Stay calm, stay still, stay straight and stay in the rhythm!

Let me explain!  This month I was lucky enough to spend 3 days with Tim Page Honeychop’s sponsored rider ahead of him heading out to Portugal to compete, Mikey and I were joined by yard buddy Stu and his owner Candice – we all had a great time.  Whilst we were down with Tim Your Horse magazine came out and covered one of our lessons for one of the magazine features they run so I am excited to see ourselves in print in the next few months.

Mikey and Henry chilling out!

The lessons with Tim were great, and I took a lot away from them, here’s a bit of an overview of what I took away, I am sure many of you can relate to these:

1. Stay calm – I can panic a bit when things go wrong before or after a fence but Tim got me really focused on staying calm throughout regardless of anything going wrong, his answer if something did go wrong “it doesn’t matter” and I think he is right, I get so stressed when something does go wrong inevitably something else goes wrong, so I am going to take the “stay calm” manta forward and try and apply it at all times.

2. Stay still – When I’m not quite sure if there is a stride in to a fence I can start flapping a bit with my arms and legs, which clearly is distracting for Mikey and puts him off, Tim got me to sit very calm and still in to the fence, I found this hard but when I kept still Mikey was able to stay in better balance so again this is something I plan on practicing more of at home.

3. Stay straight – Before and after the fence!  We really focused on this and throughout the weekend we got better at this, Tim gave me some tips on my lines in to fences and I found this really useful. At home our arena is quite small so I’m not sure I have ever really noticed quite how much we wiggle in to and away from a fence (although I know at competitions this can be my downfall and sometimes the reason I have a pole or 2 down).

4. Stay in the rhythm – Keep the canter the same, don’t loose balance round the corners, keep the momentum and let the fence come to you. Sounds easy but as you all know probably not as easy in practice but practice makes perfect.

Mikey and Stu meeting Honeychop Henry

So lots to work on but its great to feel progress with our jumping which I definitely did and looking forward to getting out in a few weeks time and seeing if I can remember it all when under the pressure of a show environment.  Thank you again to Tim and his team for having us – we loved it!

When we headed back from Tim’s Mikey found himself arriving at his new house, my niece has just brought her first horse (Ayia a 12 year old cob x who is now dressed head to toe in purple!) and so we needed somewhere that could keep the both of them together, thankfully for me Mikey is very relaxed in new places and as long as he has some hay to keep him company he doesn’t seem to mind!

Amy and her new pony Ayia, Amy loves her Honeychop hoodie 🙂

Talking of new horses, Ayia has found herself enjoying one of the new Honeychop products, she is a real good doer so we have decided to feed her the new Lite and Healthy, the reason I like it so much is whilst its low in sugar, it looks and smells lovely, unlike other low calorie chaffs that seem to smell of nothing, the smell of the cinnamon that is used in the range I particularly like!

Until next month

Laura and Mikey x