Swedish rider Niklas Lindback is not only a top class eventing rider but also is well known for training young horses. His top horse Mister Pooh won the 6 Year Old Championship at Le Lion d’Angers in 2006, ahead of Michael Jung and La Biosthetique Sam
On his visit to Australia we found out more about the methods Niklas uses for starting young horses and his answers to some questions from attendees at his clinic in Victoria.
What would you do to help a 3 year old horse that doesn’t want to go forward?
It’s difficult without seeing the horse but sometimes it can help to jump a horse that doesn’t want to go forward on the flat. You can even taking it out to the cross country course where there is a big wide open area that has low but wide fences so they have something to aim for.
If it’s a really spooky young horse it might help to have a more experienced horse with you to follow so he’ll really get going then just keep cantering around and pop over a fence every now and again. Once you feel the horse is enjoying it and starting to go, just add in a few more fences but they need to be very simple fences so that they can make mistakes but not hurt themselves. Just keep it very simple, put the neck and nose out in front, a nice soft contact with the mouth so that you don’t leave them totally alone but don’t carry them.
You can do the same in an arena by cantering around in a forward frame, jumping a pole on the ground then maybe a little upright with some canter laps in between. Again, just keep it very simple and maybe have proper ground poles even if it’s a simple cross rail to help them. Don’t force them too much – maybe the first time you go out to a big field just gallop around so he feels like it’s great fun and then next time go over a few jumps. Even if you tell them ‘let’s go this way’ don’t hold them too much or try to lift them. You can often see riders who have a lot of control with their reins but the horse isn’t really in front of the leg. Always think that you want to the neck to be long and the body to be short – people often do it the other way around with a short neck and long body because they try to control everything through the reins. The reins should be fine tuning – you should be able to turn from your position, your seat and legs and just fine tune it with your reins. If their neck is out they can adjust more easily as they use it for their balance
My young horses may not look very schooled because they trot and canter around on a long rein but they are moving forward which is the most important thing. Always keep them happy – a happy horse will do anything for you whereas a grumpy horse certainly won’t carry you across a huge fence that’s for sure! Sometimes three year olds go through growing stages and lose the plot completely – their balance goes all over the place and you just need to leave them alone for a little while through that phase until their growing settles down
You do see young horses that have been ‘carried’ a lot by their owner’s hands and even in the paddock the horse is stuck in that frame. Horses need to learn how to lose their balance so they can learn how to get it back without losing confidence. You can help them a little bit when you’re riding them but you must always let them out again and keep repeating that. Let him get out of balance, help him adjust and then let him find his own way back into balance. Of course you can show him the way, help him a little bit but you mustn’t try to control the horse’s balance because then they aren’t really carrying themselves. Until they are balanced it’s hard for them to really move forward so the best way to encourage them is to ride out on a big field on a loose rein and let them go. They may run off a little bit underneath you but if your field is big enough just let them run and eventually they will get tired and come back to you
What if they buck during that?
The problem here is that the rider expects and maybe anticipates the bucking because obviously you don’t want that to happen and it worries the rider. Always have a neck strap on your young horse and hold onto the neck strap with long reins so that you can let him out and even let him buck a few times. Obviously don’t let him go crazy but it’s not a big deal if he does it in fun a few times – if you’re worried about your own position not being very secure, do it heading up a hill and they’ll soon run out of steam!
If they are bucking it’s always better to keep them moving along - if they’re moving at a reasonable pace they find it harder to do anything really nasty whereas when they slow down they can easily buck you off. Always have a neck strap, a good helmet and back protector and then let him steam off a little bit, let him feel a bit free. Any young animal needs to run around and go a bit crazy sometimes – you can see it even in dogs and young calves in the fields – they just need to get it out of their system. Let them have fun and not feel restricted – just make sure that you stay safe during it.
Hat - tick, back protector, tick but a neck strap would be great to add to this picture just in case something went wrong
Sometimes the rider needs to have the mentality of jumping when you do flat work with young horses. When you do dressage training with young horses, try and have the feeling of preparing to jump because then you will have the horse in a good balance. You wouldn’t go to a cross country fence randomly, you’d try and prepare for it and approach it in the best balance you can and sometimes it’s good to actually put poles throughout your dressage test practise – it gives you a good check on how balanced your horse is. Without the pole you might think that the balance is pretty good but as soon as soon as you put a pole or little cavaletti in there you get an instant feedback as to if their balance is good enough or not. With young horses it’s also a question of keeping them motivated and the poles help keep them interested instead of just going round in circles
What keeps you motivated?
