Fight Like you Train, Train like you Fight

Greetings from WARM sunny Ocala (ish), FL!
(Ocala (ish) was the panicked location I gave the officer at the Agriculture Station when he asked where we were headed... I am in Micanopy which is just north of Ocala)

I'm going to give this Blog thing a try, though I am pretty sure I told a few people that I would start it when I began this trip to FL.  As this trip is VERY short (1 week) you have to give me some what of a break, starting the blog before today would have conflicted with my very much needed nap time!

As most of you know I try to make the crazy 12hr trip down to Ocala (ish) a few times a year to meet up with Kyle Carter to polish my cross country skills with Lewis.  This past season of 2010 seemed to have put some serious tarnish on those skills.  Today was my 3rd jump school with Kyle.  Today was a continuation of the severe angle lesson we had on Sunday.  Today we built the questions around xc fences instead of show jumps (which I was pretty good at running into the early part of Sundays lesson).  After having several run outs at a very angled log to a table I was at the verge of tears with frustration.  I can answer the question by putting a slight turn in the line... "dumbing it down" as Kyle said.  I just couldn't figure out how to ride through straight (man that SOUNDS so easy).  Then we had a talk about me giving in, I wouldn't give in so easy to allow the run out to happen if I was in competition would I?  Well, that was Kyle's question to me... quite frankly YES I had been giving in that easy.  Hell, I had trained me to train the horse to train me to give in.  (does that make sense?  Lewis if a human would have an IQ of 220... thus most of my problem the horse is lazy and smarter than me, great!)  "fight like you train, train like you fight" Kyle told me... (apparently this is from some military handbook).  SO now I need to train myself to fight to train the horse to fight.

If I put a jump in front of him, no matter how difficult, I must expect him to find a way over it.  He has plenty of scope, power, ability, (and... sigh... brains) to figure out how to accomplish what I have presented to him.  Now to BELIEVE it can happen.

This, ironically, ties in with some of what I have learned from taking meditation classes the few times I have gotten to go.  Riding IS so much a mind game.  Obviously, you need to have the skill and horse to accomplish  the questions presented to you at whatever level you are riding.  No matter if you are a Beginner Novice rider coming to a down hill fence or a 4 star rider turning to a line of offset corners.  The belief must be there.  So FIGHT LIKE YOU TRAIN, TRAIN LIKE YOU FIGHT

Take the leap,
Jenn