Riding Grand Prix

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Flight
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Riding Grand Prix

Postby Flight » Fri Jul 29, 2022 11:49 pm

Ok, so I may be thinking up the goal of one day riding a GP test. Maybe not at a big competition, but at least at a practice comp. Those that have ridden GP, I'd love to hear how you got there, when you thought you'd give it a go, any unexpected problems that popped up.. just the whole story if you're happy to share.

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Re: Riding Grand Prix

Postby Lipsmackerpony88 » Sat Jul 30, 2022 12:09 am

I have no experience to add but I just wanted to say this is very exciting! And I hope that you give it a go and have a great time!

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Re: Riding Grand Prix

Postby Chisamba » Sat Jul 30, 2022 2:52 am

It was a long time ago and my coach told me when.

What was unexpected. There is never a down moment. You have so.much going on . It's hard to ride the horse instead of the test. By which I mean it's easy to think of the required moves and accuracy and to forget to adjust the horse.

Mistakes. My coach never let me practice more than the moves in a row, so I rarely ride the whole test. Now I know I would probably ride the whole test so many times that even though the horse knows what's coming next I could still ask it to wait till I ask.

Kudos that you are there!!!

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Re: Riding Grand Prix

Postby Tanga » Sun Jul 31, 2022 12:28 am

I just kept working my way up. I never had any steady training. I went to a horse college, I did some clinics here, and I just kept going up. I got my Appy to GP, but he did not have a passage or extended trot (great one tempis) so I got all high of 58% and went back down to I-1.

While I kept competing him, I had to breed a horse who could do it and bring her up the levels. I got her to GP and the first year she tragically had her colon go through her mesentary and I lost her after she fought for two weeks. I had to start all over again. I found a greenbroke eight year old with three babies who was mess, but I saw great talent in. I started bringing her up the levels while I bred her twice. I got her to PSG, and she had p/p, but she was never going to have clean changes, and I had her two daughters I was bringing up. The daughters are competing PSG and I-1 and I-2 and GP right now. I could probably be doing the younger one at GP now, too, but I don't want to do both at the same level.

I just keep going, get knocked down, and keep going. Unless you are very wealthy, you're going to get beaned a lot. But, all horses can do the work. It's just a matter of how well you will do showing.

My advice. Focus on conditioning and strength. You can play with learning half steps as a baby. And I would do more in hand work younger to teach them to sit and get stronger.

I just rode GP, GP fs, PSG and I-1 before 10:30 on two horses this morning. I'm a little tired.

As to Chisamba's comments, I practice some whole tests and so pieces. My GP horse is generally not an issue with me practicing the whole test, but I be careful about overdoing it. There are a LOT of points in the little this almost everyone can do well--halts, halt and back up, and a lot of single changes that are a whole score in the test.

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Re: Riding Grand Prix

Postby Flight » Mon Aug 01, 2022 12:12 am

It does look like a test that just keeps on hitting with the hard stuff. I'm not sure I'd be able to string it all together. Guess, that is why we aren't all doing it, right?
Chisamba, do you have ambitions to get there again? Or just happy training to see where you end up?

Tanga, I'll be following a similar path, I'm not wealthy so will have to keep chipping away and hopefully get to where you are at :)

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Re: Riding Grand Prix

Postby Chisamba » Mon Aug 01, 2022 11:33 am

I obviously do not have the focus that you and Tanga have. I have seen you both progress beyond me is level and training . But yes, my goal is to get there again. I admit that when I stopped showing my training progression changed. Showing at fourth level, having one super ride that i was thrilled with , and only getting around 62 for it was a bit of a wake up. Sure I can train and ride all the moves, but I have to dramatically improve the quality and predictability to step up to the FEI. I question myself, do I really have the ambition, focus, direction and progression? So PSG first. I have warned Kimba that we are no longer ducking around . And Caliburn, despite his very difficult conformation is taking the training very well. Maybe he us lucky to be my greener horse. Kimba and Saiph are teaching to ride him better.
I have always said that I start every single horsevas if the goal was grand prix, but it's a lie. I do poles, I do hunter paces, I do beach rides and trail rides and jump. I "waste" a hell of a lot of training time that real GP riders spend honing their training.
When I actually made it through the FEI levels I got up at four am, ran to the barn. Rode three horses fed cleaned stalls and made it to class or work usually running five minutes late by eight am. I had that kind of intensity four about six years. I was so damned sure I was going to the Olympics I gave up my.other sports. I got to GP on an Anglo Arab. I rode in my coaches cast off breeches and top coat which were too big and made for a man. I made the long list, I got invited to all the Olympic prep clinics. I had a certain element of false confidence but darn that carries. I don't even recognize the current me in thT young ambitious upstart. I was a judge , I was either showing or judging or scribing every weekend. Now I feel like an aimless fart wandering around in a perfume factory not belonging anywhere

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Re: Riding Grand Prix

Postby Chisamba » Mon Aug 01, 2022 11:49 am

Although losing the weight was my first big goal back

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Re: Riding Grand Prix

Postby Chisamba » Mon Aug 01, 2022 12:07 pm

I didn't have a truly connected or collected horse. Sunstorm had a fabulous head set and was not always through. He could do all the things but not always the right way. We had no show photographers and in those days phone's didn't exist and certainly didn't have cameras lol. I have one bad photo and his hocks are way out behind.

