Now I fell off the flatwork bandwagon in March when Estrid and I roly-poly’d our way to injury whilst schooling. I had been working hard over winter and even enjoying it, but sub-consciously I think I was associating schooling with increased injury risk so I wasn’t doing it. In my head straight lines were safer and I was justifying not doing it by saying I needed to do fittening work and focus on ‘endurance training’.
We all know I was wrong, being balanced and responsive, able to maintain a rhythm, maintain impulsion from behind in a nice self-carriage is essential to an endurance horse. You can do those things without going in a school, but for me, being in an arena focuses my mind on the task at hand. So I scheduled our weekly flatwork session back into the planner.
Our main focus at the moment is getting length through the back and neck and being able to maintain a relaxed and lengthened posture through the transitions. We’re getting there, it’s not perfect but it’s definitely improved. We’re a bit on the forehand, we sometimes lack impulsion, we lose a bit of direction every now and again (it’s like I can only focus on maintaining one thing at a time, the stretch or the steering) but overall I am starting to get a relaxed horse and rider. Dare I say, I’m even looking forward to putting the focus back on flatwork this winter!
Beth Endurance 