{"id":2749,"date":"2010-02-18T09:22:53","date_gmt":"2010-02-18T09:22:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=2749"},"modified":"2010-02-18T09:22:53","modified_gmt":"2010-02-18T09:22:53","slug":"staying-focussed-but-not-too-focussed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=2749","title":{"rendered":"Staying focussed, but not too focussed…"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been neglecting Tom-related posts because there’s been other things happening. You know how it is. Life gets in the way…<\/em><\/p>\n

So, this weekend William is coming in and we’re cross-country schooling at Ascot-under-Wychwood<\/a> (yes, you can see the cross-country fences quite clearly, and if you scroll outwards you can see the rest of them in the next field!).<\/p>\n

And next month is our first One Day Event.<\/p>\n

Our JAS at Solihull was better than the mess at Hartpury (it could hardly have been worse!) and I learned quite a lot more about Tom and how he reacts to indoor competitions.<\/p>\n

You would have thought that he’d be a bit<\/em> used to the indoor experience, what with us schooling all winter indoors at home, but no.<\/p>\n

It seems that the glitz, glamour, flags, bunting, scary fences\/fillers and all that jazz unsettles him to the point where his adrenal glands kick in and, well, he gets nervous and therefore strong.<\/p>\n

I can see from the photos at Solihull that I had far too much contact with his mouth over the fences, so I’m not releasing – which restricts him from making the bascule jumping shape and doesn’t help him do his job properly.<\/p>\n

Why am I not releasing? Because it feels too bloody fast!<\/p>\n

Show-jumping indoors is different to outdoors; the turns are tighter, the corners come at you far too quickly (especially on a large, big-striding horse like Tom!) and the spacing between the fences is far less generous.<\/p>\n

The day before Solihull, we went to William’s place in Cirencester and we jumped brilliantly.<\/p>\n

But 24 hours later we were tense, nervous, on edge and fired up\/anxious and far too keen.<\/p>\n

So I need to ease back on the fired up\/anxious\/keen – but not throttle back to the point where we switch off!<\/p>\n

Fortunately I’ve got the Solihull photos, and they are a great training aid. But the bottom line is I need to give Tom his head over fences, and deal with the excess of speed between <\/em>the obstacles, not in the air!<\/p>\n

Fair enough.<\/p>\n

I’m going to try to squeeze in a couple of sessions with Owen before our first competition too.<\/p>\n

Looking forward to this weekend!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been neglecting Tom-related posts because there’s been other things happening. You know how it is. Life gets in the way… So, this weekend William<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2749\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}