Transcript
Speaker: Welcome back, everybody.
Speaker: It's episode nine, and today I'm diving into Boshayism.
Speaker: I am sorry I had a couple week hiatus.
Speaker: I do own a cleaning business that I do during the week, and it's my main job, and I'm a one-man show.
Speaker: And so this is just kind of on the side in my extra time, and I haven't had a lot of that.
Speaker: So anyways, hopefully I'll be able to get back to a more consistent release schedule for these episodes.
Speaker: Anyways, today I, like I said, I'm diving into Bochetism and I'm going to say up front, I'm really sorry if I am mispronouncing any words.
Speaker: This is a French trainer and all of his methods and stuff had to be translated from French and I'm probably going to butcher a lot of them, so I'm sorry.
Speaker: Anyways,
Speaker: He was a French trainer, and I originally found out about him from this woman.
Speaker: I think her name is Andrea Mills, and Mills Consilient Horsemanship is her page that I follow on Facebook.
Speaker: But she's a Western writer, and she just kept talking about...
Speaker: Boschism and all these like methods she was trying, the flexions and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker: And that is kind of what sparked my interest to look into him.
Speaker: And I just, I found the book Ray Sine explains Bosch.
Speaker: And so that's where the majority of this episode, the research was done from.
Speaker: So if you're interested in reading that, diving deeper, again, it's Ray Sine explains Bosch written by Jean-Claude Ray Sine.
Speaker: So who is Francois Boucher?
Speaker: He was a French trainer, mainly from the 1830s to 1850s, but he was kind of mysterious, intriguing, very controversial.
Speaker: And he was just, he had learned the like French classical way of training and he wanted to take a more scientific approach to see if he could find a better way to train dressage horses.
Speaker: He continued to research and develop his method throughout his entire life.
Speaker: And he would discover some things.
Speaker: things with horses, training methods with horses that were used from other systems that he found worked, but there are also many that he does the complete opposite of like the French classical and German classical training.
Speaker: And so he was constantly evolving his method.
Speaker: So legend has it that Bechet could supposedly bring any horse to Piaf, Passage, and flying one Tempe changes in only two and a half months.
Speaker: In France, he became known to the general public because he could supposedly do pirouettes on three legs.
Speaker: He could passage backwards, canter backwards, and all these bizarre things.
Speaker: But France's equestrian community started becoming split into two camps.
Speaker: There were ones who admired Bochet, and then there was the other camp who was anti-Bochetist.
Speaker: So believe what you want out of all of that.
Speaker: I kind of take it with a grain of salt.
Speaker: I don't know if he actually did all those things, but it just kind of seems like something that has been exacerbated through like the rumor mill or time, et cetera.
Speaker: But maybe he did do all those things.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: So he was tested a lot.
Speaker: Sometimes people would just give him difficult horses that nobody else could train.
Speaker: Other times he would be challenged with other riders, officers, and cavalrymen and given weeks or a month or so to train them to train horses.
Speaker: So he was constantly being tested by the French equestrian community.
Speaker: His method was brought to the U.S. mainly because of James Phyllis, who was a student of a student of Boucher.
Speaker: And he wrote a book on training here in the U.S. that uses many of the same boucherism principles.
Speaker: The main difference between Phyllis' training and Boucher was that Phyllis wanted to achieve forward movement first and foremost versus Boucher, who was complete opposite.
Speaker: And movement was a result, not a means, which we'll get into later.
Speaker: And the U.S. Cavalry School and the Russian Imperial Cavalry School both use Phyllis' teaching, so they kind of both have influence from Beauches.
Speaker: Boshay had an accident while training a horse later on in his life where a gas chandelier fell on him and he no longer could ride and had no strength in his legs.
Speaker: But during this time is when Boshay developed his second manner, which in some respects looks almost like a complete denial of the first one.
Speaker: We'll get into that a little bit later too.
Speaker: But other people say that he was just evolving and kind of moving in that direction the entire time.
Speaker: He was not known to be the best writer, but he was a really good teacher.
Speaker: And his teachings were very clear and logical, and they didn't have any contradictions like much of his writing does.
Speaker: And so it's often, if you're trying to study his method, it's better to study his pupils, is what they say.
Speaker: And plus there's a translation problem in English.
Speaker: if you don't speak French.
Speaker: And so some of his students that have books include, and I'm going to butcher these names, I'm sorry, General Lahaut, General Favreau de Kerbrick, and like I mentioned earlier, James Phyllis.
Speaker: So let's get into his training method.
Speaker: If I had to summarize his main training method and goals, it would be creating balance by working the horse part by part to create a soft and supple horse with as little aids as possible.
