Dutch Trainer Seminar KNHS Shows Basic Skills with Cornelissen and Hamminga

Adelinde Cornelissen and Johan Hamminga shared their vision with 650 trainers at the Dutch KNHS centre in Ermelo. (Photo Marjon Hoen for dressagedirect)

Last year all records were broken when about 650 persons visited the famous KNHS trainer seminar in Ermelo with Nicole Werner and Edward Gal on stage accompanying Johan Hamminga. Again this record amount of visitors visited the seminar staging Adelinde Cornelissen together with the Dutch former head trainer of KNHS Johan Hamminga. Johan Hamminga has lead Cornelissen and Parzival from the start to Grand Prix before she rose to fame and was brought to the most shining international presentations by Dutch team trainer Sjef Janssen. Some specialties were highlighted during the seminar. The first one was the necessary fitness of the rider. Frisian turn coach Tjalling Van den Berg explained his training principles, which all lead to both a physical and mental balance in a sportsman.

“Each human being has to show to be proud to live in his body. This looks will convince your surroundings”, Van den Berg expressed. All riders will recognize that both the physical and mental aspect for both tension and relaxation of the muscles applies to horses too. “The controlation of all muscles is everything”, Van den Berg said. Adelinde Cornelissen herself proved to be a wonderful student as she was able to control her muscles and movements remarkably well. “I think this is an important aspect in riding”, Adelinde said. “We all like our horses to use their muscularity left and right the same and train on that, while our own less developed parts in our muscles need training too to be fair towards our horses!”

While training several pairs, Cornelissen and Hamminga expressed that riders need to start in the gait which is the easiest for the horse. “If the canter is the most easy to work in for the horse and to control the better bend and the active use of the hind leg, work in the canter and only start with the trotting part as soon as there is control over the tempo and the hind leg”, Adelinde said. She and Hamminga also liked horses to move quite small and normal in the training, instead of big and impressive. “A big impressive trot or canter gives a lot of moving power and all powerful energy is showed in the contact with the mouth. This is not too easy to handle in the training. Therefore it’s better to go back to a normal and rather small moving mechanism, to gain control and to work on the strength of the muscles”, Hamminga said.

Jerich Parzival and Adelinde Cornelissen were the highlight of the renowned 13th KNHS trainer Seminar in Ermelo (Photo Marjon Hoen for dressagedirect)

The highlight of the 13th KNHS Trainer Seminar was Adelinde herself sitting in the saddle of her golden teamhorse Jerich Parzival (Jazz x Ulft). However it’s a good horse that never stumbles. After the easy loosing work and some amazing passage, Parzival had his tongue over the bit. “Never overdo a problem like this in the training and just work on the steady contact. That will solve the problem”, Johan Hamminga said. And so it was indeed. Adelinde Cornelissen explained that as long as she is riding and training Parzival, he has had this habit, both when relaxed or tensed. She said it might have been really exemplary to have showed this in front of 650 trainers, as things like this occur with their students as well and this is practice you hardly can learn to solve from books. The seminar was ended with a big applause and much hope to inspire and share all insights with pupils in the countryside.