Lucinda Green hits Canberra

What an exhilarating, full-on, exhausting, amazing and sometimes dream-like couple of days I've just had. I have just finished my first ever Lucinda Green clinic and it certainly lived up to the hype! For starters, I got to meet and hang out with an absolute hero of mine, a rider I absolutely adored (and still do!) as a Pony Clubber on my little QH cross, and who I love hearing on my Burghley and Badminton DVDs. I couldn't believe I was breathing the same air, frankly!

But, when I got over my excitement (though it did flood back at various times during the clinic!), I learned an incredible amount in a way that I really enjoyed. As did everyone else I spoke with, young and, ahem, older. Lucinda, it turns out, is a seriously generous and encouraging human being who never once spoke down to anyone and treated everyone the same, whether they were sitting on a 1* horse or a green ex-racehorse.. And the riders responded in kind, really making an effort to lsoak up everything Lucinda had to offer in a way I haven't seen much before.

It was a very tiring couple of days - riding and organising a clinic is a ridiculous thing to do! Luckily, I had the great guys from the NCHTA providing the logistics like water, snacks and the equipment, so it was less stressful than it could have been.

Jedi was super and behaved just beautifully. After Robyn the bodyworker gave him the once over the Monday after Wallaby Hill, she said he was quite sore around the girth area where the buckles of the H girth sit. I tried a normal short elasticated girth on him for the first day of the clinic (first ride since Wallaby Hill!) and he was really happy in it. No tension or humpiness at all. Interesting!

Deep breath, let's dive into everything I learned (and retained long enough to write it down!) from Lucinda Green....

Lucinda has a strong belief that 'modern eventers' are over-controlled - she used the word 'dominated'. She thinks there is a real balancing act between control over all aspects of the horse's speed and direction, and the horse's own natural brilliant instincts to get over the jumps safely. She thinks we're being taught to get things perfect, get the stride right, set the horse up so he just has to lift his legs up, basically. But when things come unstuck and we make a mistake the horse has no skills to get himself and us out of trouble. We essentially leave him out to dry and Lucinda believes that is a big reason why eventing has seen the spate of fatal falls in the last ten to fifteen years. Horses are simply over-controlled and can't get themselves out of trouble when it goes wrong. So they crash.

Lucinda in full flight

She also wants to get us sitting back a hell of a lot more coming into the jump. Not interfering, just supporting and waiting for the jump to come. Letting the horse get his stride, not pushing, letting him 'tow' us into the jump - but not rush. We practiced 'bombing' (as she called it) into two fences (showjumps on the first day) and letting the horse meet the fence as he wanted. It was hard not to see a good stride and push/hold for it, but soon we were all trusting our horses and doing well.

I though I'd got it and was happily bombing away, sitting back much more than normal, letting Jedi work it out, then we nearly came a cropper and I got a good yelling at from Lucinda. Jedi just stood off and nearly landed in the middle of the oxer. Lucinda just kept jacking them up so we were jumping a good 90cm and it was not a nice moment. I realised on reflection that I had not sat up and kept my legs on and Jedi had lost his nerve and took a blind leap. Lucinda talks about feeling like your horse is in a tube between your legs and his eyeballs are attached by strings to your ankles. I didn't feel the tube and that mucked him up.

Lucinda started delving more into this idea of focusing your horse on the fence, how important it is with the technicality of the jumps we now face (skinnies, triple brushes, curving lines to arrowheads) to get the horse's eye on the fence early. She had set up what we thought were the most impossible lines - a wide apex and a bounce but not to be jumped that way. The idea was to jump one of the apex poles straight on then on to one part of the bounce, more than a 45 degree angle! It got a bit messy, but we all got the hang of it surprisingly quickly.

The set up. The idea is to jump the green/white on the right, then the black/white on the right. And vice versa.

An idea of the angle.

 Next minute, Lucinda had set up a little skinny (1.2m wide) for us to jump a few strides before the double. We were astounded how easily how horses all  the horses did it. No guiding poles, no walking over it on the ground, just getting on and doing it. Interesting....

Lucinda with one of the skinnies behind her

We put it all together in a bit of a course, practicing these pretty basic ideas of sitting up, holding, putting them in the tube, not interfering with the horse's ability to get over the jump the way he wants to. It was amazing - we were jumping pretty damn big, the biggest  most of us had jumped on our green horses, that's for sure! It was so much fun and Lucinda was so confidence-inspiring.

It's funny but I only really started to get it when I watched the two other groups. It's hard to assimilate the information while your horse is doing it at the same time, so I was much more clear on what Lucinda was getting at when I heard it two more times!

