Cob Jockey

I was very excited for 2Pointober at the beginning of the month, because it's an area in which I know I need work:


And in the first week of it, I realized that I needed to jack my stirrups up one more hole.  Sadly, this means I'm on hole 12 on my stirrup leathers now and can't make Spinal Tap jokes anymore.

Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it's louder? Is it any louder? Nigel Tufnel: Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where? Marty DiBergi: I don't know. Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do? Marty DiBergi: Put it up to eleven. Nigel Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder.

My trainer was skeptical at first, and said I was only allowed to keep them up a hole if I kept my leg underneath me.  Challenge accepted.  It either made it physically easier to keep my leg underneath me, or her challenge made me focus on it more, but one way or another, my lower leg has gotten more stable.

It also made us revisit my jumping position, and I'm now riding with a neck strap, following his neck down more with my release, and really working on sending my hips back first and staying tight through my core.

Unfortunately, it also means that my more-like-a-hunter-saddle jump saddle, which only works for me as an eventer because I have really short femurs, is now not quite right.  Workable, but not quite right.  So I'm going to have to start thinking about that.

Not a very forward flap, and not a style you'd typically see an eventer in, but it's worked for me up until now.

In the last two weeks of the month, the phone system replacement clobbered my participation in riding, going to the gym, 2pointober and pretty much anything that wasn't an alphabet soup of VoIP acronyms: SIP, PBX, MBG, SSC, and hundreds of numbers that translate into other numbers.  Worth it in the end, but a huge effort that took many late nights and early mornings for my team of 5, and not a lot of riding for me.

So I won't be getting a prize for 2pointober, but I definitely got a lot out of it that I am looking forward to working on over the winter!

After looking at all of the pictures of my Lower Leg Behaving Badly last weekend:


it just so happened that Denny Emerson posted something the very next day that made me think.  He said in order to improve you lower leg, you need to:

1. Shorten your stirrups. And I mean SHORTEN them.

2. Place your LOWER LEG, by your ankle bone/Achilles tendon ON the horse, just behind the girth, and leave it there, with your knee "soft" and your heels DOWN.

3. Let your upper body come forward as a "byproduct" of your hips coming back-----Don`t push on the stirrup and bring your crotch forward----let the horse come UP to you, not you go DOWN at the horse.

I've head 1 and 2 a million times, but 3 tickled my brain a little bit.  It sounds just like what I teach and learn in CrossFit with the air squat.  Hips go back first, weight in your heels...


 And your weight is in your heels.

One other thing I've been working on in CrossFit lately is lengthening the back of my leg in my setup for the snatch so that my weight is more in my heels and my shins are more vertical rather than my knees being in front of my toes.  (Promise this all both horse and twopointober related, so bear with me a little longer!)

Snatch: barbell goes from the ground to over your head in one motion.

Where else do your shins need to be vertical, your hamstrings long, your weight in your heels and your hips back first?

Denny Emerson, the world's loudest advocate of a strong lower leg.

...in two point and the galloping position.  And what is always horribly sore on me after an Olympic lifting class?  My supremely tight hamstrings, a gift of years of running.  I am doing a bad air squat on the horse, with my knee in front of my toe, my weight on my forefoot, and my body mass tipped forward.

Penny Oaks, May 3, 2014

So I knew when I got home that two point and galloping with my butt out of the saddle were going to be something I needed to work on all winter.  I haven't done a lot of it, to be honest.  Haven't done a lot of jumping, haven't done a lot of eventing, haven't been asked to be out of the saddle for long periods of time before.  Even on the XC course I sit sometimes - bad, I know.  Unsuprising, my baseline for L Williams and Hillary's contest wasn't great:


I did it over terrain, too, out on the trails during my birthday hack (happy birthday to me!).  Because we're eventers, and that's where I most need to be out of the saddle:

Best birthday party ever.

A cold front came through, and he went from sleek to fuzzy overnight.  He always looks more like a pony and less like a little horse when he' s fuzzy.

They repainted the barn a few weeks ago.

So basically, 2pointober happened at the best time ever, and it's time to get to work!