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Guest Blog entry # 13: "Jane Hamlin lesson with Ky" by Katherine Erickson
Jane Hamlin Lesson with Ky
We started out warming up on the flat, and Jane gave me some great advice about getting him more stable in the contact. Namely: give him a contact to be stable in!! I hate the feeling of him bouncing around off the reins, so without thinking about it tend to ride a little longer to try to avoid the situation. Instead, Jane had me ride with a fairly short rein and good heavy feeling in my elbows but quiet hands to try to give him a stable place to go to. It was a similar message to what Kim had told me, but clearly I needed to hear it again!
After that, we started jumping!! Eeeee! We started out nice and easy over a trot in, canter out cross rail to cross rail. After getting the feel for the line, we started cantering in and Jane made the cross rails a little bigger, then turned the second cross rail into a cross rail oxer.
At first the three strides in the line felt verrry long with Ky's shorter stride, so Jane encouraged me to try to open his stride a little but sitting lightly on his back and giving my hand forward. It worked a charm, and soon Ky was making the distance easily.
(Showing pretty good eq if I do say so myself over one of the warm up oxers!)
After proving our proficiency at the line, we started doing some little courses. I was definitely a little apprehensive to jump fences without any placing rails or set stridings!! But as Jane reminded me, Ky has a lovely natural sense of rhythm that's probably better than my eye will ever be. If I create a good canter, stay out of his way, and guide him to the fence, he'll find a distance he can jump out of. Easier said than done, right? But I was actually pretty proud of myself! Here was our first course:
My definite tendency is to want to micromanage as many elements as possible. Jane, in addition to being an active competitor and eventing trainer, is also an FEI-level dressage judge, so she was definitely able to commiserate with this tendency and agreed that it was probably to my advantage to want to micromanage as an upper level dressage rider... but that in jumping and eventing, I had to let go and let things flow significantly more than I would naturally want to. Whenever I choked up or sat down and drove, Ky jumped badly. Whenever I stayed light and let him flow forward in a steady rhythm, he jumped beautifully. A good reminder!!
We did a second course with a little more technicality:
I redid the angled line a few times, as my initial response was to doubt his honesty, sit down, and drive him to a bad distance. I finally got it one last time where I sat lightly, got to a deeper distance, and instead of crumpling forward with my body or getting aggressive, I just stayed tall with my upper body and strong with my leg and let him jump up to me. And unsurprisingly, it was night and day better!
(Go pony!! Kate, keep that lower leg down!)
Blog by Katherine Erickson @ http://greybrookeventing.blogspot.com
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