{"id":8054,"date":"2012-05-31T16:49:58","date_gmt":"2012-05-31T06:49:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/?p=8054"},"modified":"2015-01-22T07:32:35","modified_gmt":"2015-01-21T20:32:35","slug":"back-to-school-with-megan-jones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/2012\/05\/back-to-school-with-megan-jones\/","title":{"rendered":"Back To School with Megan Jones"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Susan Mackenzie sits in on a lesson, and wishes she\u00a0was riding not writing\u2026\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Roz Neave took the photos<\/h3>\n

Back when I was a 16-year-old eventer doing interschool competitions I thought we were doing pretty well just to get school saddlecloths and the odd report at assembly for the Equestrian Team. Things appear quite different at the girls\u2019 school, Toorak College, at Mount Eliza in Victoria, which recently organised a three-day clinic with eventing superstar Megan Jones.<\/p>\n

I joined the older girls on cross-country day, which was held at Sara Madden\u2019s beautiful Tuerong property, \u2018Fairhurst\u2019 on the Mornington Peninsula. The riders were oh-so-keen, the sun was shining and Megan was wonderfully enthusiastic (and had my schoolgirl-self been there she would have been eager to get out on the course!).<\/p>\n

It was a hot day and we took a minute to spot Megan who was under the cover of a very large hat, hard at work with the youngest riders. You wouldn\u2019t think \u201cOh wow, there\u2019s an Olympian\u201d as she casually helped a 12-year-old girl get her pony through the water for the first time, enjoying the success just as much as the diminutive rider. Low-key, keen, quick, exacting, patient, particular, extremely knowledgeable and very approachable \u2013 that\u2019s Megan Jones.<\/p>\n

Before the girls even started the clinic Megan was examining all their gear, noting things like too-tight nosebands and unused saddle cloth tags which she said should be attached to the saddle or cut off, never bunched under the saddle: \u201cWe don\u2019t want horses misbehaving at any time, but certainly not from pain\u201d. Having taught the girls on the flat as well as over jumps Megan began the lesson with a revision of the previous days\u2019 lessons, reminding them about hands and shoulders, balance and the responsibilities of the rider; emphasising that it wasn\u2019t the rider\u2019s job to get the horse over the jump, but to work everything out in between the jumps. This was the focus for the lesson.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cYour job is to sit in a balanced position, to ride the horses properly, to sit properly and to turn them properly.\u201d \u201cOne of the biggest parts about cross country is travelling between the jumps. Rather than slopping along in between the jumps you need to stay connected. If you\u2019re galloping along and see a jump then you are ready. All you have to do is have your leg on, hand connected, elbow connected and the horse is ready. There\u2019s no scrambling to get ready.\u201d<\/p>\n

Megan explained the importance of using your body not just to balance but also to slow the horse, and not just focusing on your arms: \u201cWho wins \u2013 horse against a bicep muscle? The horse every time. Horses are very sensitive and react better to your body than your hand, they will notice you\u2019ve altered your position and react before they would acknowledge your hand.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the schoolgirls showed that if you are just pulling your reins you end up pulling them in towards your tummy, which makes you collapse your body forward. You end up looking down, the connection is lost through the elbow and the horse runs away, ignoring you.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo let them be free your shoulders must be back, your shoulder blades together and strong and you must be balanced. Your leg keeps you on, not your hands.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYour cross country seat is different to your showjumping seat. Riding cross country is all about being able to sit up if you need to, being able to go up and down hills, jump downhill, jump banks, stay on if the horse trips.\u201d<\/p>\n

Megan asked the riders to stand straight up in their stirrups to start the lesson, explaining that riding like this is the jumping version of riding without your stirrups on the flat. It allowed the riders to find their balance and find where the hands should be.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

