Now when you jump a horse you are supposed to sit nice and straight in the middle of them. This ensures that both you and your horse are balanced properly. If you are balanced properly, jumping for you and the horse is very simple. For example:
These are two pictures of my sister jumping. The bottom is hard to see but the top one is very nice to look at. See how straight she is sitting in the saddle? She has folded nicely and is going with the motion of Beau. That is a very good thing. Now let's take a look at a few more pictures.
Now what is wrong with these pictures? Hmm? Oh yeah. Everyone is LEANING! Now even though my readers aren't all horsey people I would like to pose a question. Does this look safe? Nope. That's what I thought. Leaning like this is a very bad habit and very unsafe. Because when you lean you are throwing your horse's balance off. Now look at these next two pictures. They are blurry but you can still see it.
Ahh! I love head on shots. They speak a thousand words. Now its easier to see it in the second picture than the first but we can see the rider is pulling the horse away from her center of balance and causing her to twist her body. The second picture shows the horse's front and back legs are not squared up. The front legs are being pulled to the right while the back legs are straight or canted to the left a bit. This is very unsafe. And now to the last two pictures I have. These show the consequences of this leaning habit.
And here is the result. The first picture shows the rider leaning to the left. And the second picture shows the landing. She is off balance and so is her horse. She is now up the horse's neck and falling sideways to the left...the same direction she was leaning. Now this is extremely dangerous and is calling for a fall that could possibly take the horse with it. Now these are small jumps. Two foot at most. As the fences get taller and taller, the more leaning, the more accidents and potentially serious injury for both horse and rider.
These girls are being trained improperly and it makes me cringe when they are like we are going to be a good show team and everything. Yeah. Not like this they aren't. It doesn't help that the trainer they are under is pushing fence height rather than riding technique. These kids are jumping four foot plus with all of the horses pictured. And they haven't even been riding or jumping that long. My sister and I have been doing this for a very long time. Longer than any of them. Neither of us have ever jumped four foot before. But that's okay. Gail is working with us on technique and style rather than fence height. We work on fences under three foot. But that's okay, because when the fences do go higher, we have the techniques down cold and know exactly what we are doing and how to adjust. This is how Ali and me did so well at the show. Even though these girls are doing the jumpers instead of the hunters or EQs, it doesn't matter. Technique is the most important.
Note: Jumpers is a jumping division that works on speed and power. They are looking for the fastest times and are judged on the time as such. Hunters is a jumping/flat division that looks at the horse, not the rider. EQ or Equitation is a jumping/flat division that looks at the rider and only the rider (thought having a nice horse under you doesn't hurt!). Ali does the hunters and I do the EQ.
Okay. Sorry for my rant there, but I sort of needed to say my piece and then I'll be done with it.
~Dragon Eyes~
No comments:
Post a Comment