Fall Training Sessions at True North Stables
This past weekend Bellhaus Equestrian organized a fall training session for members of the Jumper Mafia Equestrian Club. The session was hosted at True North Stables in Mundelein, Illinois with lessons given by trainers Caitlyn Shiels and Cody Wooten, who switched sessions each day in order to provide a variety of feedback for each rider.
Horses arrived Friday morning and had the option to take part in a professional training ride, light hack, hand walk, and/or turnout as preparation for the weekend. Saturday was structured with four groups of 2-4 riders and Sunday combined into three groups in order to get horses back home to Wisconsin at a decent hour. Saturday’s sessions focused on flatwork and pole/cavetti exercises that emphasized the importance of fundamentals and Sunday built up from those exercises to incorporate more jumping and course work. Repetition was the name of the game as each day also put the fitness of both horse and rider to the test! Caitlyn and Cody did a fabulous job of finding exercises that every group could do that were scalable for the capabilities of the rider and horse. This helped riders to apply instruction from other groups directly to their own experience. Examples of some of the exercises are included below!
We had a lovely group of riders and horses who took on the technical challenges with confidence and learned a lot!
From the True North Stables, we had participation from Charlotte and her pony Lucky, Olivia and her equitation horse Cashman, Emma and her new equitation lease horse Kevin, and barn manager Karyn on catch ride jumper Delona.
We had two lovely riders from Trident Farm join us, Clara and her young jumper Gaia and Bree with her long-time jumper Orion!
Lastly, from Bellhaus we had participation from Claire with her green project Ghost, Taylor with her new 4yr-old Tara, Max with his hunter equitation horse Bella, Joellen with her long-time jumper Dante, Gillian with her junior hunter Dealer, and Amanda with her jumper Trevor.
All participants presented beautifully turned-out horses each day and helped other participants when needed. Special thank you to Max who provided extra grooming, feeding, and turnout care to all the horses.
We were also joined by a number of auditors who came out to support friends and learn themselves. It was a fun and rewarding experience for our first training session with this great team.
Thank you to everyone who participated! Stay tuned for future training session opportunities!
Some of the exercises that were practiced:
Canter poles/cavalettis set in a line up the outside that were trotted and cantered to work on straightness and developing a consistent pace for every step pace. Riders were challenged also by changing the number of strides between the sets of poles to work on measuring pace.
Trot poles and single poles/cavalettis across the width of the area working on pace and track out of shorter turns.
A line of three jumps set with 3 strides between. Riders were challenged based on the needs of their horse to do 4 strides to 4 strides, 4-3, and/or 3-3.
A bending line that rode a direct 5-stride to a balancing 6 in one direction and a nice 6 stride to an allowing 5 stride in the other direction. Riders worked on keeping a consistent pace while using the track to make their adjustments.
A course that included several single diagonals, the previously mentioned bending line, and a 5-stride line.