CJF Day 1 Clinic Recap

What a great weekend!

All photos courtesy of my momma, who was one of the reasons this weekend was so great!

I got a little bit of everything out of the clinic, and it was exactly what I needed to hear.

Saturday was stadium day.  She always starts out by asking what we have been working on, and I said "Developing a short, powerful canter between the fences in order to solve our problems".  She laughed and asked what our problems were, and I said hesitating, jumping up instead of across, and things going too fast for his little brain in the ring.

The first time I picked up the canter, Cathy exclaimed how different it was from the last time we rode for her.  "Phenomenal!"  she said.  And she pushed us hard according to the progress we had made, as we started with hind leg engagement by "extreme leg yielding" on a circle, trying to bring his shoulders around first.

She had me think about hands forward all the time, and hands low.  She said I needed to make my half-halts with an upward motion to encourage him to keep his poll up, but then make sure my hands came back down closer to his neck - and to check that by thinking "pinkies closer to his neck".

This has nothing to do with anything, but check out that foreleg extension!

Connor and I's last flat exercise was canter-trot-canter-trot at 12, 3, 6, and 9 on the "clock face".  She was so delighted with our progress that she pushed us hard with something like this, and it paid off.  This was designed to help us find that short, powerful, canter.  This, I have video of:

The jumping, then, felt a lot better.

She used related-distance ground poles both as a warmup, and then in between fences, to help all of us adjust our horses' strides - in my case, always more compact and more powerful.  They really helped, as T Myers noticed in the photo I put up in yesterday's post.

Long spot over one pole - you can see his teeth!  Haha!

Long spot, defensive riding, and Connor being a total badass over a teeny tiny oxer.

Takeaways from Day 1 were that I need to use transitions and half-halts to produce a shorter, more powerful canter, so that we have options when we get to the fences, and so that he feels like he can fully utilize his "stronger body".  That led to a big breakthrough the next day on XC...

And for the record, I'm underdressed because our escape artist Husky/Malamute got loose right as I was leaving for the clinic, and I had to slide tackle the little jerk (grass stain on left knee), and then roll over him onto the concrete with him having some sort of yelping meltdown about the whole situation (torn right knee of breeches + skinned knee).  If I hadn't, he would have continued running for miles and I would have been late.

Since that's my only pair of tan breeches with belt loops, used for clinics and shows, time to go shopping!

Jump videos: