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| Not a great posture to be riding in! |
I waited all year for it and actually forgot about it until I saw it in my calendar for last weekend. Unfortunately, my aunt's service was on Saturday afternoon, so staying overnight was a no go and I was concerned I might not be able to go to Saturday. I briefly considered emailing the organizers or selling my spot, but it was important to me and it turned out that I was in the morning group anyway. So the only downside was that I had to drive up and back both days. Not a problem! I'm less than two hours away, so that was fine.
I ended up having friends in my time slot already! One was a friend I'd met on IG a while back, we started talking a lot about the work that TC and I were doing with the clinician and now she's doing that same work with the same person! It was fun to officially meet her. I knew a couple of other people who had ridden with Kate a few years ago, they had moved away since. And the last person was my trainer friend who I rode with last February!
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| Prepping for when things start to look like this! Actually this is TC dragging me to a puddle... but I thought it looked a little like an oh shit moment lol |
The clinic was super unique and so much fun. I would definitely recommend doing it, even if you don't jump or ride young horses. I frequently get the "making arrangements for falling off" feeling when TC really gets himself up into the air or when a horse tries to spin me off of them (Flounder did that to me a couple weeks ago actually!), so I know that I can make plans. But what plans should I make? Now I know!
The clinic was run so well. I'd first heard about them through Olivia's blog and what she says in her posts was similar to my experience as well. Like Olivia says, this post is not instructional, definitely go to a clinic instead of trying to learn from what I'm writing.
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| Lots of squishy things to land on! |
The instructors started us off with stretching and then some basic tumbling. I don't know about anyone else out there, but if there was a beginning gymnastics class for adults, I would absolutely take it. I think things like this are SUPER fun. I had a blast even though it made my brain go WTF.
They do such a good job prepping you for things. When I got there and saw the simulator I was like "I am not going to want to fall off of that," but with how they did things, by the time we got to the simulator, I was happily flinging myself off of it.
We started with learning the brace position. It's essentially everything we are taught not to do while riding. Tuck the chin, get the arms up and create a cage around your head (they had a specific way to do it so that you didn't make things worse, so don't try to learn from what I'm doing here), and keep your back round with your legs tucked in.
From that position, we did a lot of tumbling: forward rolls, shoulder rolls, sideways rolls. The body does NOT want to keep this position. I don't know why we didn't evolve to respond to falling like this, or maybe something was up with my brain. Because at first my brain was like "oh god I'm falling! Look up and around, pull arms close to chest!!!" and that was unhelpful.
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| Where should you be looking, Megan |
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| Brace position getting ready to fall |
The funniest part of the tumbling was that one of the instructors grabbed a pool noodle and was bopping people with it to show when they'd untuck their chin or when they'd lose their cage or their legs. It was shockingly effective and he said that it was kinder than the ground was going to be. I only got bopped a few times but it was SUPER helpful in pointing out that I tend to untuck after I've rolled once.
On the first day, we spent most of the time on the mats. Like I said above, when we got on the simulator, it didn't feel like too much because of all the preparation! The first thing we did was just practice pushing off of the horse in the same way you'd do in a rotational fall. They had us sit in the saddle on the simulator and then they slowly tipped it until we lost balance and had to grab the back of the saddle to hold on. That was the "oh shit" moment and it was when we knew we needed to bail.
Bailing wasn't too bad because we'd been doing this on the mats! We worked on both directions, first onto a very squishy mat and then working down to something more at ground level.
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| Learning to roll off the horse |
The second day, we still did some tumbling, but then spent more time than we had the day before on the simulator. I wasn't too sore the second day, surprisingly! The tumbling was much easier the second day and we graduated to some new ways of hitting the mats.
Once on the simulator, we worked on what to do with a rear. The first step is to stand up in our stirrups, something that I definitely do when a horse starts to buck (mostly because most of my injuries have been when I've tried to sit bucks, it's easier to sit them/better for my back if I'm in jump position) but haven't done during a rear. It was immediately apparent that standing up was necessary to be able to step off the rear, which is what was taught.
We were to grab onto the neck/mane to stand up but then push ourselves back. I don't sit a lot of rears anymore (Rico was my rearer), and I totally trust TC on the very rare occasion that he stands up, but you never know!
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| Stepping off of a rear |
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| Being flung off of the horse lol |
Next, we practiced rolling off of the horse. That is the most common fall, basically falling off over the shoulder. It was interesting because this was how I fell the last time I fell (and, honestly, most times), I fell to the right, rolled right off and landed on my back, hitting the back of my head. Sure enough, despite doing pretty well when falling to the left on the simulator, my body reverted to its normal response to falling off the right and I fell in a heap. Luckily this is the only time I've been able to practice falling! So I practiced and got better to it.
We worked our way up to falling directly on the bouncy green mat off the left side of the simulator. This was interesting because we were now falling from a large-ish distance, enough for your body to be like "I'm falling!" and refuse to do the things you'd JUST learned. Or at least, that's what I felt. Because the first time, I was okay, but the second time, I did what I'd done that got me a pool noodle in the face (let go of my chin tuck) and I thwapped the side of my head on the bouncy mat.
That SUCKED and made me feel old. I immediately had a headache and had some whiplash symptoms for a few days. Nothing serious, just annoying. I was a little afraid of that happening again and was reluctant to do it again, but the instructor helped me so much. He had me do some quick exercises on the simulator to get me holding my cage and keeping my chin tucked, then had me fall again and kept telling me to stay tucked. It didn't hurt AT ALL despite already being sore (lots of heat on it this week helped immensely!). Yay! Get back on the horse! Also a good reminder of why we wear helmets.
The last thing we did was practice emergency dismounts. I hadn't done one since I was a kid but it came right back to me and was so fun!
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| Emergency dismount while the simulator was moving! |
At the end, we got to watch some videos in slow motion of near misses where the rider does the right thing to both salvage the balance of the horse and get ready for the fall if necessary (they didn't want to show us scary accidents). We also had a really good discussion about safety gear.
Right now I'm going to buy a new cross country vest and a new, nicer helmet. I need the vest for cross country this year, but I'm going to use the helmet every day. I've been riding in cheap-ish Troxel helmets for a while now, which are fine. They are certified and TC/Sunny/Flounder are all very safe horses. But a friend at the clinic pointed out that all it takes is one freak accident for you to be in the hospital regretting not spending a little more money on your helmet. The moment I imagined that (and especially imagining my SO, who is really scared of me falling, reacting to the fact that I ride in pretty much the cheapest helmet you can ride in), I decided to upgrade my helmet.
We also chatted about air vests and I will definitely be getting one in the future. It's unnecessary now given what I'm jumping out on xc (Intro/BN on a very safe horse with an excellent instructor), but I want to buy it before it is necessary.
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| Definitely want to sear this into my brain forever |
Overall, my gosh, I think this clinic should be something on everyone's radar! Even without having horses who I fall off of even semi-regularly, it made me feel so confident when I rode this week and about my slow reintroduction to the sport of eventing.
It was also really amazing to talk to one of the women at the clinic, she'd been to the last one two years ago and had fallen since, with the falls on video. She swears up and down that the clinic saved her from harm, and you can TOTALLY see it in the video. That was enough to decide that I'm going to this clinic once a year or every other year for the rest of my riding career.
