Cross Country Training at Tweseldown

Posted on 10:00am Wednesday 11th Apr 2018

Cross country training at Tweseldown.

Last weekend (Saturday 7th April 18) saw a different coaching session, a XC session at Tweseldown.

My rider is stepping up to BE this season for the first time, as is her fabulous horse who is pretty new to XC, when you watch the videos I think you may question this!

Having had the first event cancelled due to the dire weather we have suffered, we used the opportunity to fine tune the XC section, and toddled off to Tweseldown for a run.

Podge (cute name eh!) is a diamond of a horse, but can be a bit strong which has meant that his owner, Josie, who must be about 5stone wet through(!!) has been struggling to balance him after a gallop, losing time setting him up for fences, and has not been able to let the "handbrake" off totally meaning losing time and potential placings.

We have spent some time training for the feel of the required pace XC, using a marked area and stop watch, the pace was originally a scary feel for Josie as she didn't want to let him go, but with lots of groundwork and a change of bit, we seem to have found a good combination.

We used this session to work on keeping a good ground covering stride over undulating ground and ensuring the balance could be maintained, but without too much "setting up", trusting Podge to jump out of his stride, which he did with ease.

Once confident to jump 90cm, we stepped up a notch, and by the end they were jumping the novice course, making it look easy!!

The water at Tweseldown is quite deep, so we started with the small fences and allowing Podge to find his feet, again he showed his quality and jumped everything, even the largest drop in and the largest jump out.

We finished there, they both enjoyed the outing, gained so much confidence and can't wait to get out and compete now.

Below are some clips from the afternoon, not loads, but enough to see what we were up to!