We Are Flying Solo: Eric Smiley

Showing posts with label Eric Smiley. Show all posts

August 30, 2014

Free Riding Clinics For You! A TFS Redux.

By eventer79 August 30, 2014 No comments

God spake to me...& I could not look upon his holy face

Ever wanted to absorb decades of experience like a little fangirl sponge from greats like Jimmy Wofford, Ian Stark, Becky Holder, or Eric Smiley?

Well, aren't you a lucky little fangirl!! In the spirit of relaxing over the holiday weekend, for those of us who can't access FEI TV (or don't want to), I have collected, in chronological order, our ~~hilarious~~ spectacular performances in front of these phenomenal horse(wo)men & teachers. I'm sure they felt just as lucky as I did. *insert sarcasm font*

I also wanted to share with more recent readers some earlier parts of this wild journey. I'm sure you are spending every free moment catching up on the 500+ posts since August of 2009 (where's that font again?), but in the meantime, I set the time machine in motion. Encore & I may appear fearless & quasi-competent at times (usually when no one is looking), but those moments are built on the foundation of 1,000 stumbling blocks of trial-and-error that Solo, my un-erringly brave & accidental partner, made with me.

Have no fear, I am unoffended if you point & laugh. I do (at myself, past AND present).

The only Olympic-quality ride Solo ever got

The Man Who ~~Ruined~~ Changed Solo & I For All Time (or That First Time We Met The XC Grin)
Ian Stark - Summer 2007
(Yes, I was afraid to canter my horse in an arena because he misplaced that gait. He only had trot & gallop...except on the trail. I'll let you guess how humbling it is after 20 years of riding, to finally have a horse & be afraid to canter it. And yes, I did try to make an eventing legend wear my sweaty helmet. I failed. Then Solo nearly dumped him. Thank cod my horse did not gain infamy as The Killer Of Ian Stark. *horror*)

I Finally Get To Meet God
Jimmy Wofford - Fall 2008
He only whacked my horse on the ass with his baseball cap once...

Becky has not convinced Solo that dressage has merit

We Discover Eventing Mecca & I Become A Bona Fide Stalker (& My Last Clinic With Solo)
Becky Holder - Fall 2010

Ok, he can jump

The Best Christmas Present Ever & Encore's First Proper Clinic (Thanks, Mom!)
Camp Becky Holder - 10 Days of Spring Training, 2013

A Scotsman Started The Fire, An Irishman Throws A New Log In The Flame
Eric Smiley - Summer 2013

Encore's 1st Training course (Fall 2013)

Wander at will & explore the evolution! Or save it for some rainy day entertainment. May there be useful lessons YOU can apply next time you swing a leg over.

And not least of all, thank you to my mother, to Jim, to our amazing friend, Beth, and to the ~~victims~~ kind, random people I threw cameras at. Your support made these experiences possible & each one is a treasure, both in lessons learned & the partnership forged with my horses. Not only did these incredible teachers raise the bar on my training & riding about 47 holes, but they did so with patience, grace, generosity of spirit, humility, & humour.

For that, I consider myself lucky indeed.

Cross Country Indoors!

By eventer79 July 07, 2013 4 comments

The first sound I heard upon waking for cross country day was the drip of rain on shingles. My heart sank as my fantasy of finally galloping my horse on Waredaca's turf evaporated. Much to my surprise, however, the sadness was misplaced. As we arrived to help set up new jumps in the indoor, I saw that Eric managed to create interesting, challenging questions that taught just as much, if not more due to the horses' lack of distraction, as being out in the field might have!! That man has some undeniable talent!

There was a different focus for each group. For ours, it was moving your horse forward in balance, both straight and through turns, and using your rhythm and pace to be competitive with accuracy and planning. Making it even more educational was our eclectic group of horses. Beth rode her experienced Prelim TB mare (a fantastic Silver Charm daughter with overflowing enthusiasm), another Adult Rider friend rode her green OTTB gelding, one of Kate Chadderton's young working students rode her spectacular jumper of a pony, and I had Encore, still rough around the edges, but making real strides in consistency and approaching readiness for Training level.

It was hard.

As we warmed up at the trot, we were instructed to look at all the possible lines, approaches and turns for each jump. Eventing is not about beating each other, it's about beating the course designer. So we trotted around, looking at everything.

Then we were told we were terrible at it, ha (learning isn't all roses, and I very much liked that, with each passing day, we were held to a higher standard, with no malice, but with a strong sense of accountability). That wandering around in warmup without riding the lines of the course (when this option is available) is a complete waste of time -- ride the turns, ride the approaches, know what every. single. option. is.

By take three, we finally got more aggressive as a group and attacked the arena much more critically, although the Stern Irishman was not exactly impressed. I could see by their faces that my lesson buddies were determined to kick some butt now too!

An important point about your first warmup jump for cross country: its purpose is to wake the horse up. Not to be pretty. Not to win an eq medal. Ride that horse forward to the jump and don't do a darn thing. If he crashes through it like a gorilla, he wasn't awake. He will be on the next one, unless he's as dumb as a post, in which case you probably should not leave the start box. And you sure don't want to find that out on the very solid first jump out on course!

We worked both ways through a simple bounce and then added a jump or two following it, keeping the emphasis on riding forward (don't you add that stride!!!) and being quick with your eye to guide your horse to the next jump.

Now it was time for the meat: turns. This is where many people lose time and when you are trying to be competitive at Training and above, time matters. It's also a good thing to practice at all levels. Truly good cross country riding isn't about who can run the fastest. We ride racehorses for goodness sake, they're plenty fast. Good cross country riding is about who has the most finely tuned technical skill, who has laid the best foundation on their horse to be sharp and accurate on course without sacrificing balance or rhythm. Watch Britain's Fox-Pitt or Germany's Jung and you will quickly see what that means. Skill, finesse, and a concrete plan A, B, C, D, and Z.

This is where it got ugly (for us!). Encore is very capable of sitting on his butt, stepping under himself, and turning beautifully. However, I had never schooled this skill on such a tight line (it was about a 12 m circle), so we both looked something like AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! JUMP!!

After Eric got me to stop pulling on the inside rein, though (NOT ALLOWED), and really pushing with my outside leg, Encore quickly began to understand what I was asking of him. That big crash in the middle is actually not him hitting a rail -- that is me pulling the whole standard down with my toe! Go big or go home!

Before long we were able to put all this together and even add a constructed corner to finish off in style.

I cannot fully express my gratitude to Beth for not only setting this up, but making it possible for me to participate. She is amazing! Thank you too to Sunset Hill and Kate Chadderton for their hospitality and beautiful facility. Kate is great fun and a lovely, patient rider; look for her and her current *** mount, Collection Pass, as they gallop towards 2014's Rolex!

And of course, thank you to Eric Smiley -- a wealth of experience, knowledge, an incredibly deep and thorough understanding of horsemanship and correct riding and training, generous, hilarious, helpful, gifted, fun yet disciplined, and with that quick eye of an excellent teacher and equestrian. Thank you for sharing so much and for putting up with the weird girl, haha.

Clinic Videos From Show Jumping Day

By eventer79 July 06, 2013 4 comments

Yep, I'm taking the lazy way out for these. Highlights covering most of the types of exercises Eric used to get the horses rhythmic, straight, and balanced.

Warming the canter up over a pole. Circle good, corners bad. While Encore's trot needs to be much more forward at the beginning, I soooo excited about how much more steady he has become in the bridle.

Basic warmup line. Don't allow your horse to speed up (I did, several times, oops), don't make a bid for the fence, do relax and wait for it to happen in its own time.

A single vertical on the circle (notice a circle trend?). I'm super proud of Encore in this one, he is such a pro!!!

Of course, right after that triumph, I did this. But I think it illustrates an excellent point that Eric made often: YOU are in charge of finding the canter and the line. Then you pass the torch to your horse and he is in charge of jumping whatever it is you point him at.

And our last course.

Learning With An Irish Smile

By eventer79 July 02, 2013 7 comments

Quick vid capture from today's jumping warmup

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Every clinic is different. Infused with the personality and riding style of the technician, distilled over years of experience and mistakes and triumphs, and hopefully capped with the flourish of their unique teaching style. Eric Smiley is no different.

