The clinic was amazing! Ryan Minor is an amazing equestrian, his riding is flawless.
We worked on schooling our horses this morning. The things we did were a series of posture repetitions around the ring. So, we started by warming our horses up at a trot to get them going and moving forward. On one long side, we would stand in our stirrups with our leg slightly behind the girth with helped strengthen our balance and leg. Then, we would be half in-half out of the saddle on one short side of the ring and lastly we did an exaggerated version of a two-point position which is really when your body is at least an inch off the horses neck on the other long side.
After that, we pushed them up into the canter. He had us hand gallop our horses to get them to move forward a bit more. And then we basically did the same thing we did at the trot to help balance our core and strengthen our legs at the canter. It also forces the heel down even more, and it hurt my ankle a bit because my boots were tied a bit too tight. They still need to be broken in a bit more.
We then started to do the jumping which was a trial for me and Hercules. I learned that I had to stay sitting in the saddle and not leaning forward because that weight tells the horse unconsciously "I can't do it" and it causes them to stop or refuse the jump. So, what we had to do was to sit in the saddle until the horse took off over the jump and sit in a two-point position and then after we landed, I had to sit back in the saddle to keep him going. Hercules and I mainly jumped the two diagonal jumps. We aren't ready for the oxer that the other two girls were doing. One day we will be.
The schooling we did over the jumps was pretty interesting. We would be tracking to the right at the canter and going towards the yellow jump and then either landing with the right lead or waiting to do a simple change, and then we would ride the short side and turn towards the red jump. As we would keep doing this jump pattern, it sort of looks like a figure eight.
I can tell you, my legs are KILLING me. Literally, I didn't know what muscles that were in my leg that I hadn't used before.
Overall, I had an amazing experience and cannot wait until tomorrow morning for the course jumping part of the clinic.
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| I know it's blurry but it shows my posture over the jump |
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| Ryan telling me about my riding |
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