The German Training Scale (GTS) is often used as the guide for modern competition dressage training. People use it as their bible in their travels to produce the dressage megastar. Most successful competitors admit to using the GTS as the backbone of their training and instructors all over the world teach and adhere to its principles. So given the importance and influence that the GTS has on modern dressage training, it seems practicable that it be examined from time to time to see if it still holds up well.
The GTS comprises 6 basic elements rhythm, relaxation, impulsion, straightness, contact, and collection. Each is taught in order because it is believed that each is built on the foundation of the earlier elements. So for example straightness is only achievable if the horse already offers good quality rhythm, relaxation, and impulsion. Likewise, collection only becomes possible when a horse has a good handle on the other five elements.
It is highly desirable that any horse (dressage educated or not) should be able to exhibit rhythm, relaxation, impulsion, straightness, contact, and collection. They are noble pursuits that have purpose and merit no matter what discipline you wish to travel with your horse.
But I also believe the GTS is not a miracle formula or perfect path to great results. Some trainers believe that GTS is the foundation of good training. It isn’t. It is not the foundation. If the GTS is to be of any value it must stand on more fundamental elements of what I call the three pillars of training – focus, clarity, and softness. For the GTS to be effective in training, each element of it must exhibit focus, clarity, and softness. Without focus, clarity, and softness the GTS is an empty shell that will have the horse never reaching its potential and failing prematurely as it approaches the higher levels of training.
So what are focus, clarity, and softness?
At first thought, focus seems obvious. We automatically think of a horse’s mind being on our aids. But this is only part of it. Not only do we need to have our horse’s mind with us, but we also need to be able to direct its mind elsewhere. We need it to listen to us, but also to send its thoughts elsewhere to create the movement we want.
Just like us, a horse thinks about what it is about to do before it does it. It thinks it is thirsty so its mind goes to the trough before the feet take it there. A horse does not suddenly find itself standing at the trough and wonder how it got there. It knows how it got there. It felt thirsty and the brain ordered the feet to the water trough. It thinks it wants to go out to the gate of the arena so a horse’s thought gets stuck at the gate. The feet resist moving away from the gate and hurry when heading towards the gate. When we try to separate a horse’s feet from its thoughts we get resistance because a horse is always trying to do what its mind is telling it. But when what a horse is thinking about doing and what we are trying to get it to do are the same, there is no resistance. So good focus is not only about having a horse listen to us but being able to direct its focus to do other things too.
Clarity is also fairly obvious. It means when we ask a horse to do something it is absolutely clear what we are asking – zero confusion. It is my experience that people are often poor at being clear with a horse. They expect a horse to know something just because they know it. Most people struggle to break down a task into tiny steps that can make sense to a horse. When teaching a horse a task people see the final picture in their mind and not the process needed to get there.
Clarity is the horse knowing the answer to the question. Knowing the answer gives the horse comfort and confidence and emotional comfort. A clarity of clarity creates anxiety, resistance, and mental turmoil.
The third element of the three pillars is softness. Softness comes about because the quality of focus and clarity are strong. It is the “love child” of focus and clarity.
Softness is quite an elusive concept for most people and it is often confused with lightness to the aids. But let me clear up the difference between softness and lightness. Lightness is a physical response to the aids whereas softness is an emotional response to the aids. You can have lightness without softness, but you can’t have softness without lightness.
In softness, there is an emotional calm. It’s what I call a quiet mind. It does not mean a dull mind or a sleepy mind. It means a ready mind prepared for what is about to come, but there is a calm okay-ness about the mind. Softness means the horse is responsive and does not have a drag or lateness or heaviness in the way it responds to the aids, yet its emotions are untroubled. It is what we aim for in everything we do with a horse. If there is a problem with softness it is because the focus and clarity are not yet at a high enough quality to yield us the softness we require from our horse.
When there is a problem with softness it is certain that there is a problem with either focus or clarity or both. Go back a step or two and fill in the gaps to refine the degree of focus and clarity. You know when you have got it right because the softness will improve.
Focus, clarity, and softness should underlie every element of the GTS (or any training principle). Without them, the GTS is nothing more than poorly performed tricks. But even more than that, if focus, clarity, and softness are instilled to a high enough degree they make most of the GTS redundant and unnecessary. When focus, clarity, and softness are sufficiently established you will already have relaxation, rhythm, straightness, impulsion, contact, and collection. It’s just a matter of how refined and sophisticated you incorporate these elements into your work. For example, you will need a much higher degree of focus, clarity, and softness to achieve collection than to achieve a good level of rhythm. But it is still the same elements – just more refined.
A few people have told me that focus, clarity, and softness are already inferred in the GTS, and talking about them is unnecessary. I would hope that were true, but I have never found it to be true. In my experience, the GTS focuses on exercises to create rhythm, relaxation, straightness, etc. But just because a horse is able to demonstrate the elements of the GTS does not mean that focus, clarity, and softness are well established. If that were true there would not be such a prevalence of horses leaning on the reins, busy mouths, spinning tails, and all the gear necessary for control that is commonplace at competitions. Perhaps when the GTS was first introduced as the bible of training, everybody naturally accepted that focus, clarity, and softness were essential parts of the GTS – maybe it didn’t need to be stated. But that is certainly not the case nowadays. If you ask most people to define and describe focus, clarity, and softness there is inevitable a confused response. They either try to make something up on the spot or shrug with an “I don’t know.” Yet most people who are serious about dressage can recite the GTS and describe all the elements.
The ideals of the GTS have a lot of merits and every horse in any discipline can greatly benefit from what it tries to teach. But without the underlying foundation of focus, clarity, and softness which underpin each element, it is nothing more than a series of mechanical exercises than has little benefit and bears little resemblance to good training.
All training is underpinned by a horse’s focus, clarity, and softness. The quality of training is rooted in the quality of a horse’s focus, clarity, and softness.