Had a really entertaining and educational day at Hartpury watching and learning from the worlds top coaches training 4* riders.
Morning Session - Dressage
Sam Griffiths and Nicky Roncoroni were the morning guinea pigs for coach Christoph Hess. We watched in awe as both horses improved during the session. Sam said his horse suffered from losing marks due to tension. Christoph used exercises to encourage the horse to open and stretch its neck, his horse began to relax and soften, showing off his lovely paces. Next up was Nicky she said her horse was hard to ride in a test. Her horse came in with his poll too low and looking like the front and back end were not from the same horse. Christoph worked on the connection by getting Nicky to canter with her reins in one hand, by the time Christoph had finished with them Nicky was riding a fully connected horse, if someone had told me Nicky had swapped horses half way through I would have believd them, the difference was incredible. It was amazing lesson to witness.
Afternoon Jumping
Andrew Nicolson was honest and open, explaining to us the various weaknesses of each of his 4 demo horses. He gave us a fascinating insight into his schooling methods which he uses to improve the horses way of going. All his jump schooling exercises I already use at home, Although some of them I haven't set out for a while so it inspired me to come home and set them all out for this years new team of horses to work on. Also on his plank exercise he used an extra plank so the curving line becomes a 10 metre loop off the track and back with jumps, I have always used this but only with 2 jumps so now I will try it with 3 fences. See picture below for plank exercise laid out on far side of arena prior to demo.
I found King Joules especially fascinating, Andrew said the horse likes to go XC behind the contact, curling his neck in, I know from experience this gives a nice light feel down the rein but with the body and legs still extended to gallop it's very hard to ride horses like this to big fences at speed, as they have no ability to extend any further or to collect or shorten.
A brilliant day and huge thanks to Tattersalls Eventing Ireland who ran the facebook competition from which I won the tickets and to my friend Louise from Eventing Magazine who came along with me to share my winnings!
