Training Tips from Lisa Wilcox: The Horse Comes First By Nan Meek

“The better our seat, the better our horses understand us.", “We need to be hard on ourselves, not on our horses.”, “We should carry ourselves like ballerinas.”

She’s eminently quotable, as the preceding words of wisdom demonstrate, and she’s outstandingly qualified, as her international record speaks for itself. She’s Lisa Wilcox, and she’s very clear that the horse comes first.
At clinic after clinic, Lisa’s focus on putting the horse first permeated every word she spoke and every aid she demonstrated. Whether she was riding a name-brand competition stallion, instructing amateur riders, or coaching established icons of the dressage community, it was crystal clear that for Lisa, the horse comes first.

Life-Long Learning

All the respected dressage masters, in all the respected dressage books, present dressage as a life-long learning experience, in which we will never reach perfection although we constantly strive to attain it.

Lisa wholeheartedly agrees with them, and laughingly said, “We will never learn dressage in this lifetime, so let’s stop getting frustrated!” At one clinic, she addressed some professionals’ fear of losing clients if they saw their trainer being corrected by another trainer, and commented, “I would be ashamed of clients like that. We all need to continue to learn, and to learn from each other. That’s something we need to do to improve ourselves and improve our sport.”

Know Your Horse

Lisa rode one of the horses specifically to help the owner resolve a serious dilemma: Her horse had been pushed too far, too fast by a previous trainer, and was having problems. To such a degree, in fact, that she was seriously contemplating selling him. “He’s a lovely horse,” Lisa commented, and commended the owner for asking for help when she felt she needed it.
Lisa continued, “I don’t care where you are, you know your horse better than anybody. If what’s happening is not right, you stop it. Nobody is God. There’s one way to tell if your horse is happy – you look into his eyes and see his soul. He will let you know.” And he did. After two days of Lisa’s patient work to re-establish relaxation and trust, the owner was able to get back on her horse and reproduce the same results. Anyone who’s ever struggled to find the answer to a well-loved horse’s issues can relate to this happy outcome.

Patience in Training

Patience is a virtue, we’ve heard time and again, but as Lisa made clear, it’s also an essential training technique. “It takes time to process and understand,” she said. “We learn and feel new things gradually, so be patient.” Her comment applied equally to horse and rider, and working with a young horse and his rider, she advised, “What a horse’s body can do, his mind may not be able to do for a long time. Take your time.”

While Lisa advised patience, she also recommended being hard on ourselves, not our horses. Quoting her trainer, the 29-year veteran of the Spanish Riding School, Ernst Hoyos, Lisa passed along these words to train by: “As Ernst says, ‘Torture yourself, not your horse’.”

Quiet Aids

Quiet hands also had Lisa’s attention. “The quieter our hands, the quieter he is in his mouth,” she advised. Busy hands can be a bad habit, or they can be the result of a body that’s out of control, or both. “We have to be able to control our bodies so we don’t interfere with the horse,” Lisa instructed. “We want to use the quietest of aids – that’s what it’s all about.”

Lisa emphasized that paying attention to our bodies, focusing on how we use our aids, and above all, thinking about what we’re doing every step of the way is critically important. She painted a memorable picture when she said, “The most important part of your seat is your brain – as long as you are on your horse it should be functioning!”


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