Reviewing the Data

I always like using my equisense in lessons because it tells me how much work I need to be doing on my own for lessons to not be exhausting for TC.

Lots of trotting and a bit of canter too

One of the things I adopted when bringing Rico back from his injuries was the desire for him to be very fit. Tendons and ligaments are most at risk when the muscles are tired. They can give out and then it's just delicate structures holding the horse together. I've felt it in myself for sure while weightlifting. The fitter Rico was, the less likely it was that in any given ride, we'd get to that point where his muscles would give out. 

And especially in lessons and shows. As we all are, I am an advocate for my horse in lessons- if I think something isn't right or something is too much, I'll speak up. But it sucks to be paying money for a lesson and say "hey my horse isn't fit enough for this much work" and have to stop. 

I have been working to apply the same things to TC and have been keeping track of it via the equisense. Now, the equisense doesn't tell me everything. It aggregates the data so I see totals vs how many sets/etc. And there is a difference between ten one minute canter sets with long breaks in between and one ten minute continuous canter set. But it's a really good reference for me. 

Red = trotting, pink = cantering, lots
of long trot sets this ride, good!

So far in our rides, TC is working 20 minutes in trot and 10 minutes in canter. After the lesson with Jeremy, I checked the equisense and we had trotted for 28 minutes and cantered for 8. I was glad that the canter work wasn't too much for him, but we did go quite a bit over his trot threshold. I never felt like he was fading, though he was running quite a bit on adrenaline that day so I really shouldn't trust him. 

Other data from this weekend reveals that we're hanging tight at the upper 7s for symmetry, which measures how even your horse is. For a while we were getting up to 8, but this score really can plummet when we're working on transitions or moving the trot up and back, which we've been doing a lot of. Instead I like looking at the little chart that tells me where the score was at any given moment. A lot of our moments are over 8 and I'm cool with that. 

7.7 is pretty normal for us

Here's it over time, early on he was
super super tense and those other dips
I think were before/after the canter

 And then there's the left vs right analysis. I was really disappointed to see my love of going right was reflected in this lesson. I love going right! I'm trying to force myself to ride more to the left though. Sometimes during a ride I'll check the equisense and see how much I've gone left vs right, then try to tack on more time to the left (more likely).

I do the same thing with transitions! I've been trying to hit seventy five to a hundred transitions per ride, and granted this ride was so much mostly because I was stopping and then walking a lot, but still, yay triple digit transitions.

At least trot and canter are more even

 Pages I don't pay attention to include the regularity. TC has always been around a 7-7.5 for his trot and canter. And the walk was a beautiful 2.5 because I both make him march and let him plod around sometimes. We get a lot of low walk regularity scores!

Overall the equisense revealed it was a good lesson! And I really need to start hitting the 25+ minute mark in trot more often. Plus, even though we typically do 10 minutes in canter and this lesson had only 8 minutes, I really need to push his canter work up too. We're peering over at those First 3 and Second 1 tests, and before I get too excited about how TC is now pretty much schooling all of the movements in each, I need to settle down and just plain canter the horse for longer so he can do the movements all strung together!