Speaker: And so, Bechetism has three main points that differ in his than the other classical training methods.
Speaker: One, balance comes prior to movement.
Speaker: Two, balance can be obtained and therefore improved at a halt.
Speaker: And three, mobility of the lower jaw, which Bochet calls lightness, is a guarantee for balance and action.
Speaker: So the entire goal is balance and action.
Speaker: You get that without movement at a halt by mobility of the jaw.
Speaker: So he believes that resistance and tension from the horse comes from imbalance.
Speaker: This imbalance is partly due to how they're built.
Speaker: We all know that the majority of the mass of the horse is on the front end.
Speaker: And then that imbalance is also exacerbated by the rider and their aides.
Speaker: So to oppose the rider and the aides, the horse has a tendency to stiffen, which contracts the forehand, including the neck, pole, and jaw.
Speaker: So then as you start increasing from a halt to a walk, trot, or canter, the increased speed will only cause more stiffness.
Speaker: So Bochet's method to fix this is to begin at a halt and in hand.
Speaker: And only once you can master, he uses flexions to get the softness and mobility in the body.
Speaker: And only once you have mastered those flexions on the ground, then you can move the rider on their back, but at the halt.
Speaker: And then once you've mastered at the halt, then you can proceed to the walk, trot, etc.
Speaker: His method consists of working the horse part by part from...
Speaker: methods like flexions and movements.
Speaker: And then once you can move each part independently, then you rejoin it all together in an exercise that he calls a fe d'ensemble, which I'm probably butchering that again.
Speaker: But anyways, the idea is to make the horse light in the front end and ready to move in any direction so that they're ready for whatever the rider is going to ask of them and any movement that could be possible.
Speaker: Another unique principle of his training is that an aide must quit as soon as its purpose has been fulfilled.
Speaker: And so the aides are only used to start, restore, and transform of movement or gait, but they're never used to maintain.
Speaker: And so you'll see any of his students or him that rode, they always rode with looped reins.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: They're never going to pull up the reins and make contact with the mouth unless they need to change the movement or quality of a gait.
Speaker: Another point that I found interesting from his method is what he calls separation of force from movement.
Speaker: So say a horse starts resisting or there's tension building.
Speaker: He's going to stop.
Speaker: He's not going to continue.
Speaker: If this is happening at the trot, he's not going to continue and try to fix it at the trot.
Speaker: He's going to take a bed down to the walk or halt.
Speaker: He might try to yield the jaw.
Speaker: Maybe he just has complete inactivity lasting several minutes if necessary.
Speaker: But you're not going to try to restore it within that movement.
Speaker: He's going to bring it back down and restore it when the horse can pay attention better.
Speaker: And it's going to be more clear and concise communication with your horse at a slower speed.
Speaker: So what are these flexions?
Speaker: This is kind of the backbone of his method and what kind of sets him apart from the classical training methods.
Speaker: So in the classical training method, you would work the horse as a whole and you're kind of trusting mother nature to select which specific muscles are needing to be suppled or strengthened at different times for different movements.
Speaker: But Beauches' method is the complete opposite.
Speaker: So he's choosing to supple the horse on his own part by part.
Speaker: And he mainly goes in this order.
Speaker: And I need to explain something, too.
Speaker: He has what is called the first manner and the second manner.
Speaker: First is like the OG version of his training method.
Speaker: Second manner is like 2.0.
Speaker: So he would start with flexing the jaw and the neck, first on foot and then on horseback.
Speaker: Then he would move the shoulders around by rotating them around the haunches.
Speaker: In the second manner, he did this on foot.
Speaker: And then in the first, he did it on horseback.
Speaker: Then he moves to the haunches by rotating them around the shoulders.
Speaker: In the first manner, he did this on horseback, and on the second, he did this on foot.
Speaker: And those aren't exactly important unless you're diving really deep into it.
Speaker: And finally, he would do lumbar flexions mainly by doing rainbacks.
Speaker: So then he would reunite the entire body by what we talked about earlier, the effe d'ensemble, which we will dive a little deeper into here in just a minute.
Speaker: But these flexions were always done very slowly, very progressively, and very softly in order to invite the horse into flexing instead of just forcing it.
Speaker: And that's really important since the main aim and goal is relaxation.
Speaker: So you're never squeezing the reins left then right, right then left.
Speaker: That's kind of the German style where you're working the pole directly.
Speaker: Instead, you're trying to invite the horse to do it and soften that jaw
Speaker: on their own.
Speaker: So how do you know if you flex the jaw correctly?
