Derek McConnell Clinic

So, I just realized that I never circled back to do a post about the Derek McConnell clinic we did at the end of March. (I mentioned it briefly in a previous post and then apparently put it right out of my head. Which also reminds me, in a follow-up to that post: Poe started eating his grain again quite happily when I left his supplements out of it. I’ve ordered a fresh batch from SmartPak and hopefully we are good to go. Also had his teeth checked — he is scheduled to have them done, but he’s still been eating fine since I chucked the supplements.)

The clinic went well! It was pretty tough and to be totally honest I felt a little demoralized afterward. I just think Poe is such a fantastic boy and I am definitely not the caliber of rider he deserves. But, you know, he’s my guy, and I don’t think he’s sitting out in the field wishing it were Oliver Townend moseying out to get him. (Though who knows, maybe he is! If Ollie came up to me, with or without a pocket full of candy, I would happily go with him…)

We spent the first day really focusing on flatwork. We did quite a bit of warm-up work, with lots of transitions and Derek repeating his downward-transition mantra over and over: sit back, say whoa, and move the bit gently around the horse’s mouth with your fingers. Also lots of dressage-type talk about the proper positioning of your legs to ask the horse to bend. I think his over-arching message was about focus: have a plan for every ride, and make each minute of that ride count; be consistent. Train, train, train. He is obviously a man who is not afraid of hard work and who believes in the big Sustained Effort.

He had us do a little “course” over canter poles. When I rode it, I felt like Poe was blasting through it, just really running. He’d been pretty strong in the warm-up, really blowing off all my half-halts — he was definitely my away-from-home horse. When I watched the video back, I couldn’t believe it. You can see for yourself about a minute in. He’s just cantering along, la la la. He felt like a freight train but looked absolutely fine. That was my biggest take-away from the weekend: What feels way too fast is probably almost fast enough. (Apart from the time when he really is too quick and isn’t listening and leaps both the trot pole and cross-rail in one go. That is the difficulty with babies: it’s so so hard to know when and how much to push, because it changes by the second. You can watch that lovely moment at 2:18 — though, like everything else, I think it felt a lot worse than it looks.)

On the second day we repeated the previous day’s warm-up: lots of transitions and reminders about down transitions and changing the bend via our leg position. Poe was blowing off my half-halts worse than the previous day; he was by far the biggest-strided horse there, so we had some issues with running up on other people. I ran into some of the same difficulty the first day too — in the canter warm-up I was paired with a woman whose horse refused to canter at all, and all the fences created an obstacle course that made it pretty much impossible to maneuver around with our current level of steering. When sitting back, saying woah, and moving the bit gently around Poe’s mouth didn’t work, Derek had me do a sort of slow see-saw thing — I hate to call it that, but it’s the best I can think of to explain. He had me put slack in one rein and pull the other slowly but strongly, then switch. Poe was not thrilled about it but with Derek’s coaching it did prove effective. I wish now I’d asked him about graduating from that — it’s a bit too crude to keep around in our dressage work, but something for the toolbox anyhow.

After warming up we moved on to course work. Poe was wonderful, I am pathetic: story of my riding life. Again, the lesson is MORE FORWARD. I also need to get in the habit of (and in shape for) putting on a stronger leg at the base of the fence. He needs that support and encouragement, even when he feels totally committed — he can still stall at the last second.

(For those using a feed reader, the videos may not be displaying — you’ll have to click through to the site to see them, or directly to YouTube: Day 1 and Day 2.)

Comments are closed.

Staypressed theme by Themocracy

canadian pharmacy low cost prices super p-force U.S. manufactured canadian pharmacy online delivering medicines at your door.