3 months to get competition ready.

The title says it all, yesterday during my last saturday lesson of the year I spoke to Fiona and we have decided that we are going to go for it on the 8th March I am going to be doing two dressage tests at Broomfield. We think the tests are going to be British Dressage Intro A (walk and trot test) and British Dressage Prelim 7 (walk, trot, canter test). 

Yesterday in our lesson we worked mainly on getting the outline constantly, I was getting Gatsby to work really well long and low in both the walk and the trot before asking him to pick himself up while in the trot. However this did not go quite as planned, as I think i mentioned in an early post this week I have been having problems with my left knee, when I moved on to asking him to pick up and go in to the outline I discovered that I was bracing my left leg and trying to stop getting any impact on it and by doing this while I thought I was protecting my leg, I was unbalancing myself and making my position slightly off. So Fiona suggested that I took my stirrups away to see if this was right, the minute that I took my stirrups away, we were in an outline in the walk and trot. Yes we needed more impulsion at times but we were in the outline. 

Fiona then suggested that we worked on a test to see what I was doing, to start with I was tensing up and panicking because the minute you say dressage test to me I become incredibly nervous. However when I stopped thinking about the fact we were doing a dressage test and just got on with it we became supple and in an outline. We tried the Intro A test first because originally i said that I was planning on doing the walk trot test in March and leaving out the canter. However after doing intro a and really relaxing, I felt quite confident and good about what I was doing. I then did some canter work (As this had been the original plan for the lesson, but I took my stirrups back for this). Fiona fetched two more british dressage tests one with a small bit of canter and the second with a larger amount of canter. I decided to do the larger amount of canter because my theory was if I could do the test with the most canter in, I would be able to do the test with the smaller amount of canter in. After going through the test once i felt happy with the work that I was doing and we decided that it was time to stretch Gatsby out, and cool both him and me down. When we were talking about what test I would be likely to do in March we decided to just go for both of the tests and see what happens. I have the ability to ride all the movements of both tests on their own and now all I need to do is string them together. 

Fiona has also suggested that we take Gatsby up to Broomfield one day to give me the feel for riding him out of the school, yes I used to ride Gatsby at Broomfield, but since he left the only place I've rode him at is West Hallam. So Fiona suggested that we hired the school out and that she took Vettie (to get him out) and that I took Gatsby. 

So that is the start of our 2015 plans! Lets see what next year brings! 

Until Next Time 

A Girl With A Dream