Speaker: The flexion of the jaw should entail the mobility of the tongue and an up and down movement, making if they have a double bridle in, it'll make the bits jingle.
Speaker: So if you can get the relaxation of the jaw and the mobility of the tongue, then the horse's pole is going to automatically be relaxed as well.
Speaker: Opposed to if the horse is locking his pole and neck and he will then just ignore the rider and he's going to disengage his hind end and he's basically going to do whatever he wants.
Speaker: He may have a classical headset, but it's always going to be a little bit too low and not in a relaxed manner.
Speaker: He also warns that as soon as the jaw yields, you have to release your hands because the horse will clench his teeth naturally as a precaution against the possible abrasiveness of the rider's hand.
Speaker: And he's going to be reluctant to abandon that defense.
Speaker: So you have to immediately release your hands so that the horse gets that instantaneous automatic reward and they're not going to become defensive and clenching the bit.
Speaker: Now, his method also differs, and he does a lot of work with the double bridle earlier versus just regular snaffle.
Speaker: He says that it helps with the mobility of the jaw and relaxing of the jaw more than a snaffle.
Speaker: You can do it in a snaffle.
Speaker: It just requires a lot more patience.
Speaker: So I just thought that was interesting.
Speaker: He kind of flips it.
Speaker: He prefers to start with a double bridle and then move on to the snaffle.
Speaker: Obviously, you have to know what you're doing, though, with that double bridle.
Speaker: So let's move on to dive deeper into the Efe d'Ensemble.
Speaker: Now, the way that he describes this that really made the most sense to me is this is, if you think of like a cat, when they're getting ready to jump onto a counter, they've got all their four legs closer and together, and they're kind of got their back arched and they're hunching down and all their muscles are loaded, ready to jump and move in any direction.
Speaker: So that's his goal with this Fade Ensemble.
Speaker: And it's the ideal way to create a horse that's ready for anything.
Speaker: And so the horse is being trained to change your center of gravity to the smallest point so that they can transfer weight on any leg at any given time in any direction.
Speaker: And he says forces a lot.
Speaker: Mainly when he says forces, he's just meaning either propulsion, restraint, or retropulsion.
Speaker: So just think of forces as movement.
Speaker: I have to write down a key of all these things that he says that we don't really say anymore.
Speaker: It's just like an outdated way of speaking.
Speaker: And so I just tried to modernize him a little bit.
Speaker: Hopefully it's a little more easier to understand.
Speaker: It certainly was for me.
Speaker: So again, this is done at a halt, but he says it's not a dead immobility, but it's a dynamic one.
Speaker: And so you're just bringing their center of gravity back so they can move off at any leg that they need to.
Speaker: He also says that this is a way to test your flexions.
Speaker: So if you haven't done your flexions correctly and one part of the horse isn't supple enough, then it's going to show in this effect ensemble.
Speaker: This also teaches the horses a couple of things.
Speaker: So the rider's legs are now going to be, you're going to be teaching them to disengage the hind legs rather than the normal putting your leg on and it's engaging their hind legs.
Speaker: It's also going to teach the horse to bring his legs underneath him.
Speaker: So when you first ask for the afe d'ensemble, at a halt, the horse will open his frame up.
Speaker: But since the hand is then stopping it and forbidding that, there's going to be a fight in the horse.
Speaker: The horse's muscles will tighten, he'll hollow his back, and he'll probably hold his breath.
Speaker: Then he will yield and close the front end and the hind end and the shoulders will overhang the front feet.
Speaker: So think of a horse standing on like a pedestal.
Speaker: It should be the feet are closer together.
Speaker: Shoulders are going to be overhanging.
Speaker: Now, he also focuses a lot on the rider because the rider's hand is going to be the most common cause of a horse's imbalance.
Speaker: And so he is a real stickler about position and aids.
Speaker: And he says, good horsemanship is a riding of lightness.
Speaker: So one should abide by the principle of release, separation, and moderation of the aids and be served by a good position.
Speaker: And one thing he talks about over and over again is release of the aids as soon as they have been obeyed.
Speaker: So the aids should start, restore, and transform.
Speaker: They should never maintain.
Speaker: He says the hands and legs should be used separately as often as possible.
Speaker: So you shouldn't put your legs on and they're not going to bump into the refusal of the hands because that's just going to erase what you just taught him in the Afei d'Ensemble.
Speaker: And the age should work out of quality and not quantity.
Speaker: The position should proceed from pliability along with correct position of the torso, so the hips forward, and almost total relaxation of the thighs and calves.
Speaker: If the rider rides like this, the horse will acquire balance, self-impulsion, and self-carriage on their own.