She is also a big believer in trying out different bits. This was a bit alien to me as I had always thought it was an issue with my training if my horse was not as responsive as he could be, especially cross country. But Lucinda sees bitting as a helpful tool, and thinks that a horse's personality and anatomy play a huge part in their ability to understand and obey the stop and turn aids. She was trying out bits on a couple of the horses with some positive outcomes.

Day two was really exciting after the day before. After a bit of a warm up and a bomb over some simple jumps we headed to the water straight up, for a 'play'. Lucinda had set up some white blocks at the edge of the water and, after a bit of a paddle, she sent us up the smallest bank at a walk. This was the first time most of us had even considered you could walk up a 70cm step from the water. Lucinda had us make sure the horses walked up the bank, on a loose rein (hands apart just in case they tried to piss off) but letting the horse work it out and scramble up completely on his own terms. She was adamant that the more we hold and push the more freaked out the horse will become, especially if he makes a mistake and leaves a leg. She said a horse that gets scared jumping up steps/banks is very difficult to re-train. Better not to set that up in the first place.

Anna going up the little bank.

Jedi was super-cool and found the whole thing quite ok. We were soon jumping out over the blocks  quite confidently, then halting in the middle of the water, turning left and trotting up the step then pushing on over the roll top a couple of strides away. Then jumping in over the blocks, through the water and up over a little roll top, up the little row of steps, halt at the top, turn around and come down at walk (Lucinda's emphasis). Then cantering over the roll top and down the drop into the water, out over the blocks. This is the playing Lucinda was talking about. Just setting up challenges, making sure the building blocks are solid before stepping up the difficulty. But she pushed our young ones pretty hard and they rose to the challenge. One of the mums of the girls in the last group said, 'they'd never let us do this at Pony Club!' And she's right - we really don't push ourselves and our horses like this as much as we probably could.

Maddy going over the blocks into the water.

On to the ditch. A very similar approach - walk over the ditch. The horse must be allowed to lower his head to look, as much as he wants. But he must not step back or try to piss off sideways. Hands wide to keep control and a good push or kick to keep him thinking of going over it. Lucinda was very disapproving of hitting the horse when he's looking at a new obstacle and working it out. She says it's completely counter-productive and makes horses frightened. This is quite different to a dirty stop at a straight-forward fence. That earns a fat smack.

Within a short time Lucinda had set up first one, then two skinnies - the same ones from the day before, one on either side of the ditch. This made a fun skinny-ditch-skinny combo that the horses had a bit of a challenge getting over. Jedi went really well. From over-jumping the ditch to comfortably jumping the skinnies and the ditch literally took two repetitions and no more. Other horses had more issues, including a lovely big showjumper who simply down tools and refused to move whenever things got a bit hard!

Lucinda had us link together a number of jumps to make a course for ourselves, getting us to practice putting our horse in the tube, letting them work out the different jumps. I made another mistake by not riding properly at a wall with a big drop on the other side and Jedi put in an enormous jump that nearly got me off. Lesson learned. Again. Sorry Jedi!

It was a truly thrilling lesson and we were fanging over some serious jumps for a horse that's only been jumping for a couple of months. I now wear spurs and Jedi wears a martingale on his breastplate, both of which improved our way of going. My confidence is sky-high after my lessons and we're on track for another Intro start at Canberra, then a shot at Prelim at Berrima the following weekend. Bloody wicked.

I was pleasantly surprised by Lucinda. Yes, she's opinionated and sure of herself, but she is absolutely not arrogant or belittling as many coaches at the top of the international game can be. She is quite self-deprecating, very funny and quite interested in us all. I loved ferrying her around and having funny conversations with her one on one. What a privilege. She said one thing that I thought was very interesting - we were talking about coaches who've come to Canberra in the last few years and the prevalence of coaches who teach us to be in 2-point seat coming into jumps, to be essentially with the horse's movement. She believes this is dangerous for 99% of riders, especially female riders and is a style of riding only advocated by men. Interesting huh? We women are not physiologically as capable of resisting the forward momentum of the horse if he were to chuck in a dirty stop or catch a leg, whereas men are stronger in leg and upper body and have more chance of hanging on.

So interesting. And really affirming. I found I already did a lot of what Lucinda teaches but was not conscious of it or why it works. This makes it easy for me to be convinced to abandon it. Not anymore. Back to my tried and true way of riding - sit in the saddle, leave the horse to do the jump, give him his head and neck whenever he needs it, be prepared for anything, keep the horse in front of my leg so when I give him a kick he always goes. Sounds easy, right?