De Knuffy in Austin...at Last!
Story & Photos by Ingrid Edisen
Say
the name “de Kunffy” in dressage circles and you’ve spoken
of a god. Charles de Kunffy’s reputation is huge. There is no other
way to put it. Every Central Texas dressage queen worth her salt in sweat
was present at the clinic organized by Cean Embrey, program chair of the Central
Texas Dressage Society on Oct. 2nd and 3rd. The Dressage Foundation helped
underwrite the costs with a Violet Hopkins dressage educational grant.
De Kunffy said it’s been twenty years since he’d visited Austin
although he’s been to Texas six times this year already. He is a world
traveler, constantly on the go between continents serving as an international
dressage judge and clinician. He’s also authored at least six books
on the subject of dressage and produced several training videos.
After auditing his clinic, I understand why he’s so much in demand.
Born to Hungarian nobility and trained under the best riding masters of Europe
since he was a child, de Kunffy seems at first very formal but his dry wit
and even-handed and disciplined approach to teaching classical methods wins
one over. His eyes missed nothing as the riders coursed the ring in front
of him. If you allowed your fingers to grow lax and didn’t keep a closed
hand, he called you on it; should your toes waver in the 
stirrups,
he gently reminded you to reposition your foot. He ran the clinic like clockwork.
Each half-day riding segment was begun with a thirty-minute lecture on various
aspects of dressage theory. Then as the clinic participants entered the ring,
the rider had to first check in with him so he could inspect tack and instruct
that person on the finer points of seat and position. He did not stray into
over-sentimentalizing the participants; rather, he called the shots as he
saw them in a neutral way.
“Riding is like a science,” he explained in one lecture. “It
is a lifelong process.” He recounted the necessary steps to becoming
a good rider and explained that the top five percent of riders are “good”
and (from what I gathered) the rest of us have to work at it. First you need
good posture, he said. Muscle memory can be good or bad and it’s far
better to reinforce the good muscle memory rather than the bad. After thirty-five
years of riding and training, he is in excellent physical shape himself and
says he’s never had pain from riding because he’s always focused
on riding correctly. After learning correct posture, then one can begin to
apply an aiding system and reinforce good muscle memory. After that one’s
growth as a rider grows geometrically.
The next thing a rider needs is an educated mind–to know how the horse
works in conjunction with a rider’s aids, for instance, and to maintain
emotional control. Only then, he said, can you be “launched as a rider.”
He said at that stage you are much like a newly trained doctor just getting
out of med school.
He decried riders who ride “out of the shoulders” rather than
riding out of an authoritative seat. And it’s “seat to trot,”
not “bump to trot,” he said. “Everywhere I see too much
holding in the front,” he told the audience and reminded us that we
don’t want our mounts to be struggling against the bit. “Contact
is made by the horse, not the rider. Keep the hand static and the horse for
awhile may hammer against the bit and then eventually step through and yield.
When this happens properly, he explained, you will feel a slight emptiness
in your hand, but this is good as it means the horse is stepping through.
“The horse contacts the bit with his hocks,” de Kunffy told us,
“not the mouth. If a rider insists on making the horse use the wrong
muscles, eventually the horse is broken down. A correct topline means all
the other muscles are 
working
correctly.” Bracing and an inverted neck shows resistance and fighting.
A rider is looking for a “draped neck,” he said.
Some consistent corrections he made of most of the participants are that he
shortened stirrup leathers one or two holes for almost everybody. “You
have to earn the holes,” he said. And he constantly reminded riders
to allow their upper arms to come back so they could keep their elbows under
their shoulders. He also loosened the jowl straps on most horses’ bridles
warning riders that no one wanted to block the horses’ windpipes. Another
comment he made was that he did not want to see any open knees. He advised
riders to give their horses room in the reins as they made downward transitions
between gaits.
As is the
desire in any dressage training session, the horse should look more beautiful
at the end and I saw de Kunffy repeat this process over and over again with
the pairs he worked with. Many of the animals started off with a slight unevenness
in their back legs and de Kunffy pointed out that this probably came from
rein lameness which is caused by incorrect riding and training. Yet, after
a session with his tutelage, all the horses were striding correctly and evenly
in back. For head tossers, he advised the rider to maintain a neutral rein
length with the outside rein and grip the pommel with the outside hand and
lean back whenever the horse exhibited this habit and not to make a big fuss
about it. He taught many riders to do a “torso roll” by moving
the torso right, then left, then right in rhythm with the horse’s striding
and soften with the left rein to encourage the horses to lower their heads
and necks. Why the left 
rein?
Because most horses are not as supple on that side and not as willing to step
through with the left hind leg. “They are not ambidextrous,” he
said. This seemed to work like a charm in the walking and trotting work I
witnessed. He explained that it reminded the horse of the authority of the
seat.
When riders performed the shoulder in, he told them that it is the inside
leg that keeps the horse coming and not the outside rein. Many times he asked
riders to relax the outside rein somewhat when doing this movement to free
up the horse.
De Kunffy is based in California these days. His website at www.charlesdekunffy.com
offers more information about his books and videos. Many of his books can
be ordered via Amazon.
