As an international 3-day-event rider, Marcia Kulak has competed at some of the most prestigious venues: Rolex, Burghley, Blenheim, Fair Hill, and she has been short listed for two olympic games. She is well known for her classical approach to training and riding horses.
In this training video, Kulak rides “Bazil”, an Irish Sport Horse gelding who was competing at the 1* level before being injured in a trailering accident and being forced to endure a long period of rest. This horse has recently come back into work, and Kulak shares her wisdom about how to recondition the equine athlete after a serious injury. She believes that walking is the key to rehabilitation: hand walking, turn out, and hacking a couple of times per week.
In the beginning of the ride, Kulak tests Bazil’s responses by asking him to move off her legs, adjust his frame, and speed up and slow down. It is important to check these responses at the beginning of each ride, she says, because horses are not robots and they can be different every day. Kulak stresses that the horse should respond to light aids at all times, and should continue to maintain whatever it is that we asked it to do for as long as we ask it to do it. “When your aids aren’t needed, don’t use them”, she says. Especially for the jumping horse, we should “use [our] reins effectively but also use them sparingly [because] when [we] over communicate with the reins [we] take the horse’s focus off the job”.
Just as she does on the flat, Kulak tests the horse’s responses over cavaletti, poles on the ground, and finally a small box. This horse has recently come back into work so he is not fit enough to work over larger jumps, but Kulak’s exercises remind us that we do not need to work our own fit horses over jumps either to effectively school them: we can test their responsiveness, their attentiveness, and their foot work over raised cavaletti, and we can test our own ability to stay balanced, keep the line, and maintain our rhythm over a line of poles.
Throughout the ride, Kulak offers many fascinating and useful tidbits about training, fitness, horse husbandry, and preparing for competitions. She is an engaging and inspiring instructor who is clearly passionate about producing athletic, happy, confident horses and effective riders. Sign up for a membership with showjumperclinic.com to have full access to Marcia Kulak’s library of training videos.
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