Aiken Part 3
Day 9: Tuesday - Jumping Lesson with Sally Cousins
We took Priscilla and Leo over to Sally's place for a stadium jumping lesson. I explained our confidence problems that developed the previous week and how he's nature was not to stop and it all really shock me up. She watched us go and her advice throughout the lesson was: If I don't feel the surge, create the surge.
With a competition on the weekend, Sally said re-establishing our confidence was more important than any training goals or objectives. His comfort zone was clearly in sighting in on the fence and opening his stride towards it. Ideally, with training, he will become more adjustable. But that is not what she wanted to focus on. Instead, at any moment when he saw a fence and I didn't feel him open his stride and surge towards it, I was responsible for adding my leg and encouraging him to open his stride. In fact, this happen in several occasions, where I felt nothing and drove him towards the fence. It made me own the surge. Before today I was so not comfortable with the surge, but focusing on it as a positive made me trust Leo when it was there. We did end up leaving out strides in all the related distances, but Sally preferred the positive, forward riding to anything else. Leo and I felt like our old selves. We couldn't make great turns and our precision left something to be desired for sure, but it felt way better.
Sally said I was not hitting him in the mouth, which I felt better about because I wasn't sure if that led to some of our problems last week. I was channeling Jane ("keep your hands low and forward, let go of his mouth.")
Sally said I did need to focus on developing my eye, so that eventually I could control the stride. Beginning with a steady 11-foot stride, the rider should be able to see a fence and determine how to change the stride to get the distance they want for the question at hand. She recommended I lay canter poles all over the ground and practice counting strides to them. For Leo, adjustability is a key training goal which she thinks I should show improvement on in the next 6 months. She recommended starting with related distances to help the fences set him up.
I also talked to her about calming agents. She said many of her horses get a calming paste the day of a show and that I would need to experiment to see what works for me. She even said that the large majority of horses are Rolex receive something - it's not something that training can necessarily take care of. Sally said one of the reasons that people think calming supplements don't work is that they don't do enough experimenting. She believes the recommended dose is too small and that it needs to be given early in the day - 3 hours before the dressage test versus 1.5 hours as recommended. She also said I would need to experiment with amino acid based pastes versus herbal-based.
Sally also said I should keep a strict diary of my rides to identify what routine produces the best work from Leo. It should document what changes from ride to ride in order to develop a routine that is best suited for him. She was full of good advice!
Becca also had a lesson with Julie Zapapas, the owner of Jumping Branch Farm. She had some wonderful insights. Like how many people with young horses try to correct the horse and compromise their position, instead of asking the horse to come to them through the correct position of the seat and body. She had Becca focus on stepping on her inside stirrup with each upwards post, to create the inside leg to outside rein aide. Stepping into the inside stirrup helped keep the hips aligned and centered, which was a more powerful position to get the horse responding to and moving off the inside leg. Overall she was much more focused on the rider position than what the horse was doing.
We took Priscilla and Leo over to Sally's place for a stadium jumping lesson. I explained our confidence problems that developed the previous week and how he's nature was not to stop and it all really shock me up. She watched us go and her advice throughout the lesson was: If I don't feel the surge, create the surge.
With a competition on the weekend, Sally said re-establishing our confidence was more important than any training goals or objectives. His comfort zone was clearly in sighting in on the fence and opening his stride towards it. Ideally, with training, he will become more adjustable. But that is not what she wanted to focus on. Instead, at any moment when he saw a fence and I didn't feel him open his stride and surge towards it, I was responsible for adding my leg and encouraging him to open his stride. In fact, this happen in several occasions, where I felt nothing and drove him towards the fence. It made me own the surge. Before today I was so not comfortable with the surge, but focusing on it as a positive made me trust Leo when it was there. We did end up leaving out strides in all the related distances, but Sally preferred the positive, forward riding to anything else. Leo and I felt like our old selves. We couldn't make great turns and our precision left something to be desired for sure, but it felt way better.
Sally said I was not hitting him in the mouth, which I felt better about because I wasn't sure if that led to some of our problems last week. I was channeling Jane ("keep your hands low and forward, let go of his mouth.")
Sally said I did need to focus on developing my eye, so that eventually I could control the stride. Beginning with a steady 11-foot stride, the rider should be able to see a fence and determine how to change the stride to get the distance they want for the question at hand. She recommended I lay canter poles all over the ground and practice counting strides to them. For Leo, adjustability is a key training goal which she thinks I should show improvement on in the next 6 months. She recommended starting with related distances to help the fences set him up.
I also talked to her about calming agents. She said many of her horses get a calming paste the day of a show and that I would need to experiment to see what works for me. She even said that the large majority of horses are Rolex receive something - it's not something that training can necessarily take care of. Sally said one of the reasons that people think calming supplements don't work is that they don't do enough experimenting. She believes the recommended dose is too small and that it needs to be given early in the day - 3 hours before the dressage test versus 1.5 hours as recommended. She also said I would need to experiment with amino acid based pastes versus herbal-based.
Sally also said I should keep a strict diary of my rides to identify what routine produces the best work from Leo. It should document what changes from ride to ride in order to develop a routine that is best suited for him. She was full of good advice!
Becca also had a lesson with Julie Zapapas, the owner of Jumping Branch Farm. She had some wonderful insights. Like how many people with young horses try to correct the horse and compromise their position, instead of asking the horse to come to them through the correct position of the seat and body. She had Becca focus on stepping on her inside stirrup with each upwards post, to create the inside leg to outside rein aide. Stepping into the inside stirrup helped keep the hips aligned and centered, which was a more powerful position to get the horse responding to and moving off the inside leg. Overall she was much more focused on the rider position than what the horse was doing.
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