Sinead Halpin Clinic Day 1

 

Lexington is used to welcoming some of the word’s best three day event riders – we do host North America’s only CCI**** every spring after all, but in the winter it tends to get horribly cold and depressingly quiet (my opinion, address your comments to me!) so we were thrilled to have Sinead Halpin, one of US eventing’s very brightest stars, return to the Bluegrass recently to teach a clinic.  National Champion when she came 3rd at Rolex behind Mary King in 2011, and of course 2nd at Burghley this year behind Andrew Nicholson she hardly needs an introduction. The clinic was hosted by Allie Slusher at her facility in Paris, Kentucky and ran over two days, the first concentrating on a little flatwork and gymnastic/show-jumping, the second on cross-country. Sinead taught from 8am until after 6pm each day, and the sessions were about 90 minutes to two hours with between three and five riders in each group. Huge thanks to Allie, and to Stephanie Spaulding-Cherry for hosting and organizing.

 

Day 1: Warm-Up and Show-Jumping

 

On both days Sinead spent some time in the beginning talking about what she hoped to accomplish with the group that day, and her goals for the clinic. A natural communicator, she’s witty and quick and had great rapport with her students throughout the day making the learning fun, but I think that what she said both days before the riding began is so relevant, and she was so extraordinarily eloquent that I think it’s worth repeating here.

 

“Basically, warming up is being passed by; we’re all so eager to get on and go and attack some fences, and be really great and really good that we’re kind of missing the foundation that will allow us to be really great and really good. It seems to be be viewed that spending time warming up a horse is a negative thing sometimes.  I think there’s sometimes the mindset that you have to get on, get out there, you have 45 minutes, you’ve got to make every second count, which is true but a lot of that time needs to be spent warming up, and that’s for the rider and for the horse. Every time you come out to the ring, without even meaning to, you’ll often bring your day, yesterday, your thoughts of what you want tomorrow with you. I really think that a big reason why guys dominate the sport is because they just come out like…’meh, whatever!’  – right?!  And if something goes wrong, they just carry on! Whereas we come out with the world on our shoulders and sometimes that can resonate with our horses; so it’s very important when you get in the tack to spend the time checking in, at the walk, at the trot, at the canter. Number one first priority – is the horse in front of my leg? I put my leg on – he has to go forward. Then I can start deciding how forward I want him to go and in what step I want him to go. Then your horse will develop a balance and a self carriage on his own, one that I’m not always constantly picking the speed, or rhythm, call it what you will, and the reason for that is that as you get through the levels, up to training level there’s no lateral work in your dressage test, but once you start going preliminary they actually hit you pretty hard, because then you have to start doing your counter canters and your leg yields in the arena. If you’re so busy with your leg and hand maintaining rhythm or speed, and keeping your horse’s head down, you have no aids left to direct the lateral step or to place them into a shoulder in because your leg is so busy keeping the trot going, and your hand is saying don’t canter, then you add on top of that a lateral step or something along those lines and it’s a little overwhelming for the horses.  

First and foremost the horses need to establish a walk, trot and canter in a relaxed fashion, that they can be in self-carriage, that they can just stay at that rhythm until you’ve told them to do something else. The next element of that is pushing the horse slightly through, through being that the energy from behind just translates all the way THROUGH the body up front and basically creates a shape that’s nice and round, and to me I always picture that energy working in a nice circular manner, it comes up from the hind leg, through the back, over the top, comes back around and then that cycle keeps continuing. You take that energy and then you can do something with it, if they have that self carriage and they have ‘thoughness’. A horse can be in self-carriage off the bit scampering around, you’re just not dictating where they are. Where we start to add that connection in, we take those hind legs, we push them through, we connect them to the front end, we put them in a shape.

 

I know I’ve been a victim of it, and most of us have, where we’ve been in such a hurry to get something done quickly and you get to a competition and you don’t have those tools that you need, and normally that’s because somewhere in the foundation there’s a hole. No matter what, now, at least if I go to a competition and if my shoulder-ins aren’t perfect and my counter canter’s not perfect but my horse is relaxed, through and in self-carriage, I know I’m at least going to be competitive because I’m at least going to be able to go in the ring with a happy horse and show the judge a happy horse.  So if I’m a little off – well, we’ll work on that next week; if my angle isn’t great or my lateral step is a little lagging,  we can keep working on that but at least I know I have a solid platform.  It really is the horsemanship side of this job – if your horse is happy in his work he can do a lot.  When that tension and pressure starts to come through then the work starts to get pretty difficult, and in our sport we need to not only accept, but promote that horsemanship that our horses need to be happy to do everything that we ask them to do. We ask them to do a lot, and if we come in drilling stuff without giving them a foundation it’s going to catch up at some point and normally it catches up just when you don’t want it to!

 

Make sure they’re in front of your leg and see if you can get them to stretch nice and low, and that they don’t keep coming back at you. Normally they keep coming back at you because they’re a little unbalanced and a little insecure, and that’s when your little half-half comes in, you support them and you put them back through again, then check your left flexion, your right flexion, often you’ll find one is better and one worse, then hop up into the canter and do the same thing. I’ve worked for a lot of people and that seems to be, of all the great horsemen that I’ve worked for, that seems to be the one bit of magic that everybody’s looking for – they spend so much time making sure that their horses are correct and through in the beginning, and then they just put a little spice on top!” 

Do you have goosebumps yet?!  Sinead watched the riders move the canter forward and back, was very strict on horses moving off the leg, and then in the downward transitions they must accept the contact and be soft and supple and rideable in the mouth. Before they started jumping, there were several exercises with poles on the ground, bounce pole grids on the ground, skinny poles three or four strides out, as Sinead said, “My arena at home looks like a trailer park; it makes you commit to a canter. If you can do all this small stuff then all the big stuff is easy.”  The jumps were set in bending lines, roll-backs, related distances.  Obviously Sinead watched everyone carefully and had different advice for each horse and rider, but a couple of things were universal – the horse always being in front of the leg and the horse must accept the contact, “Keep the contact, don’t let him drop it, it doesn’t matter about the distance, just move the bit in his mouth and keep a smooth and present contact even in the air, he’s got to trust you’re not going to go anywhere”.  Sinead didn’t back off problems and certainly didn’t sugarcoat anything; despite the happy, friendly energy she expected your best, “The only difference between a professional and a one horse rider is what you’re willing to accept – Be extremely strict with yourself in your training.”

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Tomorrow we’ll bring you Part 2: Cross Country Day. Thank you again to Sinead Halpin, Allie Slusher and Stephanie Spaulding-Cherry, and to you for reading. Go Eventing!

 

 

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