Building Gmnastic Exercises

I had Chris here to help me this morning, and the footing was good enough that Son of a Lynx and I could do some gymnastics work at home. It helps so much to have someone who is willing to be ground crew, rearranging jumps and replacing poles that get knocked down.  Saves me a lot of time and getting off and on!!

Here's the first thing we set up:

This gets the horse warmed up, being careful with his feet, and introducing the idea of multiple obstacles in a row.  I have it set along the side of the ring, so you can ride around it warming up, but it's basically along the wall.

Next we worked on going over two crossrails, with one stride between them.   After watching the video back I realized they need to be a bit closer together, to make the spacing more easily achievable for him.  For now, though, when the jumps are so small I don't mind weird distances.  They teach him to think through the footwork, which gives him the skills to reason through difficult distances.  It also transfers into work outside the arena, giving him the idea of how to navigate difficult footing or terrain out on trails.  

The third step is to give him a couple ground poles to a small vertical.  This shows him a different shape of jump, and a different line as this one goes through the diagonal of the ring.  The ground pole under the vertical stays there, to give the horse a visual of a ground line, which helps him assess how high the jump is. 

When we raised the red vertical we kept the ground pole under it as the ground line, and removed the middle ground pole to give him more room for take off.

Then we start putting it all together as a course!  First we jump through the green and blue crossrails, then trot around the end of the ring, and go over the red vertical.

 

Lastly we use the same jumps, changing only the green to be a vertical, and sort of do the course backwards.  I try to do everything from both directions to keep the horse as symmetrical as possible, and teach him how to jump things no matter which way we approach it.

Here's the video of the whole thing at the end of the ride.  Lynx figures things out so quickly, we rarely need to do any steps more than once or twice, and then he has it.  It helps that it's a very logical and systematic progression, so he can anticipate what comes next and get it correct with very few repetitions.  He does also have such a big stride, and can really lift his legs up while still in the trot to go over most of these small jumps.  Once the jumps get bigger he'll start jumping them more normally instead of kind of climbing over them at the trot, but introducing all the ideas, the styles of jumps, the footwork, can all be done over small fences.  This is much less pounding on his body, though it's a definite plus that he's 10, sound, and done growing so I don't have to worry so much about developing joints!  

https://youtu.be/RSS5xFjCOog?si=H4uQqUZvLgIfKyso 

 

I love starting "older" horses under saddle (like not two to four year olds) for many reasons.  They are physically mature and can handle more physical workouts.  They are mentally mature and have much longer attention spans than babies.  Even if it's the same amount of time in a workout, I can put more information into the session without overwhelming an adult horse.  It's especially nice to have off the track horses because they've already seen so much of the world and life, that the stuff I introduce isn't scary or threatening, it's just another interesting thing to learn.  

Son of a Lynx is really an incredible example of what a Standardbred can learn and accomplish in a very short time.  He has everything going for him:  age, looks, intelligence, truly sensible temperament, and is learning how to be a sporthorse incredibly quickly.  He's quite the ambassador for the breed!  As Nationals at the Horse Park of New Jersey approaches, I'm getting excited to show him off, exhibit him with only a few weeks under saddle and show what he already can do, and in a calm and confident manner! 

Looking back through the blog, his first ride/first sit was on July 11, making tomorrow exactly four weeks of riding.  He's trail riding alone or in groups, with or without dogs, in any position in the line.  He hauls to friend's places and the vet, went to a horse show and won a bunch of ribbons, and is now jumping small courses and gymnastic exercises both at home and in other places, in an arena and out in the fields.  That is a LOT to have learned in just one month!  We've got five more weeks until Nationals, and with all he's already accomplished I'm really eager to see what he'll be doing by then!