On Saturday Vin and I went to Lincomb for cross country schooling.<\/p>\n
The instructor wasn’t the advertised; owing to circumstances beyond everyone’s control we had a last-minute stand-in.<\/p>\n
I checked out her achievements before deciding to go ahead but I resolved that if she asked anything I felt uncomfortable about I’d duck out – which is fair enough.<\/p>\n
I think if Matt Ryan had asked us to do anything I’d felt uncomfortable with, I’d probably have ducked out there, too.<\/p>\n
Unusually the session began over obstacles in very slow-paced walk.<\/p>\n
Steps up, steps down, ditches, sunken roads… all in walk.<\/p>\n
What I found interesting this morning was that these exercises are all described in this month’s Eventing Magazine – but at the time I thought it was very peculiar.<\/p>\n
Then we moved on to water; to establish canter rhythm into, through and out of water and over an obstacle (suspended log) on the away.<\/p>\n
Then we reversed the approach: hanging log, in to water, through water and out the other side.<\/p>\n
Then barrels.<\/p>\n
There are three sets of barrels on the portion of the cross country course we worked on.<\/p>\n
Set one is a single wooden ‘cask’-type barrel on its side.<\/p>\n
Set two and set three each comprise two end-to-end barrels of the same size and type.<\/p>\n
I would have put Vin to either of the latter ‘double’ barrels but the single barrel in isolation?<\/p>\n
No way!<\/p>\n
However without much time and effort (and with a lot of mental bravery pills on my part) Vin was trotting up to then jumping – and then cantering up to and jumping – the single barrel very nicely.<\/p>\n
Then we were allowed to go off and play by ourselves until our tutor brought us back to jump increasingly steeper angles across a palisade.<\/p>\n
I wussed out here.<\/p>\n
At our level of Eventing (Intro) angles aren’t allowed; I’ll take them in to our educational cycle if and when we’re ready to progress beyond Intro but for now, that’s that.<\/p>\n
On our tack and position the length of Vin’s martingale was questioned; I saw the logic in what she was saying and have now put another few inches in to it.<\/p>\n
But length of leg and upper body position she encouraged was significantly different to the words that Matt Ryan gave us a few weeks ago.<\/p>\n
As with all things equine-related, it’s a subjective sport. One person’s opinion may significantly differ from that of another.<\/p>\n
I did like our instructor, I thought much of what she had to offer us was beneficial; things I accepted – either outright or decided to adapt to suit our own circumstances.<\/p>\n
But there were one or two very minor things I was – and remain – unsure about (either because the conflicted with things other people have given us, or because I was just not sure), and won’t be adopting everything she offered us.<\/p>\n
And that’s what this game’s all about.<\/p>\n
You take what you want from who you want, adapt other things and reject one or two things (perhaps reject them for now to accept them later on in life).<\/p>\n
It was a brilliant session.<\/p>\n
Vin showed his star qualities once again.<\/p>\n
And I’m chuffed to bits (with him more than with me).<\/p>\n
But completely knackered.<\/p>\n
In a good way.<\/p>\n
B<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On Saturday Vin and I went to Lincomb for cross country schooling. The instructor wasn’t the advertised; owing to circumstances beyond everyone’s control we had<\/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-496","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\/496","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=496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}