exercise du jour: grids + angles

Happy Monday, y'all! It feels so so good to be writing a normal lesson recap again, instead of yet another sad sack post about whatever latest woe has befallen my hot house flower of a horse. I'm sure those future posts will always come. Bc Charlie, obvi.

But for now? It's back to business as usual, and it's such a relief!

so freakin happy to be jomping things again!!!

It was especially nice to walk up to the arena for our normal weekly jump lesson with Trainer P, and feel reasonably confident that my horse would be sound. Bc, you see, I had brought him up the previous two weeks just to hang out, or just to see. No dice tho, he'd been too sore. Not this time tho! Yay for healing haha!

happy feet haha

Another bonus was that, while we *do* have stuff on the calendar, there's no real agenda for anything that has to get done immediately in terms of prep. Right now Charlie is extremely unfit, but otherwise he honestly feels pretty good. Which, like, he should feel good bc he just got his hocks done, got that magna wave treatment, plus had four weeks of R&R.

cantering bigly over the low bounces

Now that we're getting back into it, tho, the name of the game is fitness. And basics. Always and forever.

Which worked out perfectly, bc Trainer P had been doing grids already with her earlier lessons that day. Apparently there's a CT here next weekend so all the jumps had been moved around to paint standards, and she didn't feel like making a new course. Fine by me, grids are my favorite!

so serious into the narrow grid of one strides!

We had three lines of gymnastics set up: a line of bounces, a one stride line, and a two stride line. All pretty low heights. Tho, interestingly, as you can sorta see above and below, the grid of fences set at one stride were all built with the narrow-ish brick boxes as fill. Which, I believe those boxes are right around 4' wide.

So not the skinniest of skinny jumps, but esp all set up in a line like that, definitely asking for straightness. Good practice!

not too too terribly narrow, but enough to get the point across over a line of four jumps

Charlie didn't care one bit tho. Actually he was pretty quiet and casual about the whole thing. Not dull tho, and not sour. Just very workmanlike. Very much like he knows the drill, knows how to solve these puzzles, and was quite content with just getting on with the job.

center line was a grid of three fences each set two strides apart

Meanwhile I could try to focus on my own self a bit too, always useful lol. Eventing Nation just ran blogger's recap of a Buck Davidson clinic, and one nugget that stuck out to me was about rein length. Buck apparently said you should be able to touch your elbows together in front of you while maintaining a connection.

For me, this was a useful, tactical description, and also helped me remember to sit up and open my chest. Gotta love those meaty little morsels!

the center vertical was perfect for coming in on an angle to slice as a single

Anyway, tho, the bounces were kinda hard to get any real effort out of Charlie. Like, honestly he was just treating them like canter poles with an exaggerated stride vs actually jumping them. The other lines went well tho, and were good practice with a few repeats.

I had kinda figured that would be it, actually, since it was a little warm and my horse is so unfit. But after we schooled all the individual lines, then put them together into a little mini course (in the video below), trainer P then had us shift gears slightly: to angling the fences.

we, uh, we better in one direction vs the other LOL

I've worked on jumping fences on an angle with Charlie maybe.... like, twice in the last two years. It's something I always think that I should be schooling, but somehow never quite get around to it. Who knows why, ya know? But as soon as she had us start on it, I was actually pretty excited!

pictured: just narrowly missing a runout here haha

Tho Charlie sorta lulled me into a false sense of security with our first effort, coming in on an angle off the right lead. Bc you see.... Charlie's always been pretty uneven in his shoulders -- his left shoulder is unbelievably earthbound, heavy, and constantly falling out... it's unreal. And it's always really pronounced after time off, with right now being no exception.

me too, charlie. me too.

So when we nailed it off the right lead, then figure-8'ed around to catch the same jump back the other way off the left lead, we actually almost died lol. Charlie just.... didn't pick up, and instead of supporting him with my leg, I got wayyyy ahead of him haha. Whoops! Turned out, this was a great exercise for us, tho, since I was forced to address that left shoulder drift issue.

there we go tho! it's hard doing this angle thing when your left shoulder apparently weighs 2,000lbs!

Our next time, we still chopped in an extra stride and kinda sorta almost nailed the standard, whoops. After that, tho, we got back onto the same page. Phew! And again, I kinda figured we'd be done for the day with that, but nope. Trainer P had just a few more ideas for us.

putting a line of angled fences together - starting with the narrow bricks!

She hadn't planned the lines out in advance to work this way, but actually the distances weren't too bad. So she had us catching one of the narrow brick boxes from the line of one strides on an angle, then continuing to an oxer from the line of two strides.

First effort was again off our trickier left lead, and you can see in the video how we just weren't quite as confident leaving the ground off this lead. Plus I honestly was a little nervous and had no idea how this line was gonna ride haha.

wheeee kinda super-manning out over the oxer!

It rode fine tho. Well, it rode a little long after our conservative in jump. But there was never any doubt that Charlie was going. He really seemed to have no problem understanding the whole "slicing the fences" concept. Which is awesome haha. I mean, we weren't exactly on the most severe angles or whatever, but you gotta start somewhere, right?

angled line going the other way

We finished up by looping around to repeat the figure 8 coming the other direction on the right lead - much easier for us. Which was nice bc this line was a little shorter and wanted a bit more of a forward ride. And it worked out! Good boy Charlie!

pictured: not murdering the doggo, whoops haha

Tho, uh, right as I made the turn I realized the dog pictured above was kinda sorta sitting right around where I wanted to takeoff haha. Whoops. Oh well, no dogs were harmed in the making of this video!!

video of all the exercises here!

It was definitely really fun tho. Idk what it is about changing it up a little bit - skinny fences or jumping on an angle or whatever. But that more technical stuff kinda makes me have to think a little more, and makes the horse pay more attention. Plus esp the angled fences were much clearer barometers of our straightness than anything else we've done lately.

Tho. Ya know. It could have also just been so refreshing bc it was our first lesson outside since 2018 haha. Yessssss, spring is coming!! Is anyone else dusting off any fun or favorite exercises now that the weather is finally improving?