She asked them to trot and halt in this position, carrying their hands. A few horses were a bit confused by their riders asking them to halt with no seat in the saddle and carried on, not liking the hands that were there and not moving: \u201cIf the horse hits your hands from your balanced position that\u2019s ok, because that\u2019s not you pulling on them. They\u2019ll hit them and go \u2013 ouch, that\u2019s embarrassing, I hit your hands, I won\u2019t do that again.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the young riders made a point of asking Megan to help her with her horse\u2019s tendency to get long and to run. Megan was quick to point out how important the rider\u2019s position was to stop this: \u201cYour hands need to be forward and not in at your tummy. A horse that gets long must be forward. If you ride with your hands back and him thinking backwards, you\u2019ll be in trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The first jump was a skinny log, and Megan emphasised the rider\u2019s responsibility: \u201cYour job is line and pace. You show them the line, you show them the pace. No chasing three strides out, let the horse jump, not you. Line and pace.\u201d<\/p>\n

Seventeen-year-old Stephanie Wake had ridden one star on her grey horse, White Russian, but the horse hadn\u2019t jumped for six months and was getting a little cranky, bulging through the corner and speeding up at the jump. \u201cTurn your shoulders and the horse\u2019s. Turn your inside shoulder back more. It\u2019s all about where he\u2019s putting his head and neck. As soon as he rolls over he pops his shoulder out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNext time the horse\u2019s shoulders need to come around the corner like a bus around a corner, get them moving early.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCount the canter rhythm in your body, your hands and in your elbow. Don\u2019t lose it. Same. Same. Same.\u201d Once the horse accepted the line, Steph maintained the rhythm and the jump improved.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook he hasn\u2019t jumped for six months so no matter what you do today he\u2019s going to whinge and complain. He hit your hand a few times, but that\u2019s his problem. You choose the line, not him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Some of the riders were tempted to try a last-minute fix three strides out from the jump but Megan\u2019s mantra was \u201cThe same, the same, the same. Rhythm, rhythm, rhythm.\u201d She emphasised that it\u2019s the quality of your canter that gets you over the jump, not fiddling three strides out, and the next time the girls jumped they were spot on.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The first related line was the same skinny log to another log on a rather sharp right-hand line: \u201cYou find your line, you find your fence\u201d.<\/p>\n

While all the riders were aware that they had to \u2018look\u2019 for their jumps Megan explained the need to be able to \u2018feel\u2019 the lines as well, noticing the shoulders and if the horse was drifting: \u201cYou have to be able to feel if they\u2019re crooked. You have to get your \u2018feeling senses\u2019 on. We are looking for the jump, but you also have to feel it. If you don\u2019t feel, the line is going to be a train wreck.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The first rider was too fast and Megan pounced on this immediately: \u201cI\u2019m going to pick on you for a bit. Think back to the flatwork. It\u2019s the same here. Your job is to control the line and pace: your horse wasn\u2019t going too fast, you were choosing to go too fast, it was your choice.\u201d \u201cYour legs hold your position strong, which allows you to let go of your arms and use your body to slow him down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Megan was quick to notice anyone looking down as they approached the jump: Matilda Alexander, riding a lovely Anglo-Warmblood called Tanuie Lad, dropped her eyes before the jump, fiddling with the pace: \u201cGet your eyes up and trust your distance,\u201d said Megan, \u201cIt was there but you didn\u2019t trust it, keep your leg on him, not a fast leg, but a supporting leg and trust that you\u2019ve got it right.\u201d They cruised through the sequence second-time round.<\/p>\n

Another focus was on the energy in the canter, the canter having enough revs: \u201cNo matter how fast or slow you are going, you always need your leg on to set the horse up. You might have good speed but you need more energy.\u201d \u201cNow shorten the canter, keep your leg on, just open your chest and shorten your body.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRide your leg to get organised.\u201d<\/p>\n

Megan was quick to put the responsibility back on the riders; after showing them what to fix the first time she then asked them to get it right on their own, because as much as we\u2019d all like Megan Jones in our head each day, we do have to do this ourselves: \u201cNow, do it without me saying anything. You need to check your legs. You need to check your eyes. That\u2019s what you\u2019re in charge of.\u201d<\/p>\n