It's difficult to accurately convey the details of this one though. With a quiet humility and a ready smile, he says he's "not one of the big boys," but with accomplishments from 1982's Irish Field Event Rider of the Year to 2012's Belgian Olympic Team Coach, one could certainly insist that there is more than one definition of big.

A gifted instructor, he makes a quick connection with all of us, asking each rider (1) what they like most about their horse and (2) what is one thing they would like to fix THAT DAY. "People coming to clinics always have a long list of negative things about their horses, but I want to get you to think of what you enjoy about them." And this is only the first of many questions and insights that strip away all of the fuss and details and noise surrounding How To Ride Your Horse and reach down to the heart of what we are trying to accomplish and polish the gems of wisdom passed down through generations of horsemen.

I'm a visual, logical, process-oriented person; I like to understand why I am doing something and what end I am trying to achieve. This is probably why I enjoy listening to all of Eric's lessons. There is no "use outside rein, now more leg, now your left buttcheek, now inhale three times..." Instead, he challenges us to really think about and engage into each ride, using questions aimed at simplifying and streamlining how you approach riding and training. These are concepts which you then fill in with details and through this, deepen your understanding. For example...

What is forward? The horse should be taking you. Not you chasing him or tapping him or nudging him.
What is impulsion? Energy that you can then do something with. I thought of it this way: trying to ride without impulsion is like trying to wash a car with an empty bucket.
What does 'through' mean? There are NO blockages in the flow of energy from your leg to hind leg to hock to stifle to hip to back to neck to poll to jaw to hand. So, are there? Examine each of these areas.
How many ways is it possible to jump a fence? Four -- twice in each direction, one turning left and one turning right. Know them all for every fence you see.
How do we turn our horse after a fence? Using the outside aids. Then the eyes and the inside hand show him where to go.
and...

DON'T RIDE CORNERS! Yes, that's right. Why? Because they are hard. Try that one at your next lesson, ha! But in all seriousness, because almost no one rides them correctly. They lose impulsion and rhythm in the corner, so when schooling your jumps, keep your lines on a curve and your energy flowing forward, stay out of the corners and you won't get stuck in them. I heard this one alllllll day today, stadium day.

But I already know these things, you protest. Perhaps, but have you really, really thought about them, the biomechanics and the definitions and the reasons, and applied that directly to practice?

Encore has been, in short, a gem. On dressage day, I identified my one project as consistency -- in contact, in rhythm, in outline. I'll be damned if he wasn't solid as anything. Today, throughout the entire jump school, he remained attentive, balanced, steady as a metronome, and jumped as round and lovely as you could ever want.

Giant breakthroughs? For us, no (although several other riders have made amazing strides with their mounts, particularly the very green horses). Well, I was told my lower leg was completely wrong and got my stirrups jacked up two holes, details... However, the sessions have nonetheless been extremely valuable to me by offering not only a vastly simplified way to think about what and how I want to ask my horse, but perhaps even more noteworthy, how to think about what is NOT working. You can't fix a problem if you don't understand the cause!

What do you do when your horse is hanging on the bit? Push his hind leg farther beneath him with your leg. Why? Because if he is hanging, there is too much weight on his front legs. Placing his hind leg farther beneath his body shifts his balance back a bit, weighting his rear through the hocks and lightening his front end. He is, quite simply, a teeter totter. Understand this dynamic and you have the power to manipulate it into any variation of balance you desire.

Tomorrow is the best part, naturally, as we head over to Waredaca, just down the road, to school cross country both to ours and our horses' delight. We've been lucky so far and not really been rained on, as well as having the benefit of Sunset Hill's massive indoor arena. If the weather will hold until 3 pm, everyone will be home free!

Naturally, a wonderful part of it all, and one of the reasons I love this sport, is the people. Meeting (and perhaps re-meeting, hey, I have a terrible memory) fellow Adult Riders, spending time with the awesomeness that is friend Beth, soaking up my doggy fix, margaritas by the pool and the best sangria you've ever tasted (hey, these things are important) and basking in the exchange of knowledge and skill between teacher and rider and horse; all of these pieces just make me hungry for more.