Account of Pegasus EduSeries Showjumping Clinic with Phillipa Collier

Written by Helen Richardson

2023 Newsletter Article

A few of us from the club were there (and some of our esteemed instructors), it was a great night with excellent information and 3 very talented young riders, who were able to demonstrate the different way of riding the lines. The evening started with a talk upstairs and Phillipa, asked us to take a photo of the information she was going to talk through after which we saw a couple of videos and then got the chance to see it with our own eyes in the indoor arena.

The 2 photos below show what was the essence of course building and course walking.

Photo 1:

First you need to know this is my memory of the information (and therefore could be inaccurate)! When you are talking steps for a person, we are basing it on 90cm. Trot poles. My take away point 1. How to set up trot poles. The simplest option is to just have 3 poles set at 2.7 to 3m apart. So 3 steps a pole then 3 steps. This layout can be used at walk, trot and canter. If your horse is not going smoothly through them (changing rhythm) or hitting them, or not stepping in the middle, you will need to adjust to meet your horse's length. Note horses and ponies need different widths. Walking the course. The competition canter speed is what we are basing our course walking on as shown above. Higher fences, different ground, what comes before, if you ride straight, can all effect the number of strides between a fence. The above suggests 2 steps for landing, then 4 steps for each horse stride and 2 steps for take off. This is how you walk the course to plan what strides you should be aiming for. It is important to watch the course being ridden as we found that what looks like 4 strides can infact be ridden as 5 or even 3.

Photo 2:

This next photo shows the grid and jump layout, Phillipa had set up in the indoor arena. We all went down and had a go at walking the lines and seeing how they could change, depending on the line you took.

This was all good in theory, however we soon saw that the expected strides were riding quite differently to what was expected and changed with the size and education of the horse. Phillipa changed the distance slightly to make it safer. My take on this was if you ride a line and it isn't feeling right, work out if it is longer or shorter than you expected and then change it to make it safer (I'm still happy having lessons and letting the instructor help me here).

One thing that I took from this lecture was that we really should not be setting grids at home until we really know our horse and what we are trying to achieve.

If you look closely at the grid, the distances they are set at is not as you would plan or build a course. They are set shorter, to get the horse to sit back on its haunches (get off the forehand).

I had a great night and learnt so much. I enjoyed being with my club mates and coaches. I am happy to admit I have been riding for 40 years and have never been taught much of the theory behind many of the calculated processes. I look forward to attempting more of these exercises.

At no point did Phillipa suggest if you need to get there quicker, get your elbows out and shout encouragement at the horse (I am going to try to learn to count strides in and out and in between, not sure if that is after I master breathing, someone said if your counting you have to breath!).

Anyway it was a great night and I was excited to practice what I had learnt.

My aim after the talk is to, walk, trot and canter through my 3 poles, I'd like to count 3 strides in and learn if the standard 2.7 is the right length for my horse.

I was asked to write this article, because of all those Horsemans members and coaches present, I probably had the most to learn and thus a more basic approach to sharing. I joined the committee to encourage those members who don't know (or are keen to learn) to ask questions and get value out of the magic brains trust that we have, just by being members (Thanks to Monique for her help with Ralph's random leg swelling last rally).

Thanks to Phillipa and Pegasus Feeds for providing us with this opportunity.