That will probably change soon enough (February and March are our most typical "winter" months it seems), but combined with the near-constant rain lately it's meant that ground and riding conditions have been yucky muck.
charlie has the prettiest dad bod in all the land!! |
To be honest, tho, I don't generally give Charlie a full and complete vacation unless medically required. He's a high mileage model who feels his best when kept in motion haha.
So for the last couple weeks since Oldfields, we've mostly been just hacking out, wandering the fields, trails and lanes around the farm. Occasionally trotting and cantering where the ground permitted, but mostly just strolling. It's been nice!
riding the bend to the rainbow standards, from which we'll land and bend back to the brick walls in the center of the picture |
I'm really loving these lessons with our farm's resident upper level event rider K, too. It feels like she has a plan for us, a vision. She comes to each lesson with a specific exercise for us that's specifically related to our particular strengths and weaknesses. And each lesson feels like it's building on the previous exercises.
There's been a progression, and I'm really diggin it haha. This summer we sorta started by working on getting that consistent 12' canter stride. Then that progressed to being able to balance within that canter to make short turns. So so so SO many turning exercises haha. But reeeeally focusing on that canter in the turn.
we've been practicing short turns to jumps. um. uh. can you tell??? lol.... long live the dinosaurs in tar pits! |
The kernel for this most recent lesson was planted a few weeks ago when we had two simple fences, separated by an indeterminate but lengthy distance, that were slightly offset. But rather than jumping either on an angle, we were to jump both of them straight on, and execute a modified "S" curve between them.
So this week the same concept showed up again, but at much shorter distances. Also thankfully at fairly small jump heights too, so we could just focus entirely on the task at hand without me getting excitable or risking knocking anyone's confidence if we made mistakes. Which... We did. Many, haha.
Again, the jumps were spaced at more or less indeterminate distances. And, believe it or not, this was maybe one of the first jumping exercises I've done in recent memory where I *wasn't* counting strides between jumps. Like, sure I was still counting my rhythm, but not the distances.
It wasn't until I watched the video later that I saw that they were basically all roughly ~5 stride lines (tho I'm fairly sure we did 6 a few times over the course of the lesson!).
All that to say - it's a flexible set up.
mostly straight at the point of the jump itself, but already preparing the next bend |
And it was fascinating. This very simple set up allowed us to make almost every single mistake. But it was always very apparent what the mistake was in each instance, and not at all in a punishing sort of way.
sorta kinda chipped this one, but the better balance in our canter made it nbd |
Then I let the canter get too forward and escape out the front. The jumps had a nice forward energy with Charlie reaching nicely "across" them, but the bends sorta got away from us and we ended up jumping the fences at angles instead of more straight on.
Because it turns out, when Charlie's a bit flat and strung out, there's really only one direction his energy can go and it's directly straight ahead. Imagine the feeling of aiming a runaway horse at a wall and feeling like if he veered to either side you might fall off. That's an extreme example of all the energy running straight out the front.
this horse really has come so far in his own body awareness and balance |
Or at least, haha, that's the goal, right? That's the holy grail. I'm not sure we ever quite got there, to be honest. And in fact, we never actually had a quite-clean run through the pattern. Like, for instance, this video was our last run through and I knocked a friggin standard down with my foot bc we drifted too far to the inside, whoops.
But.... the feelings were there. And I really liked how clearly this jump configuration laid bare those feelings. It was deceptively simple in construction, but definitely super instructive. I'd guess that even at ground poles or cavaletti height it'd still work. Tho with a horse like Charlie, everything is always a little easier when he has an actual jump to look at lol...
So yea. It felt like a nice test, and a nice exercise for getting back into gear. With any luck, spring will be here before we know it. Or, ya know, maybe old man winter will actually get around to showing his face first?? Who knows. Either way, we'll be ready!
Yeah for lessons! Looks like a cool exercise to keep you challenged and working on the canter pacing/striding (insert correct jumpy-term here! lo).
ReplyDeleteDefinitely a cool exercise and fun way to get back into the swing of things !
DeleteThat looks like a really fun exercise.
ReplyDeleteYou should try it!!
DeleteSounds like a great lesson to really dig into what you've been working on. Since we're stuck indoors, all the courses have a gazillion bending lines and s turns and what not. I never struggled with these things on Jamp or Rio, but on Eros? SO HARD! He's the laziest animal on the planet, but he does love to jump. And turns into somewhat of a hunter type torpedo. But these are the types of things we're working on too.
ReplyDeleteOmg hunter torpedo lol.... in a way tho that’s kinda how Charlie is. Like. He IS going to the fence. He’s gonna jump it. But he’s maybe a little careless and lazy in technique even has he gets strong and forward, so that’s where we sorta ended up jumping on crazy angles instead of bending to become straight again lol.... great practice tho!
DeleteLol KABOOM went the jump! That exercise looks like a ton of fun! I want to fire the videographer - I mean yay you got awesome video but boo my eye/stomach/brain connection lol
ReplyDeletelol we'll give her a pass since she was trying to instruct me and shoot video at the same time ;) generally if i had to pick one of those activities over the other, i'd pick the instruction. but i'm grateful she volunteered to grab some footage too - every little bit helps!!
DeleteWe haven't had a day of rain in February yet... I know we always "need it" but I'm not going to complain =)
ReplyDeleteSuper cool exercise! It looks really tough but in a good way! Glad you and Charlie enjoyed it!
ReplyDeleteI’m glad that you and Charlie are enjoying the winter. You two look great, even with the crashing standard. 😁
ReplyDelete