"I've Seen Worse"

I have an announcement... Rico and I are going to show on June 2nd! And we're riding 4-2!

At my lesson last night, I was on top of my shit. I came into the lesson with questions about showing, to which Tracey said "well I haven't seen you in a while..." and I said "yeah but WHAT SHOULD I DO?" Poor Tracey.

I argued my case and asked her to look at the pirouettes so that she could make my decision for me we could figure out what to do. She first gave me an exercise to set him up for them that was basically just riding in and out of pirouette canter without him getting too slow. It turns out that in my hopes of getting him collected, I allow him to slow his canter down but not actually take shorter steps. This means that my discoveries from this weekend were true- the pirouette needs to be more about short, active steps, and less about the big rock back into collected work.

When will I 

get it through my thick skull

that this horse

does not

need to be more collected?!?!

Rico was great to the left, stayed up in front of me and through his back, and gave me a decent pirouette. To the right I struggled to sit still. I didn't know I moved so much, I look way too far ahead, pull on the inside rein, and basically fall to the inside until Rico has to scoop me up. And then I call it a pirouette, blame him for why it's weak, and go on with my life. Needless to say, when I actually sat still, my horse pirouettes just fine to the right. What a concept. He's essentially known what I want for months now, but has just been fighting me.

So then, so then! We stop to start talking about the show and Tracey says "I've definitely seen worse pirouettes at Prix St George, I think you'll be fine." That from Tracey is quite a compliment since she has the highest standards in the world. She's actually seen worse at a higher level! She thinks I will be fine!

We didn't want to over school the pirouettes, but she described some good exercises to do this week:
- Work the quarter pirouettes, half pirouettes are hard on him, and it's all about maintaining him active on short steps in front of my leg, it's much less the turn
- Work the transitions from collected canter to pirouette canter and back, lots of short transitions so that he doesn't get stuck. Pirouettes are 6-8 steps, half pirouettes are 3-4!! He just needs to be on his hocks for 5 steps at the most so there's no reason to school 15 steps of it.
- Work the square turns to get him to use his inside hind leg toward the midline, I tend to push his haunches too far in, so this is really good for me to learn to sit still and ride him straighter.

After that I confessed that I had never been taught how to ride an extended walk properly, and that I thought it was a dumb movement to not get a 7 or 8 on. I should save my shit scores for the pirouettes and the extended trots, not the walk work.  So I now know that extended walk is merely free walk with a bit of contact and have been instructed to ride lots of transitions into it because "Fourth level tests go so fast that the judge needs to make up their mind on the score and the comment about half way through the movement." Good to know! The first several steps of a movement count a LOT. Unless something spectacular or horrifying happens in the movement, the score usually stays the same.

We still had time left, so we did a bit of trot work after I talked to her about the energy. I said that I felt like my seat stifled him, she disagreed and said that my seat was nice. MY SEAT IS NICE. But we did a big serpentine, steep leg yields in each direction, then some walk-trot transitions within shoulder-in. I wasn't quite sure what was going on until the shoulder-in when I realized that his trot was enormous and he was sooo supple and easy to ride in that movement which has always felt a tad awkward. Lots of serpentines focusing on putting him into the new outside rein from the inside thigh and lots of steep leg yields focusing on his responsiveness laterally. Then walk-trot transitions in the shoulder-in to increase engagement in the upward transition.


Overall, I'm STOKED! We have a tough two and a half weeks ahead of us, Rico needs to be fit and so I need to force myself to have time to ride him every day (twice per day when I can). I also need to do a lot of without stirrup work and learn to ride forward in my tiny arena. I'm putting together a conditioning plan to get us in gear and ready for this show which I will post soon!

I can't believe we're actually moving up. We're moving up!!! Yay!