The Aiken training sessions with show jumping legend Katie Prudent wrapped up yesterday, and California training listed rider Tiana Coudray arrived out east just in time to take advantage of them. Tiana has once again generously written a training session report for Eventing Nation. In 2010, Tiana Coudray won the Jersey Fresh 3* and placed 6th at the Boekelo 3* with Ringwood Magister. This year, Tiana is a High Performance B-List rider. Visit Tiana’s website to learn more about her program. Thanks for writing this Tiana and thank you for reading.
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Finian’s win at Jersey 2010
From Tiana:
Wednesday morning of the Katie Prudent training session got off to a bit of a chaotic start because of some location and scheduling changes. A very inconvenient thunder storm forced us out of Three Run’s Plantation and down the road to Peter Barry’s warmer, dryer, covered ring. With how wet we were getting just riding from the trailers to the indoor, it would have been absolutely miserable for us, not to mention for Katie, to try to be doing lessons outside at Three Run’s Plantation. With the change of location also came complete abandonment of the schedule as we had to double up and get finished as early as possible. It was come one, come all until we all got through. Unfortunately that meant that there were often 4, sometimes 6 riders in each lesson and I was not able to watch the other groups as I had on Tuesday.
Katie is an interesting clinician to audit because she teaches to the crowd as well as the riders. Many times while someone is on course, she is giving commentary or sharing a bit of theory. I learned as much from watching as I did riding on Tuesday, so I was obviously disappointed to miss the other groups. In my first lesson I rode Master Hill and the lesson started with cantering a two stride of poles and then a very sharp 5 stride turn to a bounce of poles. Katie built on this by turning the bounce into a small vertical and asking us to gallop around the ring before collecting for the 2 strides, and then riding the 5 stride turn. Once we got that, we went straight ahead after the vertical which was a long 3 strides to an oxer and then a long 4 strides to another vertical. Clearly the lesson was on shortening and lengthening the stride. The other trick of it was planning your 5 stride turn such that you were coming forward to the first vertical rather than still trying to stuff your horse around the turn. By meeting the first vertical more forward, it made the long distances much easier, and for Master Hill, I even got him down the line too easily. Katie asked me not to get him to the oxer so much, and said the lesson for him was about having to reach a little bit for the oxer, so to hold him off of it a little. When we were all proficient at that exercise, we had to jump down the line, turn around at the bottom and come back up the line. This way it was still long, but the hardest part was getting the horses collected and turned to make the two stride of poles at the end. If you allowed your horse to cut in on their turns, or you were not able to adjust their stride, you were not going to be able to get the job done. Katie was very precise about what she wanted to see, and corrected every time a horse rubbed a jump or touched one of the poles on the ground.
My second lesson was with Ringwood Magister (Finian) and we had quite a variety of very schooled horses and very green horses all in the same group so we started off with a lot of flatwork. Katie approaches flatwork with the same precision as jumping, and while the exercises were very simple for Finian, it was still a good warm up to be completely measured in how we were leg yielding and doing flying changes. When we moved on to jumping, we did a very simple gymnastic, but one of the best exercises I’ve done in a while. It was a pole, 9 ft to a small vertical, 18 feet to a slightly bigger vertical, 21 feet to a slightly bigger oxer, but then you had to circle around and do the line in reverse. To start off, the oxer was only about 3′. When the horses jumped through nicely, we had to start coming back down from the oxer first to the bounce pole. Because the jumps we descending and the distance got tighter, it was very difficult to get the balance and the footwork and many of the horses wanting to bounce the one stride or straddle the bounce pole on landing. I think the real challenge of it, was that the jumps got smaller, which for me at least, drew the horse, and my position, downward rather than stretching up for the next jump. Like my previous lesson on Master Hill, it also asked the horses to lengthen their stride going through the line one way, and then shorten their stride coming right back through the line. I am excited to try this exercise with other horses and see how they do.
Every one of the lessons was packed with good exercises and targeted at understanding your particular horse’s way of going. If they cut in on their turns Katie wants you to know that ahead of time, or if they jump best with a little more gap to the jump, she wants you to know that. She said that her goal was to help us make a plan for Sunday at the event, so you get to every jump in the way that your horse will jump it best. I am very excited about that kind of planning and precision, and I think looking at show jumping from that angle could really improve my rides, or at least one can hope.
