John Lyons discusses collection of the horse at Equine Affaire 2010

John Lyons is a well known clinician and horse trainer, especially in the western stock horse world.  He has been active in the horse show community for many, many years and has won numerous accolades and awards for his riding and teaching abilities.  I was very excited to see the number of John Lyons clinics offered at the Equine Affaire this year.  His “U-Pick” system of training provides a number of exercises geared toward a particular goal and the rider can choose which exercises appeal to and work for each horse.  In addition, each exercise has a few variations that can provide varying levels of challenge as the horse progresses.  There were a number of Lyons clinics I was interested in seeing, including ones for developing better control, controlling speed, and improved stopping.  The first one we made it to was the speed control clinic. 

The arena was packed with spectators, and seating was tough to find.  We were lucky to have some folks offer us their seats as they left and we got front row.  The one hour and fifteen minute clinic began with John coming out and talking a bit about his experience and then introducing the three men that were on horses riding around the arena.  It turns out that they were not “students” as in most clinics we watched – they were John’s two sons Josh and Michael, and a man that began the Lyons training certification many years ago.  John proceeded to talk about the unnatural manner in which we ask horses to remain collected and illustrated his points with a horse he led around as he spoke.  During the entire monologue, his two sons were mounted on horses and were riding around the arena behind him doing their own things.  It sort of looked like a warm up arena at a show, with John Lyons wandering around in the midle with a microphone.  To say it was a bit distracting would be an understatement. 

Finally John mounted up and the exercises for speed control began.  The first one he chose to talk about was doing a directional change – as you walk around the arena and your horse increases speed, stop and do a 180 degree turn and walk off in the other direction.  Each time your horse speeds up, change direction.  Simple enough, right?  Well, it felt like he spent fifteen minutes discussing this exercise, how to increase the difficulty (change gait), or include variety (turn on forehand versus hind).  The whole time he talked, his sons were riding around the arena doing their own thing – reining spins, loping, lead changing.  Finally he finished and moved on to Exercise #2, one of Josh’s choosing.  Unfortunately, Josh did not have a microphone and so John had to translate everything he said to the audience.  This one involved spiraling off into smaller circles if the horse speeds up; however there was some confusion as to how the exercise began.  At one point John seemed to be indicating that the rider should hum to the horse to slow it down.  I found the lack of microphone to be particularly troublesome, as Josh would lope off to demonstrate the exercise, but the audience was unable to have it narrated as it happened.  Once again, the other son was off doing his own thing, adding to the chaos.  I also felt that John wasn’t clearly explaining his techniques to the audience.  Maybe someone that has completed his video series would have understood him better, but I found instructions such as “Move his tail back” unclear and confusing.  This scene repeated for the first four exercises, but eventually I felt that the clinic was not serving the purpose I’d hoped it would and we left. 

In summary, this clinic was not well organized.  All three riders should have had microphones, or at the very least, the one demonstrating the exercises should have been narrating.  All the riders should have been demonstrating the exercises being discussed or they should have been waiting quietly for their turn, in my opinion.  All the activity had the effect of appearing chaotic and was a distraction to the exercises at hand.  Finally, I felt that the demonstration was very commercial.  In his defense, I had that same feeling at several of the clinics we went to and it’s a feeling I don’t recall having had at previous Affaires.  There was a lot of self promotion of the Lyons name and product line, and I felt that took away from the point of the clinic.  I would have liked to see students participate and learn the exercises with the audience, so we could grasp what issues the horses may come up with.  The exercises were that were provided were useful, albeit a bit basic for my own riding level, but a good refresher.  All in all, there was some good information there but I had higher expectations from a clinician of his caliber.