Mary Wanless Workshop: Riding Takeaways

I got a ton of takeaways for my own riding this year, and probably more on the theoretical part than the actual physical changes part. This post goes over the three things that I really took away from this workshop for myself.


Depth of Knowledge

Every rider has faulty movement patterns that prevent them from their goals. Mary drew the diagram below with the phrase "I want to ride like Steffen Peters" in the middle as the goal. I added my own movement patterns that I've struggled with and when those were affecting me the most.

Some movement patterns will be very persistent. My rogue left hand, weak left oblique, and enthusiasm for staring at the ground are still very deeply rooted. My previous habits of my hollow back, wiggling hands to get the horse on the bit, and refusal to go to the gym have been eliminated now, but were still very much present when I was showing Larkin in 2004 at First level.

For me, this diagram was super helpful. Looking back at all of my previous problems that I've gotten rid of completely was pretty inspiring. It helped me realize that I won't be struggling with the same things in a few years from now.

TC's My Left Turning Problem

TC and I have had some issues in the turning left department. I've isolated the corkscrew, and working on that has for sure made this way way better. I'm still not perfect at it though, and going left is still really hard. Doable, but hard.

At the clinic, I discovered through our hands-on work that my right shoulder wants to come forward. This puts my shoulders in a perfect place to encourage TC to have a better stuffed left hind and right front, which puts him in that popped right shoulder place. So that was really helpful to realize that I'm automatically setting him up to fling himself right.

Then, we had our upper level demo rider on when she said "I can't get my right edge on his right edge" and I had a huge lightbulb moment! This is exactly what it feels like! I can feel TC's left edge very easily, in fact, I probably sit right on it. But his right edge feels blurry, I can't find it.

With another demo rider, Mary talked about the three skewers I mentioned yesterday and told the rider to put her zipper and her chin over the horse's crest.

I went to ride TC on Monday and discovered that my skewers point left, my zipper is on the left side of his crest, and my right edge (seatbone) is too much to the left. I first put my right edge over on his right edge. It's really far over there! Then I put my skewers and zipper right on his crest. It felt completely wrong. And he felt like a zippy asshole, because he was (he hadn't been out in three days). But I could TURN him. Easily! So that's going to be a game changer for me I think.



Blowing Down My House of Cards

I'm always comparing my journey on Rico to my journey on TC. And it always frustrated me when I struggled with "basic" things with TC because "I've already done this, I've already trained this, this should be easy for me" and it wasn't.

Having people tell me how much easier it has to be on TC than Rico always frustrate me. They are totally different horses! The things I learned on Rico aren't necessarily applicable to TC (for example, I can't fix him with the addition of a big whip and one thwack with it, I'd get launched) just like what I learned on Leo wasn't necessarily applicable to Rico (Leo was very light in the bridle, Rico much heavier).

At first this was a source of frustration to me. I too thought TC would be a walk in the park because of my experience with Rico. But then Mary introduced the following concept.

The left most triangle, and smallest one, was what I learned taking Leo to the Grand Prix level. I didn't train him, there were some major holes in the work we did, and so on. But I made it there and it was great!

The next triangle is the knowledge I gained taking Rico to the Grand Prix level. I had to learn way more new things. Leo taught me how to ride a canter pirouette but Rico taught me how to train one. We hit 65% at Grand Prix but still, there were holes in my knowledge.

The biggest triangle is the projection of taking TC to what I hope will be the Grand Prix level. His baseline circles are completely different than Rico's, so my knowledge had to expand down there first.


If you keep taking the same type of horse to the same level with the same techniques, you stay within your triangle. At some point I asked the question "how can I do this different" rather than just trying harder. Take a different path around the brick wall I hit rather than finding a more effective way of smashing my head against it.

I'd love to expand that triangle as much as possible, I'd like my goal right now to be breadth so that I can then start climbing up height without hitting the walls of those triangles.

This guy is teaching me so much! 

This was way more me-oriented, but tomorrow is all I learned about my teaching and the changes I'm excited to start implementing!