Many years ago Dusty bought me a copy of the 1010 Jumping Exercises book to give me things to work on with Gem in the arena while we lived in WI. I never made it past exercise 1 though I can’t recall exactly why. Residency probably got in the way. Or I just plumb gave up because I had no clue what I was doing.
Regardless, I ran across it again as I was unpacking and decided that it would be a great way to work with Gem at home now that I have some jumps I can play around with. My bigger goal in using the book is learning how to properly set up a course with striding so as to not create something impossible for us to do.
Sunday afternoon was not deathly cold for the first time in nearly two weeks and proved the perfect opportunity to set up exercise one and get going. Keep in mind that I had not really ridden Gem in two months beyond a few times I got on and toodled around at the walk and trot, it has been cold enough that I’ve kept the horses in at night, and I recently changed foods. All ingredients to a great ride, no?
Exercise 1 is very basic: create a 6-10′ chute with two ground poles and ride a 10-20m circle through the poles in both directions. Goals include: proper bend in each direction, being straight inside the chute, halting inside the chute, making sure you exit on the correct diagonal at the trot. The point of the exercise, per the book, is to get a feel inside the chute what it feels like to have the horse straight under you and then how it feels to have the horse bend around the circle.
I warmed up at the walk and trot at large in the arena and noted that Gem was still pretty focused on outside the arena instead of on me. I got a bit tougher with her as she started tripping over herself a bit when I was asking her to turn and she wasn’t paying any attention. It was annoying and she soon learned that I wasn’t having any of it.
I worked Gem in the walk and trot through the exercise making sure to randomly change directions and throwing in some halts inside the chute. At first I was getting very annoyed at myself, and Gem to be honest, because we had no bend. None. Picture a surf board. Add steel. We were more rigid than that. It wasn’t all Gem’s fault though. I couldn’t get my body to function right. I’d remember to turn my upper body and pelvis and not just my head, but then I’d lose my outside rein contact. Id’ pick that back up and my inside leg would fall off her. I’d shove that back into place and I’d find myself with rigid elbows. Those would loosen just so that my outside rein could get lost again.
All was about to be lost in a sea of frustration and expletives when my perspective shifted. While I was internally chastising myself about my inability to create bend in my stiff horse, I failed to notice how Gem, a horse who used to view halting as something that happened to other horses, was halting square from the trot every single time I asked, right when I asked inside the chute and then would trot off when asked without walking in between. I failed to notice that while she wasn’t paying full attention to me, she was maintaining her rhythm without constantly speeding up or slowing down. I failed to notice how she walked when asked and trotted when asked and wasn’t breaking in between or trying to tranter off into the distance.
So while we couldn’t bend worth crap, there were still a lot of things to be very happy with. I need to stop being so hard on us both. I did text Trainer though and set up a lesson in the future when our schedules align again to hopefully get myself back on track to where I was in November.
The book wants you to not move on until you have perfected the one exercise, but um..not going to happen. Both Gem and I would get very bored with that, so instead I’m going to alternate between two exercises to keep things interesting for us both but yet not really move on until we are ready. I haven’t looked ahead to number two yet, but if I remember from before it is similar to one only with figure 8s instead of just circles.
The Roaming Rider 
Nash’s mane floof hides his adorable little ears!!!!! Omg tiny pony for the win!!!!
And yay for recognizing that you have made a lot of progress!!! It’s always so easy to get caught up on what you can’t do that you forget what you can do that you used to not be able to do 🙂 Soon you and Gem will be looking st other things and forgetting you couldn’t bend bc you’ll be all bendy and such!
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His mane floof is adorable and his ears are smaller than my pups.
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i love this! a lot of these “simplistic” exercises get passed over bc they seem boring or too elementary or whatever…. but i like this stuff for two reasons: 1) having visual markers like ground poles really help me (and the horse) stay focused on the exercises instead of getting dragged into the weeds of fussing with each other; and 2) it’s kinda amazing what a focus on basics like practicing halting, or practicing moving from bend to straight to bend again can do for tuning in both the horse and rider. awesome that you had that revelation during the ride! for me, once i start to feel that little bit of progress, it becomes easier to recognize when other pieces are starting to work better too.
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The one thing I sick at finding time for is ground work but boring things under saddle are my go to since I’m too wimpy to do much else 😉
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There are definitely a whole host of varying bending exercises to be had to continue working on the bend without trodding over the same exercise day in and day out! Really great that you were able to step outside of your head for a minute and see all the good that was happening in the ride even though the bend was nowhere to be found. We definitely have to celebrate the moving of the needle.
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We need them all. Bending is our weakest spot right now
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My dressage trainer has me do what seems like the most boring exercises ever. But they’re super effective so we do them. Even though….boring.
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Effective is good!
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you are holding out on Nash stories that is NOT NICE 🙂 HA and I am glad you had a good experience with Gem! I am still envious as hell of you having that gorgeous barn and nice ring right outside your house (But in a nice way) HA!
I want the Nash story. I need something to brighten my week 🙂
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Sorry!!!! I’ll get to it! Work has been a mess and I always write these at work. I have a bunch in my draft folder. I still need to finish my moving story too. Some day it will calm down again
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If you get the flu life slams to a halt. its like it is in slo mo for me right now. #truestory 🙂 Take your time i am just picking on you as you know:)
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That is actually a wonderful exercise which I am totally going to pinch!
I think that horse riding is such a long journey it is easy to lose sight of how far you come because you’re always looking into the horizon of how far there is left.
But that is wonderful progress, and I am thrilled for you!
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You are very right. With so much to always work on it gets hard to remember where we started from.
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Good for you for working through things and thinking. You will make great progress that way for sure
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It’s a novelty to not only have a working brain but enough knowledge to know what is broken and how to fix it. Not that it worked mind you. We still had no bend but I felt like I was trying to do something about it instead of getting frustrated and quitting
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I always thought the instructions to only stick with one until moving on were silly. I think the idea of having two or three exercises set up so you can alternate between them is a good idea. You have to keep it fresh. Horses don’t like drilling any more than humans do.
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I get bored very easily and couldn’t possibly stand doing the same thing a million times.
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