Vaulting and the Vaulting Clinic

Are you a gymnast who loves horses or an equestrian who loves gymnastic? Well, did you know there is a sport out there that combines both gymnastics and horses? Bet you didn't! It s called vaulting and it is literally gymnastics on horseback.

Faith, one of the horses we used.

Oh my goodness, I was so happy that I did the clinic today. I would have been gutted if I didn't. I learned a lot in this clinic, but mainly the mount and poses for vaulting.

The mount is basically swinging your leg up and pointing your head down; but on the third swing, you mount up.

Next, we learned some of the cool poses.

The first pose is the standard seat.

 This was very interesting because some of the elements battle against the way we learned to ride. So just like sitting deep on your bum, instead of heals down, it was toes down. I got the hang of it though because it was an element that helped you stay quiet on the horses back.

The next pose we learned was the flag.

So for this pose we use our outside leg and inside hang to form the flag. You start at the standard seat, get onto your knees, bring your leg up with your knee turned to the inside and then bring your hand and arm up. You want to make sure you are keep your weight spread throughout your shin as well as keeping your elbow bent to absorb some of the motion coming from the horses movement.

The next pose is the windmill.

The windmill is very similar to around-the-world, except that you have to perform this slowly to make it look more crisp and clean.

The fourth pose we learned was the stand.

This is basically standing on the horse's back. You start in the sitting position, move up onto your knees and slowly make your way into the standing position. The key point in this pose is to keep your knees bent to absorb the motion from the horse. I was able to stand for 4 seconds at the walk and almost 4 seconds at the trot.

The last pose we learned was the candlestick.

For this pose, you start at the sitting position and then turn around half the windmill until you are facing the butt of the horse. Then, you get up onto your feet while holding onto the bars and point on leg up into the air.

This was an awesome clinic and I was so happy that the officers organized it for us. I had an amazing time and learned so many new things.

If you want to learn how to vault, check out Warm Beach Vaulters