mrussell
Well-Known Member
Rightyho.... here goes !
As you may know... my OH is a would-be-eventer who has tinkered around over the years with a couple of horses (one of whom is the wonderful floiying Oirshman, Chester, from the EWW column itself). He, being a mere man, suffers from sitting-to-one-side-itis on account of..well... I shant expand on that (**snigger**). He also suffers from why-wont-it-do-what-I-want-it-to-pox and so I finally badgered him into a Biomechanics session at Ashen EC.
At first his eyes lit up at the thought of a greasy rag and some star-drive screwdrivers but it soon turned out that mechanics like this dont need a Haynes manual. Off we set with Chester in the boot of the Chester-mobile to central No-where to see what Becky could offer.
Firstly he was plonked on Strider, which is a mechanical horse with a permanent case of the right-flexation. Little did this former-rug-demonstrator know that his life as a mere shop assistant would end up with his legs coming off and him being mounted on a weight sensitive machine, hooked up to monitors and wires. It turned up that OH was actually quite central and balanced... and Becky only needed to tweak him a little - but it was fascinating how that tweaking made a huge difference to the feedback from the machine.
An hour later, OH was clambering onto the Chestermachine, who was just like strider only smaller and wilier and more prone to running off. Becky watched them warm up before starting on taking them back apart again. What an experience. Some amazing sound-bites such as "close the back of your armpits" rather than the usual "open up your chest" !! 45 minutes later and Chester was taking much bigger steps and was on the bit without any fiddling at all.
The conclusion - we shall definitely be going back. As the evening wore on it became evident that Becky doesn't simply instruct - she teaches. And that is a first for OH as he can do almost anything when someone is "instructing" him... but put him in the ring on his own and he is stumped.
As you may know... my OH is a would-be-eventer who has tinkered around over the years with a couple of horses (one of whom is the wonderful floiying Oirshman, Chester, from the EWW column itself). He, being a mere man, suffers from sitting-to-one-side-itis on account of..well... I shant expand on that (**snigger**). He also suffers from why-wont-it-do-what-I-want-it-to-pox and so I finally badgered him into a Biomechanics session at Ashen EC.
At first his eyes lit up at the thought of a greasy rag and some star-drive screwdrivers but it soon turned out that mechanics like this dont need a Haynes manual. Off we set with Chester in the boot of the Chester-mobile to central No-where to see what Becky could offer.
Firstly he was plonked on Strider, which is a mechanical horse with a permanent case of the right-flexation. Little did this former-rug-demonstrator know that his life as a mere shop assistant would end up with his legs coming off and him being mounted on a weight sensitive machine, hooked up to monitors and wires. It turned up that OH was actually quite central and balanced... and Becky only needed to tweak him a little - but it was fascinating how that tweaking made a huge difference to the feedback from the machine.
An hour later, OH was clambering onto the Chestermachine, who was just like strider only smaller and wilier and more prone to running off. Becky watched them warm up before starting on taking them back apart again. What an experience. Some amazing sound-bites such as "close the back of your armpits" rather than the usual "open up your chest" !! 45 minutes later and Chester was taking much bigger steps and was on the bit without any fiddling at all.
The conclusion - we shall definitely be going back. As the evening wore on it became evident that Becky doesn't simply instruct - she teaches. And that is a first for OH as he can do almost anything when someone is "instructing" him... but put him in the ring on his own and he is stumped.
Glad to hear that isn't the problem, anyway 
and really deserves a name of her own...) has a tendecy to crookedness, we consulted an osteopath and she pointed out that T does actually have a bit of a curvature to the spine which causes her to slide to one side. It would br dascinating for her to have a session like that to actually appreciate the impact her crookedness has on her pony, and see if she can start to tackle it. It is quite slight on the flat but really noticeable when she is galloping out of the saddle, they picked her up on it on the XC training thing at the Racing School. Need to save my pennies up and maybe do something over the winter...