Well, I’m an eventing rider so it isn’t the dressage! It is of course the cross country because of the connection you get with the horse. The connection with the horse on cross country is unbeatable - there’s just nothing like it. The feeling when everything goes the way you want it is fantastic but of course sometimes it doesn’t always go the way you want it to but I don’t let that upset me too much.
It isn’t just about jumping the fences because for me I don’t get that feeling with show jumping but spending nearly 12 minutes out there on a high level cross country course with your horse is what makes it so special. You get so much feedback from the horse, even when you have a few bad jumps you say to yourself, ‘Okay we need to nurse this back together and give him a few really good jumps’ and then you feel him grow again. You can really feel how they’re thinking.
Niklas and Cendrillon leading the dressage at Boekelo 2013
Sometimes you have to be careful when you’re in that zone as you want to push it, especially when you want to win. It happened to me at Boekelo in 2013 on Cendrillon when we were in the lead after the dressage; there were 100 starters so they were all chasing me and I wanted to make the time on cross country. I wasn’t sure if the horse was ready for it as she had only done a few starts at that level but I decided to move it up a notch and go for it. We did start well but then she got a little too brave – the horse started to think that nothing can go wrong. I know that sometimes I can be a bit the same so I have certain markers on the cross country where I say to myself and the horse ‘Okay, here is where we start over again’. Not that I pull the horse up but mentally I start over again and take a little hold back on the horse because it’s just too easy when you everything is going well and you want to be inside the time at big events to push too hard.
Obviously if you want to win you have to be fast so sometimes you take a little bit of a risk and if you’re successful with this most of the time you can get a little too brave and start to think that nothing can go wrong, especially when the adrenalin kicks in. That’s when you need to mentally adjust and on this occasion I didn’t do that. There was a table to a skinny that we approached too bravely and, even though I realised it and really tried to get it back, it was too late and the horse had switched off from me. Nothing really bad happened – we had a big fall, neither of us was injured but it is all part of the learning curve; funnily enough, on that occasion my plan was to do my ‘mental hold’ the fence after that, before the water jump which had been causing problems. I think that the horse learned from it but we’ll see next season
What type of horse do you like?
I usually like a little bit of thoroughbred blood in my horses but sometimes you can find a warmblood that has a good canter and is easy off the ground - those ones can go a long way. I used to just ride pure thoroughbreds and I really love them because you’ve got the speed but in Sweden it’s very difficult to find a good jumping thoroughbred. In Sweden, in fact probably most countries, they are just breeding for them to run fast and the racehorse trainers don’t mind if they are a bit crazy because they think that helps them to run fast which I think is a load of rubbish.
The really top racehorses, the ones that are good at their job, certainly aren’t crazy, they are usually really relaxed – they know they job, they focus on it and afterwards they are very calm and relaxed – you can see when they walk back to their stable. They conserve their energy and if you can combine their speed and sensitivity with good training and schooling then you have a really good horse. You can’t try and dominate this sort of horse or be a dictator in its training but when you school it to be obedient and happy in its work then that’s when you get a really great horse that you can get the full potential from. Regardless of the breed, you want a relaxed horse, especially for jumping as I think that the more relaxed I can get a horse the better it will jump, whether on cross country or show jumping. If a horse feels nervous or pressured, he is less aware it is of poles coming down but when a horse is super relaxed he feels it when he hardly touches a rail so I believe that the more relaxed a horse is the better he will jump and be more careful.
Having said that, horses are like people and some are naturally more careful than others. Some horses are temperamental and some are more laid back and the same applies to riders too. It’s important that the horse and rider suit each other; we are all different and just because a horse doesn’t suit me doesn’t mean it’s a bad horse and it’s the same with any other rider. I don’t think there is any rider that is completely perfect for every horse but there are lots of riders that can ride any horse because they are very open minded, they listen to the horse and adjust themselves to it. Mark Todd for example is one of those riders who can adjust to any horse, maybe he’s not perfect for every horse but he can get a lot out of every horse because he’s so good at adjusting his way of riding. That’s what I think a good rider does
Some riders just want one type of horse and if a horse doesn’t meet that expectation they’ll move on to the next horse until they find it. I guess everyone is doing that when they are looking for horses – they are trying to find the perfect horse for themselves. But sometimes, during that time of looking for the perfect horse, you find a few that are maybe not perfect but are really good and you can make them even better by adjusting to them and hopefully make them into stars.
Mark Todd can get a lot out of every horse because he’s so good at adjusting his way of riding
