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