March Henrik Clinic

The past week and a half I spent 4 days clinicing with one of my instructors, Henrik Johansen. I was able to clinic 4 different horses.

Claudius:
I was able to take Claudius in two lessons. Henrik knows Claudius quite well and Claudius has a reputation of not fulfilling his potential. I have been working with Claudius for about 6 months and working very hard to get Claudius to want to work. We have come a long way and it showed immediately when Henrik didn't recognize Claudius as I warmed Claudius up.

The emphasis in the trot work was to bring the shoulders up and get the hindend quicker. We spent a lot of time in the lateral movements working on increasing the impulsion by riding out to near a medium gait halfway through the movement. In addition we spent time in half steps and then going into quarter turns on the haunches.

The canter has been our weakest link and Henrik put a lot of emphasis on making sure the outside was engaged and straight. We spent a lot of work leg yielding off the outside seat and leg and then in a renver (haunches out) on a 20m circle. That was by far one of the most challenging things I've done. All of this work paid off as we were able to start some solid schooling pirouette work.

I have had a goal of showing Claudius at least Prix St Georges this season and after these sessions I feel confident to have Claudius ready for the PSG by June.


Nick:
I had a very solid session with Nick and Henrik continued the theme I had been working on with Claudius of having a straight horse in the canter. We spent a lot of time in the renvers, especially on the right lead canter. Once I had Nick listening to me I could produce a flying change with no effort and the half passes just sailed across the diagonal.
The one thing Henrik emphasized was to ride Nick more like an FEI horse even though I'll be showing him 3rd and 4th this season.


Sabu:
Sabu is also another horse Henrik knows quite well and this was the first time Henrik saw me on Nick. Once again Henrik was quite happy in how the horse is going. The big thing with Sabu that we worked on was being able to have Sabu transition within each gait without bracing in the base of the neck. In the first lesson we spent a fair amount of time at the walk to get this. By the second lesson I had the walk down within the first couple of minutes.

The big thing we worked on in the second lesson were flying changes. I have "settled" Sabu's changes down to what they used to be, but still needed some help refining. The left to right change has been our achilles (mostly a late change) and Henrik gave me a good exercise to work on it, which I hadn't thought of.

At the very end of the second lesson we had a trot that, for Sabu, was engaged, uphill and expression-it felt great!

Neo:
Neo is the new guy and I only had 5 rides on him before our two lessons. Neo's two limiters are strength and straigtness. Henrik gave me a couple of different approaches to getting him straighter. Neo is fairly stiff on the left rein and Henrik had me not even focus on that and instead get the left shoulder up and the right hind engaged and then eventually I'll have what I'm looking for.

The second ride went well and Henrik immediately commented what a difference from the first day. We spent about 1/4 of the lesson on canter pirouettes. It was evident strength is what we are working against; but I was able to get some steps from time to time that showed what Neo can do.

We had a good audience for the second ride and everyone was open with the praise for Neo. Henrik saw no reason why I wouldn't have a strong season with Neo at PSG and I1


The big picture items I was reinforced with and it's so hard to skip this, but keep at the basics: the trasnitions, the straigtness, and having the horse respond to me. With all of that, everything is easy! Thanks Henrik!