Catch-up Post 8: More Grids!

We did more grids! Some jumps were set up in what looked like a one stride to a one stride. I was out there Saturday morning (14th) with no one else riding. Perfect time to do some more jumps. I got off Scarlet to drop all but one jump to poles to start. It’s always nice that he will just chill right where he is when I’m moving jumps. Not perfectly ground tied but he does it when we are in the arena.

 

Step 1

The spacing was not right. It ended up being something like 1.5 strides to 1.5~2ish strides. I’m super glad that I had decided to put everything down to poles instead of just diving head first. I moved the middle jump back to try to make it an even 1 and 2 strides. We did the poles again. Not quite right. I moved the middle jump 2 more times and then the third jump once to get the proper striding happening. Oh well. It worked out eventually.

Step 2

As you can probably tell from this picture, this is actually when I moved the third jump. The angle was weird and we were getting an odd line through that was messing us up. We had to do this a few times because Scarlet’s momentum was not very forward. (more on that later)

Final step

By this point, Scarlet was getting a little annoyed with me and me with him. We chunked our way through the grid twice with him trotting after the second jump once and after the first the second time. I tried to not get too frustrated with him and got a much more forward canter and we made it through at the canter with some strong leg.

A lady who was turning her horse out in the arena came over to the rail and I made a comment on how he was just done with me. She asked if I would want some advice as she used to be a trainer. I said sure. I’m always open to advice. Whether I take it or not is a different story. She told me that I was holding him back and pushing him forward while we were going through the grid, which is why he was so annoyed with me. I needed to release better. Okay, I thought, let’s do this again. She was nice enough to video for me.

I thought about over releasing as we went over the jumps and we made it through very smooth. I called it a day and thanked her for videoing.

Later, I reviewed the video and showed L the video and I realized that my hands suck. They are so far back just normally that over releasing legitimately did not show. Trainer D has had to remind me to carry my hands forward and up during the lessons and I thought I had been doing better. Seeing this video, I still have a long way to improve and I really get what she was telling me now. The wonderful thing about videos is being able to see yourself as other people see you. My main goal for riding for a while is going to be HANDS FORWARD!!! XD

Catch-up Post 1: Grid work

Hi all. It has been a while since I’ve posted which is unfortunate because I had a lot of really awesome things happen with Scarlet that I’m really happy with. But the other things in life *cough*work*cough* have been burning me out so much that I just couldn’t make myself get on the computer to write about them. So the next few posts will be some catch up work.

First, let’s talk about some gridwork we did!

Scarlet and I had never really done gridwork together. I’ve never ridden it in a lesson before and didn’t really trust myself to set it up. We’ve ridden lines where there is a 4-6 stride length between two jumps. We haven’t done that much either as Scarlet has a tendency to rush jumps. We have been working on getting that to go away and he has gotten better on single jumps but two still gets him quite excited.

I was out on a weekend morning (no exact date is what happens when you delay too long Alex! SHAME!) and there was no one else out at the barn. There was a diagonal 1-3 line set up that I’ve been wanting to try with Scarlet for a while but haven’t had the guts to do with it all set up. Since I was alone, I thought this was a great time.

I took down all the jumps except for a small cross rail at the beginning, leaving the other two as a pile of poles. After a good warm up, we headed over the first jump. I tried very hard to get a good turn. The turn for the side with the one stride is a little tight from the corner but I wanted to go from the 1 to the 3 so we would have more time to regroup if we totally biffed it over the one stride. I got a decent turn with enough balance and Scarlet locked onto the fence. I did my best to just think forward and straight and not interfere otherwise.

He did great. We just cantered right on through. The one stride is quite long for small little Scarlet but he was quite happy to stretch for it and then rock his way through the three stride.

I had us to the first fence only again with a higher cross rail as I set it at basically ankle height the first time. He had no problems so I added the second fence. The turn was a bit sharper that time so we had a bit of an awkward stride into the one stride and it took a lot more jump to get over. I took us around it again and got a better angle. Scarlet happily hopped over both fences.

Then I put up the third fence. And Scarlet powered through it. I was so freaking proud of him. The one stride is a long one and then the three stride is pretty accurate. Scarlet really had to push for it but he didn’t feel like he was speeding up or trying to rush the fences. He did such a great job for me as he rocketed over them. I was so so so proud of him. And really disappointed no one was out there to really watch.

There was a girl lunging her horse in the round pen and I was so happy with Scarlet that I told her what we did and that we’d never done it before. She said “Oh I missed it! Go do it again!” So I did. And she watched. And she saw how awesome my little horse is.

It felt a little silly to want/need someone else to tell me how awesome we were but I’m okay with it. The grid was something we did on our own, no help, no instruction and we rocked it. I’m looking forward to trying it again and doing more jumps like this in the future.