So.<\/p>\n
Yesterday’s cross country training with Matt Ryan (I thought I’d tell you about it before you asked – especially given the slight note of panic you might have found at the end of This Reality 1)…<\/p>\n
To say that I was nervous beforehand would be an understatement of cataclysmic proportions.<\/p>\n
Crapping myself is much closer to the truth.<\/p>\n
I almost didn’t go.<\/p>\n
It occurred to me a few days ago that I’d lost my confidence; Vin being too green and too fast had finally killed off and buried my bold cross country style that Ash had terminally damaged when, due to his unpredictability, severe damage was inflicted upon my left knee.<\/p>\n
But on Saturday morning I sat down and totted up how much the clinic had cost (payment in advance, non-refundable) and thought ‘bollocks, I’m bloody going<\/em>‘.<\/p>\n We got there – I travelled Vin tacked up and ready to go – unloaded and walked off to the cross country course where, with about nine other mounted folk, we mingled, worked in, mingled again and chatted.<\/p>\n I ‘knew’ (but have never met) one person from the riding club – the training session organiser, met another riding club person I didn’t know and had a natter with someone I knew from somewhere (though we couldn’t work out where we knew each other from, some competition centre or other).<\/p>\n By the time Matt arrived my nerves were off the scale.<\/p>\n Half of the group went off with Marie to the lower cross country course, five of us stayed with Matt.<\/p>\n He had our names and the other information we’d given as our abilities\/aspirations on the application form.<\/p>\n We introduced ourselves and our horses and topped up the level of information with what we hoped to achieve from the day.<\/p>\n Matt said he was going to concentrate on the riders, explaining the principle of his cross country position and how the upper body and lower leg should work together in a position very different to the one required for dressage.<\/p>\n Yeah, sorry.<\/p>\n Esoteric stuff I know, but that’s the point; the difference between riding actively in the cross country position where the rider has to be ready for every eventuality while riding forwards at 30mph – the horse might stop unexpectedly, run out, peck badly on landing…<\/em><\/p>\n If any of these things happened to a rider in a dressage position s\/he would be on the deck in a most unexpected (and usually painful) way!<\/p>\n He checked our positions, made corrections to the other four and said my position was ‘about perfect’. Bless.<\/p>\n Introductions done and positional corrections made Matt established that we had worked in, then set us a small course of three fences: an 18″ high pole in trot then striding onwards in canter to a 2’6″ pheasant feeder then a longer distance cantering to a set of 2’6″ parallel rails.<\/p>\n Except that we (I<\/em>) had a massive problem four strides out from the second fence; I lost my right stirrup and dragged Vin back to a canter-on-the-spot-supposed-to-be-halt while I fought to get my stirrup back.<\/p>\n When I had things restored we went at fence two and three but Vin was wound up and tense and jumped everything fast and flat like the ex-racehorse he is – but because he’d been held back and I was cacking myself (it’s a technical term).<\/p>\n Matt told me to go around and do it again and gave me a very firm instruction to let Vin bowl on and stop holding him back.<\/p>\n So we went again on the same line, much quicker – much better results!<\/p>\n Matt told us to ride the same line and introduced a fourth fence; we rode the new line twice getting better (and faster!) each time.<\/p>\n Then we moved on to a bank fence and rode over the drop in trot then back around and cantered over it.<\/p>\n By this time Vin and I were covering the ground very quickly, much faster than I would have permitted before the day.<\/p>\n We’d been jumping for less than half an hour and I’d learned that Vin is a little like a bicycle (it’s a crude analogy but) – if he’s going too slow when he’s got things to jump it creates a loss of balance which, in turn, unnerves him. It’s not an issue that manifests itself when he’s working on the flat, only when he’s got things to jump. After the bank we worked on a massive drop; a huge bank that dropped steeply 35’.<\/p>\n Vin lapped it up so much that on our second go round instead of walking down the steep bank we cantered down it and that, my friends, was very scary and brilliantly exhilarating – at the same time!<\/p>\n Then we moved on to the lower cross country course and worked over a more complex range of fences that included ditches, coffins and water.<\/p>\n At the end of two hours we called it a day.<\/p>\n My personal confidence restored but, more importantly, the Bren and Vin cross country jumping partnership confidence taken to a level it has never been before.<\/p>\n Brilliant!<\/p>\n Thanks Matt.<\/p>\n B<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So. Yesterday’s cross country training with Matt Ryan (I thought I’d tell you about it before you asked – especially given the slight note of<\/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-422","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\/422","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=422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/em>
\nWe reversed track and jumped up the bank; do you know how fantastic it is to have an Olympic triple gold-medal winner say things like ‘Brilliant mate, brilliant!<\/em>‘?<\/p>\n