Speaker: So he made a lot of focus on the rider and how correctly they should be riding.
Speaker: Now let's dive into a little bit of the difference between the first and second manner.
Speaker: So like I said earlier, the first manner is his OG training method.
Speaker: And then once he got hurt, that's when he really started working on the 2.0 version.
Speaker: And so the first manner was mainly about the fade ensemble that we just talked about.
Speaker: And this was a tool for stability.
Speaker: He used it at a halt to calm a horse, or you could use it in motion to restore the regularity of a gate.
Speaker: I did try to look up writers doing this Efe d'Ensemble and Olivera Stables.
Speaker: He does a ton of the Efe d'Ensemble and motion.
Speaker: So if you're curious, go take a look at his YouTube page.
Speaker: But the first manner was mainly about the Efe d'Ensemble, and then in the second manner, it would lose its prominence.
Speaker: He would still use it to regain regularity of the gates if it was lost, but it would be occasional, momentarily, and followed by a total release of the eights.
Speaker: In the second manner, he introduces a new concept of hands without legs, legs without hand.
Speaker: And he also gives three new uses to the hand.
Speaker: So in the first manner, the use of the hand was to obtain the right division of weight between the four legs.
Speaker: And then in the second, he adds that the hands are going to restore harmony of the gates or movement.
Speaker: to reposition the horse to be ready for a change of direction, and then finally to depart into canter and during flying changes.
Speaker: The legs without hand, hand without legs creates calm, sensitive horses since the aids are no longer erasing each other's conditioning.
Speaker: The hands are only used for down transitions, which he shortly after mentions using hands for direction and transferring of weight.
Speaker: And then legs are used for up transitions.
Speaker: And then when there's no need for modification of the speed or movement or gait or the direction of the horse, the aids will remain silent.
Speaker: And so in the second manner, hands without legs, legs without hands is always priority number one.
Speaker: And then the efe d'ensemble should be used only when needed in order to prevent a fight or to make the animal feel the power of the person, the rider.
Speaker: Hands without legs, legs without hand applied to any transition from one speed, one gait, one movement to another speed, gait, or movement.
Speaker: So it's basically just a clear, simple, concise use of eights and never doing them together because it's going to create confusion for the horse.
Speaker: In the first manner, Bechet entrusts the rider's legs to disengage the hind legs to create propulsion and engage the hind quarters to create balance.
Speaker: But in the second manner, he entrusts that the hand is going to start engaging the hind quarters by way of lifting the withers, and the legs will be tasked with animating the horse, so disengaging the hind legs.
Speaker: The other main difference I saw between the first and second manner is the headset, which he calls the ram in the air.
Speaker: But it changes from being, he used to use it as a tool to achieve balance in the first manner.
Speaker: But in the second manner, he discovered that the horse will put himself in the correct headset if they're balanced.
Speaker: And so he decided that you can't ask or force the headset on the horse, that if they're in balance, they will automatically set their head on the vertical.
Speaker: So how does Boscheism differ from other training methods?
Speaker: So he talks about the horse's anatomy has two different sets of muscles.
Speaker: He describes the first set being for locomotion, so they're moving the horse forward.
Speaker: And then the second one is going to be used to flex joints, and there's like fulcrums that they're moving.
Speaker: And the entire goal of dressage is the enhancement of the gaits of a horse.
Speaker: So to train a dressage horse basically is to perfect and fortify the second set of muscles, so the fulcrum muscles, in order to allow it to give the locomotion set its optimal chances of full expression.
Speaker: And so the classical dressage training systems work the second set, the fulcrum muscles, indirectly by putting to work the first set of muscles, the locomotion muscles, by a series of exercises articulated in a very carefully studied progression.
Speaker: So think of the training scale.
Speaker: You must start with rhythm, regularity, and tempo, basically forward movement first in an organized manner, and then you're going to proceed up the training scale and add more onto that.
Speaker: But forward propulsion is always first.
Speaker: Boscheism, by contrast, tries to work the second set directly, so he's flexing those fulcrum muscles directly without movement at the beginning of training.
Speaker: Movement is the enemy, or it's at least a nuisance, something which unnecessarily complicates the rider's task and the horse's comprehension of what the rider is asking of him.
Speaker: In Bechet's second manner, he will coin the expression separation of force from movement.
Speaker: And this is to stress the advantage of frequent and short periods of rest in the course of a working session.
Speaker: So he always begins with the efe d'ensemble at first, at the halt, to learn the balance of the forces moving that center of gravity.
