I booked a lesson with local SJer Rosie Moss on Tuesday. I really wanted a pure SJer to give us their point of view on Soap, my competition warm-up and how I ride a course. We started off doing our normal warm up as we would at an event, and she watched. After a total of about about 25mins warm up I said that we would then usually jump the 3 warm up fences a max of twice each, and then that was it, she looked a bit surprised! She said it was all too relaxed and that I needed to activate his canter and get him pinging and ready to jump. So we worked on lengthening and shortening the canter, 10m circles in each corner, and raised trot and canter poles. Soap found this tiring but he really tried. She explained that Soap is not very active behind and so it’s up to me to create a good quality canter from him. A good canter produces a good jump. She then put up a xpole, then to an upright, and then to a spread. I really concentrated on riding all the way to the fence with this big active canter and then a few strides out softening to allow Soap to produce a nice jump. We ended on a fab jump really big and round and soft and I was stoked.
She thinks it will take about a month for him to build up the correct muscle for this more active canter, so I am going to be doing the ground work exercises as often as possible. I must remember to ‘activate his undercarriage’ in order to get this powerful canter. SJ has long been my weak phase, so this season I am really pouring all my efforts into cracking it!
I also managed to arrange a few bits of online PR this week with my sponsor Mountain Horse and the fab sporting colours company who I bought my colours from Treehouse
see below…
