Being a Light Bulb

Friday and Saturday, Tanya Vik came to teach a clinic at my barn! Like... no travel required, just got off my horse and walked over to the dressage court and was at the clinic. That and that my regular dressage trainer comes in every week and some weekends makes me so happy to be where I am, even if I can't enjoy this sort of instruction just yet.

Unfortunately with the baby horse still on rehab and me still on limited income, I couldn't ride with her, but I did clear my schedule for the weekend and got to audit both days.

Lucky me, there was a slot open and so my friend and I took it on her horse, who I ride for her sometimes. It was SUPER fun, Tanya is a great instructor- really nice and supportive, but also quite demanding of each rider (I might have been sore for several days after, TC doesn't take much strength to ride). I learned so much over the two days both watching and riding. I'll turn it into bullet points, some from my lesson, some from others.

No pictures from the clinic since I didn't ride my horse, but here
are some random ones from recently

Bounding Lead Changes
Tanya agrees with me (okay she just said this and I agree with her) that lead changes are awesome and fun and one of her favorite things. The rider was having trouble because the horse would be under-powered and then be late to the aid or late in the change. Tanya said that people often struggle with finding the correct quality of canter, since good changes are relaxed, yet expressive. People will want to run their horse into them thinking that forward = energy and expression, but then the horses get too fast. So then people think quiet and collected and under-power the horse and bam, late or no expression. She told the rider to think about bounding forward in the canter, and to land from the change and GO somewhere.


Quicker, not Bigger
The horse I rode was a bit behind my leg and she described him as feeling like a hammock in his back, which is the best way I've heard of describing that feeling. For me, I always felt like I had to shoot him across the ground to get him feeling like I got him forward and connected. But by pushing him bigger over the ground, his hind legs slowed down and I had to go much much bigger than I should have just to get him stepping under. I was so glad when Tanya addressed that since I was feeling like I wasn't very effective at warming him up.

The idea was that in order for me to get enough horse in the bridle, I needed more energy going that way. And sure running him over the ground throws more horse into the bridle but... I could also just quicken his hind legs. Which proved to be REALLY hard to do. But also had an instant light bulb moment and we had a GREAT ride. It reminded me of my lesson with Tracey on TC last year when she said to connect TC wherever I could (even in retraction), then fix the connection once as there was something to fix, even if it's not perfectly correct. Because at first I felt like I was cramming this horse together, but then once as I got him connected, I could soften and let him reach out a bit. So half steps and taptaptapping with the whip from now on.

He's getting so beefy

Lateral Work Shortens
Another issue the horse I rode had was that he tended to lose rhythm slightly at the canter. Again I've been adding energy with medium-collect-medium transitions, so we started by making his canter quicker. Then we put him in haunches-in to shorten the base while continuing to make the hind legs quicker. Oh. Yah that makes perfect sense. To be collected, he needs to shorten his body. I can do that by taking back on him and sitting him down, but he has a tendency to get retracted in the neck and drop his shoulder. Instead, I put him slightly haunches in, which shortens the space between his front and hind end, and that helps him collect while still allowing me to maintain bend. Not something I'll be doing with TC any time soon, as he's incapable of that and has crookedness problems, but it worked super well with this horse.


Topline as a Pipeline
In several lessons, she mentioned that the horse's topline was like a pipeline with energy. Resistance comes when the pipeline gets clogged. Horses get a kink in the line when not straight enough or not supple enough, horses get clogged when they drop the shoulders/back, and so on. In the one lesson I really listened to on this, she urged the rider to bend the horse to break up the clog in the pipeline. This and in another lesson her mentioning that the thigh was like an emergency brake, gave me a really good visual of getting horses through.

So cuddly

Positional Changes
She had a lot of really interesting ways of describing position. I didn't get much of that in my lesson, because we really focused on my friend's horse. But people got some really good things said to them, I wrote some of them down:

- If you have a bucket of water and a basketball, push the ball down, meet resistance, lift the hand slowly and ball comes up, but don't let it fly up. Same in sit trot with the down beat. That's how you can develop the passage (I've heard of changing the way you sit to develop the passage, I've never had luck with it, but I'm also absolutely no expert in putting passage on. Must experiment more).

- Don't push down in the stirrups so hard when posting, carry more weight in seat and thigh in the upswing.

- You can have firm abs and be curled in the back so think less about strong abs and more about a strong back. Be like the lady on the ship (you know those mermaids or whatever at the front of ships).

- In the sitting trot, sit down into the trot to bring the back up, when you put a saddle on the horse for the first time, they don't go hollow, they bring their backs up to buck (this was interesting to me because I've always sat lighter to bring the back up. Unfortunately sitting deeper on TC made him hollow, but I'm going to experiment with client horses some more).

- When getting a horse forward, don't land a kick and hold, bounce the leg off the horses side. Holding and driving with the seat just irritates horses. Don't grip with your hips. (like CD says- lazy horses ride with the legs off).

- Keep the hands on either side of the horse, especially when the horse wants to fall out over one shoulder (guilty as charged).

- Think of the thigh as a brake, take the thigh off to go forward and the thigh on to stop. On a lazy horse, all of you needs to tell the horse to go- keeping the thigh on just a little bit will cause a lazy horse to get lazier (I found this to be quite true with Rico, any thigh on that horse was like an emergency brake).

- Imagine you've got strings attached to the horse's hind ankles and as you post you're pulling them up (I love that imagery for TC because his hind legs sometimes get lost behind him).

- My favorite imagery ever: Imagine that you're a lightbulb and you have to glow quite bright.

Some riders (me) tend to ride a little soft sometimes. I've really struggled with this and with my looking down, which doesn't give me much presence as a rider. Some riders trot into the arena and you're like DAMN THAT RIDER IS GOOD. And that's not me. I sort of go around soft in my core, looking down, and I'm easily missed. The lightbulb imagery made a ton of sense to me. It's like riding with presence, carry more muscle tone (but without bracing) and keep your core strong. Definitely going to be working on that. I've got a horse with a lot of presence, now I need to have some too.

Super fancy horse, rider could be fancier

Overall it was an AWESOME clinic and I'm super stoked for her to come again, hopefully later when TC is ready for a clinic. She was so nice to look at his video at dinner on Friday and said some nice things about him. He's not the fanciest horse in the world, but I think we can do some good things with him, and hopefully she'll be in my repertoire of trainers that I ride with.