Speaker: He will then introduce movement as with an eyedropper to
Speaker: drop by drop, always controlling with the utmost care the side effects of movement.
Speaker: So if he starts movement and there's an issue, he's going to be able to go back easily and fix that, know where it's at, and fix it.
Speaker: Beauches believes that there is less resistance at the halt since all four legs are anchored into the ground and he can divide the horse's weight better and make them more balanced.
Speaker: It also breaks down the lesson into easier to understand task and clear and simple communication with the horse.
Speaker: Now, the purpose of the Efe d'Ensemble is to close in the horse, which is going to create a collected horse.
Speaker: And Bechet always wanted collection at once.
Speaker: So at the halt, he will prevent the horse from moving even one of his limbs at his own will.
Speaker: This is one of the main goals of the Efe d'Ensemble,
Speaker: to establish total subservience of the horse.
Speaker: So Bechet's aim is to suppress any initiative of the part of the horse to replace what he calls the instinctive forces with harmonized ones.
Speaker: Now, most riders want the horse ahead of the hand, but Boucher wants them behind the hand and ahead of the legs.
Speaker: And only with this condition will the animal be under the total dominance of his rider because a horse ahead of the hand is behind the legs.
Speaker: which he then evades your actions from both ends.
Speaker: And he describes behind the bit being defined as dropping the bit in disgust and with a gaping but stiff mouth, so a stiff jaw.
Speaker: He's not relaxed.
Speaker: And he's then going to refuse to move forward and listen to your eights.
Speaker: He also differs majorly from the classical systems in the sense that lightness is what he's trying to achieve.
Speaker: And so lightness is the absence of resistance of weight and strength to the rider's hand and resistance of inertia to his leg.
Speaker: So in other words, if the rider has to afford any physical effort, the horse is not light.
Speaker: And lightness specifically of the mouth means that the lower jaw gives and is proof that the horse is relaxed.
Speaker: Once the horse is relaxed, the horse is light altogether and the resistance and tension has disappeared.
Speaker: So that differs greatly from the German riding where they're wanting the horse to lean into the bed and have a feel in contact with the rider's hand.
Speaker: Boscheism tries by all means to destroy that.
Speaker: He wants no weight in the hands at all.
Speaker: So those were my main takeaways and what I learned from the Race and A Explains Beauches book.
Speaker: The one thing that stood out to me, I just love how he uses little to no contact, the teaching and hand first before getting on and trying to teach a horse something.
Speaker: I like how he stresses the importance of the quiet aids and only use the aids when they're absolutely necessary and
Speaker: He breaks down the training into individual parts, which I love, and trying to train at the halt or the walk first before moving on.
Speaker: I definitely have a lot more to learn about the flexions.
Speaker: If this is a reliable and effective training method, I haven't...
Speaker: Tried any of it on my horse because at the moment, the bridle and bidding is a bit of an issue for us that we're working on.
Speaker: But also, I need to learn how to have the correct biomechanics and use of my aids before I try this on him.
Speaker: I definitely think it would be fun to play around with.
Speaker: I definitely have found a few resources on YouTube that show some of the flexions.
Speaker: There's Patrick King, who I think practices Boscheism.
Speaker: And then, like I said earlier, Oliver Stables on YouTube, he shows some of the stuff.
Speaker: And then the Mills Consilient Horsemanship on Facebook.
Speaker: She's a great example of it, too.
Speaker: And it certainly seems to work for her.
Speaker: She talks about problem horses and how her training has evolved over the time.
Speaker: Very interesting follow.
Speaker: But I would love to hear feedback from you all.
Speaker: One, to see if I...
Speaker: even analyze the Boucherism method properly.
Speaker: But also if you've found parts of it work, parts of it don't, or any other resources that you found for learning more about them, I'd be happy to pass that on to you all on my Facebook or Instagram as well.
Speaker: But also, like, have you competed using this method?
Speaker: How did it go?
Speaker: I'm not sure how useful it would be in modern dressage and how it would be scored since I don't think the judges would really reward you for having looped reins.
Speaker: But it would be interesting to hear your stories.
Speaker: And I wanted to leave you with this little excerpt from the book that Racine says on how to become a boucherist.
Speaker: So he says, practice a writing style abiding by the style of release, separation, and moderation of the aids.
Speaker: And as far as the training of the horse is concerned, it is to refuse ever any compromise with the balance of the horse at the cost of possibly limiting one's demands in the beginning as concerns movement.
Speaker: But I just think that's a really good point to leave it on, kind of wraps up the summary of Boscheism.
Speaker: So I will see you all next time.
Speaker: Until then, train hard, ride easy.
