United States Eventing Association

Conditioning makes the horse fit and increases his endurance performance with less wear and tear on feet and legs. The idea is to work his heart and lungs in short intervals, let him recover a bit, then work him again. The following schedule for Training level horse provides an introduction for the horse and rider at the lower levels to the principle of interval training.

If your farm has the space to set up a cross-country schooling course, it can be to your advantage to have cross-country jumps available for schooling purposes. Safety should be the number one priority when designing and building cross-country jumps, and an expert should be consulted whenever possible.

After the rules for the jumping test, show jumping penalties, and show jumping timing and faults, there is a summary of the different ways to be eliminated in the show jumping phase in rule EV 154 Eliminations.

USEA ICP Level II certified instructor Gerry Lindsay and Dr. Liz Addison, DVM will be hosting a galloping and conditioning clinic at Oakhill Farm on Saturday, September 19, 2020. The aim of this clinic is to help riders master good cross-country riding skills and to allow horses to have a pipe-opener on excellent footing at a time of year when the ground is hard. This will be a perfect warm-up for the fall events!

A few months ago we began discussing the difference between defense mechanisms and coping mechanisms. Often confused as the same thing, they couldn’t be more different.

For over 20 years the USEA Instructors’ Certification Program (ICP) has been educating all levels of eventing instructors to confirm their knowledge base, both theoretical and practical, upon which they will continue to build throughout their teaching lifetime. The USEA is now shining the spotlight each month on some of the 300 ICP Certified Instructors.

Learn the dressage wrong test? Here is the established protocol. What happens if you start your dressage test and it is the wrong test? Current USEF eventing dressage test ‘A’s track left and test ‘B’s track right, so the judge knows within the first movement that you probably learned the wrong test.

From the moment they hit the ground to the day they take their first steps under saddle, everything you do with your young horse is setting them up for success in their future career. Sue Clarke, Stable Manager at Ms. Jacqueline Mars’ Stonehall Farm in The Plains, Virginia, is part of a team that includes Lauren Nicholson (neé Kieffer), Kimmy Cecere, and David O’Connor that helps raise young horses from their very first steps on the ground to their first competitions and beyond.

Why do we not talk more about fear when fear is a common emotion in cross-country riders? There is probably no sane person who is totally fearless and everyone has his or her limits. Even a Grand Prix race car driver, who is brave enough to average 150 miles per hour around a circuit, may well frighten himself trying to improve his time by just half a second. Fear is a basic human mechanism to place limits on what we do.

“Keep going,” says five-star eventer Will Faudree. A stalwart member of the U.S. Eventing squad since he was named USEA Young Rider of the Year in 2002, Faudree’s impressive resume has provided him the experiences to become a successful rider, trainer, and coach.