L Program: Session A

This last weekend I completed the first session of Part 1 of the L Program! Again, with all the copyrights abound, I can't share any materials or anything, but I do feel comfortable talking about the structure of it and what I got out of it. My IG has some additional information if you're dying to know more about what I actually learned.

Friday afternoon I zipped down to Arizona. I had rented a car for the weekend, so I picked that up and then was on my way! In rush hour traffic! I didn't realize other places had traffic, so I hung out at a coffee shop until it died down and then headed to get my materials printed.

I hadn't had a ton of time leading up to the session to get that done, but flying down early had its perks. One hundred eighty pages and one large binder later and I was finished. I found my Airbnb and tried to sleep.

The L program has officially ruined my riding on him, I now
know too much and he managed to dislodge himself from my
seat and bolt through all his medium canters this morning

We started at 7:30 the next morning in the organizer's beautiful house. My Airbnb, which was the cheapest thing I had to pay for that weekend, was perfect, it was small but only a 20 minute drive from the location and the bed was super comfortable!

Saturday AM 

Most of the morning on Saturday was about rules and the program as a whole. For the most part, our instructor emphasized two things with regard to rules:

The judge must be flexible with unusual circumstances

The judge must be fair to all competitors.

This meant that if something insane happened, like A REAL EXAMPLE OF A LITERAL RACCOON FALLING FROM THE RAFTERS INTO THE DRESSAGE COURT DURING A RIDE, the judge must use their best judgment to help the rider. There were lots of good examples of how to handle the situation, but the idea is to set the horse and rider up for success. The judge must interpret the rules to uphold the sport, sure, but the judge must also be kind and honestly, have a sense of humor.

At the same time, the judge MUST be fair to all competitors. There can be a policy that if a raccoon falls from the rafters, you let the rider hang tight and then let them restart from where they were at. But if you tell one rider that they have polo wraps on, you then have to check in with EVERY RIDER and if you miss one, you're not being fair to that rider. It's best, as a judge, to not say anything to anyone, even if you notice they have boots on or an illegal piece of equipment.


Saturday PM

We began going over the training scale and the basics after lunch. There is a HUGE focus on rhythm, which makes sense. The purpose of dressage is to enhance the horse's natural (pure) gaits. The judge has no idea if your horse's canter is lateral because you bought a horse with a lateral canter or if it's lateral because your training is destroying its rhythm. The judge must judge what they see and nothing more.

We also went over suppleness, which was super interesting. The intricate details of bend and the various types of suppleness were fascinating. It's not new information, I mean, none of this honestly is, but it was really cool anyway. I think what I found I gained most, other than the practice scoring, was even more ways to encode/describe/remember these concepts. I feel like everything I knew about all this just got encoded more deeply.

Picture from the program

Sunday AM

Before lunch on Sunday, we finished the training scale and then we got to ask any questions we had.

I learned a bit about the rest of the sessions and then part 2. The next session is on the criteria of each movement and then the last session is on the collective marks. Part 2 is going to happen sometime next year, I'm in and will be going through it. Each of the three sessions (two practice exams and then the final) are held at horse shows and will probably be in Colorado! I also have to bring a scribe, which adds to the expense of it all, but at least I get to choose my scribe.

I also have to do a bunch of scribing myself. I already know what organizer I'm going to contact to scribe for. It's tough because I want to scribe locally, of course, but I also want to show myself and have my clients do shows. Soooo I'm going to be going to a lot of horse shows next year!

Then we take the final exam, it's a written and a practical. Most people pass the written, but the practical is harder. To pass with distinction, I need to be pretty much dead on the judges and have good comments (there's a lot of info on how we are allowed to do comments). So I'm going to need a LOT of practice. After the last session of Part 1, I'm going to start offering some remote test scoring if anyone would be interested. And in the mean time, if anyone has any posts where they posted a video of a test (at a rated show please) and a picture of the test sheet, please leave them in the link below! I need to study!


Sunday PM 

We finally got to see some horses for real on Sunday afternoon. We arranged ourselves in chairs as close as we could to the letter C and watched three groups of riders come in. Training level, First level, and Second level.

We were given numbers to hold up as the riders went through test movements and showed their horse's gaits. It was really amazing to have a wide variety of horses. In each group we had better trained horses and greener horses, fancy horses and more "normal" looking horses. We got to give a wide variety of scores from 3 to 9.

I think it'd be fun to be a demo rider and fully plan on volunteering if I ever get the chance, but you could tell which demo riders thought it was fun and which demo riders were irritated by the scores we were holding up. I suppose if you think your walk pirouette is good and then turn around to see a bunch of 4s, that can't feel good, but the more self aware the rider seemed to be, the happier they were, even if they were getting 4s. We need those 4s to help us, so we didn't mind when the rider made a mistake, though it is true that we want to see everyone succeed... positive comments with 8s and 9s are way easier to judge!

I finally got to flex my judging skills with this part, something I was nervous about. Having competed at a high level, riding with an L faculty member for 6+ years, bringing my students to many shows, and having lots of friends who are judges, I figured I wouldn't be toooo far off. And I wasn't! I need to re-calibrate a few things, but the main instructor said that I was spot on a few times with both my score and my reasons and I got bolder and bolder as time went on.

I had a full on (very civilized) argument with one of the instructors about walk pirouettes and came up against a few of the other participants who, in my opinion, were enamored by the quality of a horse and ignoring the problems in the connection. For the most part though, I was dead on and felt really good! I gained a ton of confidence knowing that my scores were accurate, I think I might be able to do this.

One thing they mentioned is not making allowances for breeds,
for example, friesians can't stretch but still penalize them.

Unfortunately I was sick the whole weekend. I got through the weekend just fine and learned a ton and had a lot of fun, but I will say that I hope I feel better for the next one!

I'm sure some theory posts will come out with more information. I can't figure out the balance between writing about what I'm learning without having problems with the copyright. So standby for that stuff. Feel free to DM me somewhere and chat if you're really curious though. I think everyone in my life is sick of me talking about it (poor non-horsey boyfriend has gotten the brunt of it "sticking in a walk pirouette is a RHYTHM PROBLEM and that's the most important thing so I went LOW with that but apparently too low"), so you'll be doing me a favor.