:52
Well,
2:40:52
Arne Koets: the easy, the easiest thing is to join one of the public events
2:40:55
I hold, because they usually haven't come to limits of of numbers yet.
2:41:00
So I do, in the first weekend of May, I do the Rosswochen symposium.
2:41:04
So this also includes academic lectures.
2:41:07
This includes workshops for those that are inventive with horses.
2:41:10
But a lot of people just come on foot to watch, and they can join
2:41:14
into some sword fighting exercises.
2:41:15
We have a tango night.
2:41:17
And just get to know people, watch, ask, talk.
2:41:22
And then there is about 30 riders that I can accommodate in my tiny, tiny, tiny
2:41:27
yard, and those are handpicked people.
2:41:30
But I do try to put in new people that are interesting that we want to come
2:41:35
this time, a few weekends ago, I I flew somebody in from Aus- Argentina just
2:41:40
to connect him to the to the community.
2:41:42
And so we, we try to keep it very international, and, and to, to not just
2:41:48
build my own event, but to help people build their events and their things
2:41:53
and connect the, the, the English and the Norwegians and the Swedes and the
2:41:57
Czechs and the Polish and, and all that.
2:42:00
So that's in May.
2:42:01
That's first week of
2:42:01
Rupert Isaacson: May.
2:42:02
Arne Koets: That's the first weekend of May, yeah.
2:42:04
And- First
2:42:04
Rupert Isaacson: weekend of May.
2:42:05
Arne Koets: Right â¦ first weekend of May is when I traditionally hold this.
2:42:07
And this is just, you know, register.
2:42:10
That's all there is to it.
2:42:12
Yeah.
2:42:12
Usually done over Facebook.
2:42:13
And then I do some, some other events like the Harnischfest,
2:42:17
which is more a fencing thing.
2:42:19
But then I do do week students and stuff like that, but my, my year fills
2:42:23
up rather drastically dramatically.
2:42:26
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
2:42:26
Arne Koets: So people can just write me- usually Facebook is the easiest to get
2:42:31
a hold of me, but they could email me.
2:42:33
And and then provided I have space and time it's more or
2:42:37
less happy for you to turn up.
2:42:40
Can I
2:42:40
Rupert Isaacson: bring my students?
2:42:42
Arne Koets: Yes.
2:42:42
Yeah, yeah.
2:42:42
I mean, I have a, a few rooms, so, it's probably easier if I would
2:42:45
chunk people together in bunches.
2:42:47
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
2:42:47
Like, if I got a group of my people and said, "Hey, let's go to Auntie Anna's.
2:42:51
Let's, you know, for-
2:42:52
Arne Koets: Yeah
2:42:53
â¦ Rupert Isaacson: five days," could, could that be done?
2:42:55
Arne Koets: Yeah, absolutely.
2:42:56
Yeah.
2:42:56
Okay.
2:42:56
Brilliant.
2:42:56
We just need to find a, the date is gonna be the hardest.
2:42:58
Rupert Isaacson: Indeed, indeed.
2:42:59
We might have to book some time out, but nonetheless.
2:43:02
Arne Koets: Yeah.
2:43:03
And I have done a few projects that I, were one-offs, but what I want to do more
2:43:07
of is, for instance, I have a, a very, very amazing friend who's a physiologist
2:43:12
from Australia that I have flown in and I have worked together with a physiologist
2:43:17
with the, the, the mental and physical trauma of the rider in connection
2:43:23
to what that does to their riding.
2:43:25
So we establish what the, what riding movements you should be doing in your
2:43:28
seat, and then we start looking at, okay, what stops you from just doing that,
2:43:32
and then with the physiologist, getting people into a better place mentally as
2:43:37
well as physically to then execute that.
2:43:40
And some of those things were just really interesting deep dives in physiology
2:43:45
and, and the fact that mental trauma and physical trauma are just not separable.
2:43:50
They're one and the same thing.
2:43:52
Rupert Isaacson: Indeed.
2:43:52
No, indeed, indeed.
2:43:53
Arne Koets: It's stuff like that.
2:43:53
So we, we go into deep dives like that as well.
2:43:55
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
2:43:56
Right.
2:43:56
I don't know if you know, we have a, you know, we have three therapeutic
2:44:00
programs Horse Boy method, Movement method, which actually doesn't have
2:44:03
anything to do with horses, and TAKIN, which is where we use training the horse
2:44:07
from the ground as its own therapy.
2:44:10
Uh-huh.
2:44:10
And we do that a lot with veterans and a lot with abuse survivors and a lotâ¦
2:44:13
So basically we say this, we do a lot with horses that need rehab.
2:44:16
So we might say, "This horse was broken in service.
2:44:19
Could you help us please put it back together so that it can serve
2:44:23
that autistic kid over there?"
2:44:24
And in the course of that we help those people put all the training that you
2:44:29
just described into a horse on the ground, and it is its own therapy.
2:44:33
And we fell into that by chance 'cause we ran out of time to train our own
2:44:37
horses in our own therapy program.
2:44:39
So we realized, hold on, we're idiots.
2:44:40
Our clients should be the people doing it, 'cause they're actually perfectly capable.
2:44:44
And the horses really like them because they have, like, no ego.
2:44:47
And it became a thing, you know.
2:44:49
So yeah, I would love to explore the therapeutic stuff.
2:44:53
And so if you're, if you're already diving into that trauma
2:44:57
and resilience piece I'd, I'd love to continue that conversation too.
2:45:02
Arne Koets: I'd love to do.
2:45:05
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
2:45:06
All right, Onno, I, I, I feel like heartbroken to let you go.
2:45:10
It's just like I could have you around all evening.
2:45:12
so here's my formal thank you for coming on the show.
2:45:16
My pleasure.
2:45:16
And I really look forward to the next one
2:45:18
I hope you enjoyed today's conversation as much as I did.
2:45:23
If you did, please help us to make more.
2:45:26
Please like, subscribe, tell a friend, give us a thumbs up.
2:45:31
If you'd like to support us on Patreon, please go to my website, rupertisakson.
2:45:36
com.
2:45:37
And if you'd like to find out about our certification courses with.
2:45:40
autism, education, horsemanship, everyday shamanism.
2:45:44
There's a whole range of cool stuff.
2:45:47
Putting a show together like this is not an easy task.
2:45:51
If you'd like to support us, please consider going to our Patreon page
2:45:57
and showing us some love there.
2:45:59
Even the smallest donation, it really helps us to keep the good content coming.
2:46:05
So go to rupertisakson.
2:46:07
com and click on the Patreon link.
2:46:10
Not to mention our excellent merch.
2:46:12
Please go to our shop and check out some of our really cool
2:46:17
rock and roll themed merch.
2:46:19
T shirts, hoodies, all that sort of thing.
2:46:21
rupertisatson.
2:46:22
com, it's all there.
2:46:23
I can't wait for our next guest and also to meet you there.
2:46:28
In the meantime, remember, live free.
2:46:32
Ride free.