Forward II

Trying to explain the concept of "forward" is quite a challenge. Recently, a friend of mine competed in horse trials, and I thought that her summary of the ride over the cross country course gave a pretty good "feel" of what "forward" is all about.

Here is her write-up of her own ride:

'In showjumping I realised I wasn’t going forward enough and that in grade 4 you can get away with it because the jumps are quite small but in grade 3 you can’t do that. You have to ride forward or it will all go wrong. So I made sure I rode forward on the cross country!!

The second jump was HUGE so I just rode at it and it was fine. Then jump number 5 was interesting - an apex next to a tree and getting to it was tricky!! The line was terrible and the ground was boggy. So took a very very long way to get there then lost my stirrup so circled to get it back and then flew over it!!

Jump number 6 was a drop, one stride to back up the other side and then one stride to a log. I rode it terribly and way too slow and we fell through it but got there.

After that I had a good chat to myself and the next jump was quite big but I had jumped it before so I just rode at it and it was awesome and I decided I just had to let her go and trust her to jump them.

So I did jump 1-8 in 4 mins and 8-15 in 2.5 mins!!!!!! It was the most amazing feeling going at the jumps with that much speed and then flying over them!!'

The interesting thing to note here is the amount of detail she provides about the first few jumps. That's logical planning. Then, all she says about the last few jumps is that she trusted the horse and flew over them. That ... is "forward". Get it?