Fantastic Pirouettes

This morning I woke up in a lot of pain because I had tried to push myself up in the middle of the night without thinking and had hyperextended my back. It felt kind of twinge-y all day in a spot that hasn't hurt me in a long long time.

About 8 years ago, my back was seriously injured by a certain brown horse at his first show at First level. A water truck came into the arena and this horse chucked me up into the air and then generously caught me on his back. Unfortunately my back was arched at the time and when I landed, a disc in my back slipped. Obviously it was very painful, but it also gave me a weird twinge in the joint, like it was unstable.

"I would NEVER do that"

I took a couple weeks off of riding, pledged never to ride without my back brace again, and managed to get through half of Junior Championships before being forced off my horse for 6 months that winter. Ugh. Luckily, it hasn't hurt me since. My other injury (facets in L4, L5, S1) have certainly hurt, but not this weird disc thing.

Until now!

That being said, tonight I had a lesson with Tracey and it was great! I tried to sit the trot during warm up and my back wasn't having it. I went into canter and it felt okay so we worked primarily at walk and canter.

We started with some walk-halt and halt-walk transitions. One of the most wonderful and most frustrating parts about lessons with Tracey is her amazing ability to make any exercise, big or small, rather difficult. By the time I got to Prix St George, I'd have thought I knew how to halt. Turns out, nope. Rico tends to *stop* which is very different from a *halt* which I didn't really know. When I ask for halt, Rico stops his legs. They just stop moving. Evidently this doesn't count as a halt.

We worked on keeping him up to the bridle and over his back in the walk, then insisted that he complete the halt with all 4 legs, not just one and then the rest cement into the ground. By the end, I really felt a big difference!

After that, we did a bit of work in the quality of the canter before moving on to a great canter pirouette exercise.

Rico has been getting MUCH better at his pirouettes lately. But it still feels like I aid for it, then I hold on, he does the pirouette, then I regain control. So from the outside, they're looking better! But from where I'm sitting, I still don't have much control over what happens inside them.

Zero control but nice sitting on
Rico's part!

Tracey had me establish a good connection on a 20 meter circle, then had me maintain the connection, length in the neck, bend, energy, and collection as I went to a 10 meter circle. This alone was hard! Rico wanted to get short in the neck, lose the energy, collect too much, and become hollow in his neck and back. We did a lot of just cantering on a 10 meter circle allowing me to gain more influence over these requirements.

After that, she had me put him in haunches-in on the 10 meter circle maintaining that long list of requirements. To the left, Rico was able to figure it out pretty well! To the right, we both struggled but by the end were able to get something resembling a working pirouette.


I was really pleased with the exercise because it felt like I had a lot more influence over the connection, bend, energy, and collection in a way that I hadn't before. Like during a pirouette I could actually make a correction and that correction would go through without making the pirouette worse.

This made me feel like we were making some real progress!