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Re: Riding Grand Prix

Postby tlkidding » Mon Aug 01, 2022 8:51 pm

The GP test is all about transitions. School endless transitions of all the types that are in the test. If you miss a transition, it will kill your next move and because things come so fast, the miss can bleed into the next several moves.

Always make sure you have access to a half halt and a medium in every moment, and spend a lot of time in different trots and canters while schooling.

The hardest move in the GP test is the canter to trot transition at C at the very end of the test.

The 2 things I schooled on the spot where the halt-reinback-collected trot because we'd often either walk out or canter out. So I wanted a little bit of association with the spot in the arena + the movement. The other was doing the diagonal of 2s off the right lead and 1s off the left lead (I think that's right for the GP test).
Last edited by tlkidding on Mon Aug 08, 2022 6:42 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Riding Grand Prix

Postby khall » Tue Aug 02, 2022 7:34 pm

No advice other than you’ve got all the pieces just do it:). I like chisamba’s advice buy the saddle breed the horse show in the show. We only live once

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Re: Riding Grand Prix

Postby Tanga » Tue Aug 02, 2022 8:14 pm

Chisamba--I'm with you in that way back when, there were a lot of holes. As I go along, I am filling in/smoothing out the holes, but things get so much harder. Do not be disillusioned with the scores. I noticed in the last few years especially riding and scribing, that the scores are generally a good amount lower than they used to be, and very few judges are willing to give many 8's, even at the lowest levels. (Which I think is ridiculous, because if you can't find an 8 in most rides, you need to be a better judge.) The show last weekend had four rings going for four days. I was stunned at how low most of the scores were, and there were a LOT of nice horses there, very expensive with the best trainers. I got to compete against Akiko Yamazaki's very nice, very expensive horse Steffen found her, and she "only" got a 66%. The scoring seems to have gotten a lot harder.

tlkidding Yes, GP is about transitions, but I really think of it more as collected forward and back. The biggest transition scores that count are in and out of p/p, which, oddly, is what Quilla does well. I usually gets 7's on them, and even though she's just as good as she was on those, those have been dropping to 6's and 6'5's now because of what I see in scores. I don't think the canter to trot at the end of the test is hard, but you do need to make sure your horse is aware you're going to do it, and the back up, and school them before to remind them that's there. That last transition usually gives a really nice extended trot. I think a lot of people find the passage to canter transition hard, though I love it. By FAR the hardest transition is the collected walk to passage. It is really hard to keep an actual collected walk without the horse anticipating it and jigging, so that is one you really have to be careful not to school before the test.
Last edited by Tanga on Fri Aug 05, 2022 5:43 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Riding Grand Prix

Postby Flight » Fri Aug 05, 2022 12:02 am

These posts are awesome thanks Chisamba, Tanga and tlkidding. Khall - yes I do need more of that attitude!
I watched an AOR GP test recently live, and it was a lovely, kind ride with a horse who looked happy. No huge movements or really fancy so scores fairly average. But it made me think that me and my horses might be able to achieve that. My horses are very plain, my big horse has conformational challenges, and when I've had lessons with competitive riders they tend to make me push my horses to have a lot more impulsion so I feel I'm always chasing them and they become unhappy. Which is one of the reasons I switched to working eq. Yes, you need impulsion, otherwise you cant do 4 x tempis on a curving line, but you dont need big paces.

Anyway, interesting Chisamba you talk about the focus and wasting time not training for GP because I do a lot of other stuff too... long listed for the Olympics is very cool.
Tanga, I've always enjoyed watching your vids when you share them and its' great to hear your thoughts on it all, the scoring etc.
Tlkidding, I've not thought about it as specifically as that, the transitions, tempis off which leg. I will now!

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Re: Riding Grand Prix

Postby Ponichiwa » Tue Aug 09, 2022 8:48 pm

Echo lots of the good advice above-- especially re: transitions. You need to be able to access any dimension of any gait from any other gait at any time-- because there's nowhere in the test to get a breather to recollect. The whole test is an exercise in going from one hard thing to another hard thing and (trying to) keep it looking easy(...ish).

One-tempis in particular just need an on and off switch. Clear start, clear stop, ability to expand or contract the canter in the middle. Easy, right? But I'll tell you that it took me an embarrassingly long time to get the exact right number of one tempis-- kept getting far too many or two sets of far too few. And it all boiled down to (my own) pilot error-- was so busy thinking about the next movement that I forgot to stay in the one I was in.

Something like 30% of the available points in GP are linked to piaffe or transitions in and out of the piaffe, so keep that in mind as you're planning when to give it a shot.

And the only other thing-- I don't think you can get better at it without just doing the GP. Take lessons, go to clinics, ride a lot at home... but ultimately, just going out and showing is the only way to get better at the GP test.


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