move his feet; don’t place the horse with the hand and keep the upper body quiet. Try to keep a steady rhythm and then eventually the horse will figure it out. You can also do this with cavaletti in the ring. When you’re going cross country and
you get to a jump wrong and it’s too late to do anything, the best thing you can do is sit still: don’t throw your shoulders or pull on a rein, just sit in the middle of the horse, keep your leg secure and hope the horse is looking at the jump and can make a quick decision to save both of your necks. As you’re approaching the jump,
Gina Miles
Winner of the individual silver medal in eventing at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games (in Hong Kong), Gina is a promi- nent member of the eventing community and runs a busy teaching and training business in San Louis Obispo, Califor- nia. She has a super string of horses at the moment, one working on the three-star, a two-star mare moving up to Advanced and some exciting young horses. Gina and her husband Morgan have two chil- dren, Taylor and Austin.
changing the rhythm or stride with the leg, moving the upper body around too much, pulling on the reins or holding the horse too much are all ways the rider can interfere with the horse on the approach. Riding “backwards” impedes the horse’s back, which makes it impossible for him to see the fence and to move his legs. You can practice staying out of the horse’s way on banks
too, but it’s a little harder on an up bank. Try to keep the stride a little bit together so the horse doesn’t get long to the bank, which is how you usually end up having a fall— when the horse has to reach for it. A lot of times a horse will jump too big off a bank and the temptation is to yank on the reins, but keep practicing so he uses his neck and lets his front end drop first, instead of trying to leap off with his whole body.
Will Coleman: In our teaching we try to get everyone to approach the jumps from a place on non-interference, first. You can’t always be neutral in how you ride to a fence but you want to feel that you’re well balanced enough to stay out of the horse’s way and let them be as athletic as they need to be to negotiate the combination or whatever. We always start with the rider’s balance. If the rider has
balance the horse improves no matter what. Specific exer- cises depend on the horse. Some have quick feet and some are slow-footed and need to quicken their footwork. Probably the simplest exercise is just trotting fences, sometimes with a placing rail. I’ll have people trot courses too, at 3’6” or even four feet, which forces the horse to negotiate the fence from a variety of distances. Because they’re not in a rhythmic canter they can’t manufacture the jump and influence the horse so much; they have to work with what they’ve got. Joe Fargis does that a lot. I think trotting fences is something people don’t do enough. It’s the easiest way to get a horse sharper over a jump. The big thing for the rider is to have a solid lower leg and
work at understanding and feeling where the center of the horse is over the fence. Anne Kursinski does a lot of things to make you challenge your balance: keeping your hands wide over the fence, we make the kids jump with the reins on one side of the neck. There are tons of things you can do. It’s just
32 March/April 2017
Gina completes her dressage round at the Rolex Kentucky event in 2015.
making it a priority—you have to see things through to really feel a difference, and it takes a long time, that’s why it’s a hard sport; it’s not easy.
Holly Payne Caravella: In the cross country, especially, I tell all of my students, and I’m a big fan myself, to slip the reins. In your position you need to stay centered and allow the horse to use his head and neck to balance himself. If you keep your upper body centered and your leg under- neath you, it doesn’t matter what the horse is doing. Even if the horse takes off long and the rider isn’t expecting it, even over a two-foot jump, I’ll tell my students to slip their reins. With my young horses over little jumps, I’ll ride with a longer rein. They use their neck a ton for balance and it’s important to give them their freedom as they’re figuring things out. I also have students stand up and balance in the stirrups
at walk, trot and canter, hands out to the side, and balance like that. Even if the horse is bucking or rearing, if you’re centered and have a strong leg position, you’re not going to move; you can be in a good strong secure position.
Gina Miles: I try not to let any of my riders go out without a bucking strap or five-point breastplate to hang onto; I think it’s important in a sticky situation that the rider’s instinct is not to grab the horse’s head. If you let the horse’s head and neck go, they can turn themselves inside out to get out of problems. I have a bucking strap on my saddle, and if some- thing looks like it’s going wrong I can grab on and let the horse figure it out. People might make fun of me and say that bucking straps are for kids, but I can feel confident to drop the reins and say, “Hey buddy, get yourself out of this mess.” When they figure that out at Novice and Training, it’s easier later when the jumps are bigger. If you hit them in the mouth or land hard on their back, they’ll have a negative association. But if you can grab a bucking strap and sit tight, the horse learns to get themselves out of trouble when they need that fifth leg.
Ed Haas
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