Day 178 & 179: The clinic weekend in the sun

Alison and Gejzer over a simple cavaletti exercise in walk - he takes the "no touching the rails" very seriously ;) 

Agata and Galka - here in a self carriage exercise in a very short trot leg yielding towards me. Testing rider's suppleness and coordination of aids. 

Short session with 4 years old PRE mare 

Flatwork session with a lovely "heavy" horse who moved as if he had no idea about some cold blood crosses running through his veins :) 

Flatwork session with a lovely "heavy" horse who moved as if he had no idea about some cold blood crosses running through his veins :) 

My cousin, Karolina, working on similar exercises as Agata and Galka. Learning about being precise and accurate with shapes of circles and figures of eights to improve self - carriage. The horse chooses his frame to some extent but the rider has to maintain line of travel, tempo and rhythm.

Ola doing some fun coordination exercises to improve the feel for diagonal use of aids.

Chatting with Dominika about her super mare :) 

De-brief after flatwork session

The Sunday jumping session - working in a line that can be ridden for 3 or 4 strides depending on the length of canter stride chosen by the rider. Here Dominka went for shorter stride that didn't fit either option leaving Falkata to decide and go for a long one. Very athletic little mare. 

Myself with my lovely Mum and 4 years old niece :) 

Tea time :) 

More tea time :) 

Jumping session - understanding a feeling of "uphill canter" 

Jumping session de-brief

Karolina and I working on ironing out a postural crookedness through her upper body

Eye to eye with Krater. I am using the whip to touch Karolina when she collapses her upper body to give her proprioceptive reminder about where her seat becomes weak and ineffective. 

More posture corrections - here with one stirrups very short and the other foot out of the stirrup to wake up different feels through the pelvis in relation to back motion of the horse. 

Flatwork session in the sun :) 

Ania and Zarys. Jumping session - planning a dog-leg to improve rider's ability to ride a correct line and tempo - here ending up too close to the left wing. 

Jumping session - same line and exercise as with Dominika and Falkata.

Same dog-leg line as above - testing the ability to plan a line and tempo of the canter for most optimal take off before the second jump

Natalia and Jaron - flatwork session 

Fabulous weekend. I ended up doing 18 lessons in two days as we added a couple as we went and I am seriously considering investing in a portable sound system that I can use during clinics. We worked in a large outdoor arena so to limit my shouting I walked all the time which gave me a serious amount of steps per day in a rather deep surface ;)

All the riders worked so well and are so eager to learn, I wish I could teach them more often. Alas, next meeting is in October so they have plenty of time to practice what we did during the weekend.

Wx