1/11/15- Dressage test riding with Julie Corrigan
Last Sunday was a great opportunity to start our dressage winter training. Norton Disney saw us improve in this phase to get our best score to date achieving a 30.3, now the goal is to get sub 30! Julie Corrigan was holding a dressage clinic/test riding at Laughton Manor, Folkingham in their lovely indoor arena. I decided to ride a BE102 for her as we will be hoping to do BE100 next season again (fingers crossed!).The idea of theses clinics/test rides is to have a dressage test in mind where you ride through it first, julie then gives you tips/advice where and how you could possibly improve to get the better marks, the clinic is finished off by riding the test a second time. Both tests are judged by Julie and hopefully taking her tips on board you should have improved. Guy rode through the first test quite well but a little tense at times- he just tries too hard- Julie gave some great tips from softening through the transitions by breathing techniques and from a judges point of view what I need to show more of eg suppleness through showing more bend in the shallow loops. Putting all what she had advised I set off on doing the test again. A much better test but with the unfortunate bum swinging to the right in the last halt grrrr..!!!! Julie judged both tests like she would have done in a proper competition, first test would have scored a 33 and the second test was an amazing 28.5 fantastic- we are on our way to sub 30 scores!!!!!!