International Eventers Forum 2015 - my take on it

Busy weekend, we went to to visit MDR photo to look at the the new website and a new business idea (watch this space), stopped of to see the bro in Oxford, met Lisa Sparrowhawk (My performance coach) there and then the following day we went on to Gloucestershire and Hartpury! Mum, Lisa and I had a great time, we were joined by Michael Rogers from MDR Photo and Jenny Gray-Wallis . We came away from there...well inspired would be the word overall and personally I took away a lot of things that I could start using immediately.

Start the trot, not finishing the canter' This was one of many things Christoff Hess said that really made me think differently about doing 'gymnastics' (flatwork) with my horses.  

What a way to start the evening forum, Christoff Hess is such an amazing trainer, every horse that entered the arena left a better horse. We watched him train Sam Griffiths on a youngster and on Happy Times and we also watch him train Nicky Roncoroni. 

I really liked his techniques, in my opinion he worked with the horse, harnessing its natural movement, I have already started putting it into practice with my horses and it really does work, next I'll be trying it out on all my clients that I teach!

Next was a very insightful talk about how to get your horses up to eventing fit by Hugh Suffern, Irish Team Vet, Charlie Logsdon Racehorse Trainer and Andrew Nicholson. I think keeping records for comparison was the theme of the whole talk whether you are taking bloods, looking at how much fitness work your horse needs or recovery rates. I already have fitness plans for individual horses but taking a record of each of my horses fitness plans and comparing what stage they were at when they performed at competition, so that I can refer back to them to look at what each horse particularly needs to perform at its peak is something I will be now be doing. (Mum informs me it just a case of a simple spreadsheet)!!!

The day was rounded off with a jumping demonstration with Andrew Nicolson, what a character...Not entirely sure we agree with galloping 4 year olds on a weekly basis but I still learnt a lot from him and we all really admired his honesty.

He did some really interesting exercises in his demonstration, helping to train the horse to pop the fences and not over jump because this could land you into trouble in the cross country course

Little diagram of my favourite exercises Nicolson did. It really helps the balance and its a lot harder then it looks.

Quote of the day by Nicolson: Question: Do you believe in using calmer at events? Nicolson Answered: You've got the wrong man......

International Eventers Forum 2016 is already in the diary. Special thank you to Laura Lucas on Facebook's Twitter Eventing  Group who organised group tickets this year.