Megan asked who wanted to go next and I almost opened my mouth, wishing I was 16 again, sitting on my old eventer ready to go\u2026<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t revolutionary, what Megan was saying, we\u2019ve heard all these things before from numerous instructors over the years, but coming from Megan it just made sense, and you could see that the riders thought so too.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Having established the basics we moved on to a series of brush jumps either side of a log on a mound. \u201cI know you girls can jump all these jumps easily,\u201d said Megan, \u201cbut together it gets difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n

The riders were reminded to feel the turns from the brush to the log (which were at 90 degrees) and Megan re-emphasised the importance of a balanced body on the downhill log: \u201cJump it down, stay tall, let your arms lengthen if you need to, teach them to jump down into your hand so you can stay in safety seat.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m the queen of sitting back! Some people go forward and that\u2019s fine if you\u2019re a strong man, or a woman who goes to the gym a lot. But if you\u2019re not and you sit forward you\u2019ll be spat out if something goes wrong. I\u2019d rather look a little old fashioned sitting back and know I won\u2019t fall off. Falling off isn\u2019t fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI want you to all have horses that feel like Jester on cross country! He jumps down with his head up and ears forward, looking for the next fence, not down at the ground.\u201d The sequence was a skinny brush, sharp right turn to the bank, up the bank, down over a log, sharp left turn to another brush. All supposed to be in control, balanced, with hands where they should be, canter full of \u2018revs\u2019, eyes looking for the jump, shoulders turning when you want them, horses under control…<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

How do you find teaching riders this age compared to teaching adults?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI teach a lot at this level, I teach a whole range, but I love it, they\u2019re responsive, they\u2019re keen and they\u2019re usually not scared. Adults, you\u2019ve got much more of a fear factor there as well that you have to overcome, and then add in the control and balance. The first thing is the fear factor, and to get them more controlled and more balanced gives them less fear, but they don\u2019t want to stand up and go down hills, so you have to get past that and then they\u2019re like, oh hills are fun now, I can go down hills and jump fences.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThese kids are keen, they\u2019re soooo keen. It\u2019s been great. The whole school has been great, we had a group today of kids this morning who would have been about 9-12, they were cute with their ponies, just cruising around. I had one little kid who was quite scared as her pony pulled and bucks a lot, but once I got her confident to go with the horse, send the horse forward back to her, rather than fighting it, then she was cantering down the hills, jumping off banks and she was just ecstatic to get over that fear of letting her horse go, and then to bring it back, it\u2019s something I see over and over again.\u201d<\/p>\n

You were really focusing on working at riding between the jumps, rather than the actual fences\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cYes, because the fences are easy, at the end of the day the horses are either going to jump or not jump, and they generally stop or duck out if the approach wasn\u2019t right or the balance wasn\u2019t right or the line wasn\u2019t right. So I do a lot getting the balance right, the connection right, I could do a whole lesson with them just cantering circles, without them even jumping a fence!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think you\u2019d be very popular with the group if you did that\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019d absolutely kill me! If I came back next time I\u2019d love to do one day of flat and two days of cross country with the first day working on balance and lines and control and second day you go out and jump the big jumps and gallop fences and do trickier jumps, but without the control there, it gets a bit scary. I want to be safe the whole time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI said to them I want you to feel that you\u2019re riding Jester on cross country. Because I didn\u2019t realise what a cool horse he was, and what a great balance I had with him, until I moved on to my other horses and brought them through to two star and three star and then I went, hang on a minute, what\u2019s missing here, what am I doing wrong. I went back and watched videos and looked at photos and realised \u2013 it\u2019s the eyes, the shoulders, the hands; all of it I just did, I didn\u2019t think about it. So I had, not relearn that, but look at what I was doing so then I could teach it to other people. Because, if they could feel like they were on Jester that would be great, he\u2019s so nice to ride.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026and wouldn\u2019t we all like to ride Jester cross country!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eventing star, Megan Jones takes a cross country lesson…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8056,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[816,73,476,826],"class_list":["post-8054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-eventing","tag-cross-country-training","tag-eventing-training","tag-megan-jones","tag-training-the-event-horse"],"acf":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8054"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8054\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20763,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8054\/revisions\/20763"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}