Tuesday, February 24, 2015

JR/YR Clinic with Jeremy Steinberg

We traveled down to the beautiful Shannondale Farms in Alpharetta, GA to audit the Region 3 JR/YR Clinic with Jeremy Steinberg. Extremely talented riders and horses were in attendance and Jeremy was a wealth of knowledge, improving everyone's rides by the end of the weekend.

I felt Jeremy focused a lot on quality of gaits and how to improve them. He went on to explain that every movement starts with the gait...so the quality of the movement can only be as good as the gait was going into the movement. I think that's really important to remember as we ride and train our horses.

He was also quick to identify any weakness in the horse, and gave good exercises on how to strengthen them. An example was several riders were struggling with their canter pirouettes. Focusing not as much on the pirouette, but strengthening the hind end and quality of the gait by asking the horse keep the "jump" in the canter while doing haunches in on a circle. This keeps strain and stress down on tendons and ligaments while strengthening the horse and subsequently improving the pirouette.

I was pleasantly surprised to see everything from Pony Riders through Grand Prix Young Riders. All rode very intelligently, classically, and compassionately. Wonderful role models for up and coming riders in Dressage.

Faith and I both took a lot home from the clinic and are looking forward to the next one. We were also able to get much needed insight on what we should be doing for Faith. We were given the information to get her on the list as an Emerging Dressage Athlete which then starts her on the pipeline. Hopefully she will be riding in the next clinic!