Regular lessons or one off holiday to improve?

[daydreamer]

I wanted some opinions on how best to improve my riding. I have decided this year will be the year i try for my BHS stage 3 riding (don't need qual for job or anything, just to give me a personal goal). I need to improve my riding especially jumping and cross country and practice riding a lot of different horses but can't work out the best way to do it. I am limited by money and also time (teacher with weekend job too plus occasional tutoring in the evenings and loan horse).

Options i have come up with are....

Try and ride at good local-ish stables and exam center once a month (+ good, - £, petrol, takes a whole evening)

Try and find a more local riding school for occasional lesson (+ diff horses, cheapish, close - poss not great horses/tuition)

Save up for an intensive course at good local-ish centre or one of the big exam centres (Talland or YRC?)

I think shortly before the exam i may also put word out where i keep my loan horse that i want to sit on as many diff. horses as possible. I could also maybe try and find a yard to volunteer at in the holidays in the hope of getting some free riding (although in my exp this tends to involve a lot of manual labour and little riding/instruction!)


Opinions?
Left over mince pies and apple juice if you got this far!

 

[tazzle]

well I think in the main there are pros and cons as in everythig and it kinda depends on how you as an individual learns and rhat you want to iprove / change

From my point of view I have been on several 4 day / week course and not just horse related but to do with physical skills. One of the main benefits of this was that when I needed to recognise and build up a new physical memory , especially if needing to undo a muscle memory in order to do so , it was more advantageous to have the intensive coaching because I did not go away and pactice what I thought I needed... I was watched repeatedly doing it till it became more or less set and I was at a stage of knowing what the correct moves felt like ....... then I was allowed to practice out of sight of intructor

This is however a very intensive and tiring way to do it ..... and unless you have a short taster before you wont know if the instructors methods will suit your goals .

thanks for the juice but will pass on the pies