Plugging In and Staying Plugged In

Thanksgiving morning, I zipped up to teach lessons, then drove a bit south of my aunt's place (where we were having Thanksgiving) to take my own lesson! I was only 30 minutes late to dinner, totally worth it. 

I kept pulling over (and stopping in the middle of the road,
no shame) to take pictures of all the pretty places along the way

I rode with Alexis on her going GP horse again, something that I've been wanting to do for a while now. The last time I rode with her was about a year ago I think.

I'd love to have told her how much better a rider I am now, but I honestly feel like the last year has been two steps back and then two steps forward. I do feel more knowledgeable though, so that's a blessing and a curse I think.

The lesson was FABULOUS as always. This horse is so tricky to ride, but so good for me.

We began with some trot work, with all my Tracey lessons recently, I was able to stay more organized than it at least seemed last year just based on my post. I'm nowhere near as strong, but Tracey has a level of detail to her teaching that is... for lack of a better word, horrifying. So I've been noticing and correcting a lot of the little things that make me a less organized rider than I should be.

Driving from Alexis' to my aunts took me through an area that'd
had snow recently!

My main takeaway biomechanically was how much I sit to the left, especially when the horse gets laterally unbalanced. This guy wanted to lean his wither right, which is what TC does. Rather than going down with the ship and grabbing onto his wither with my right thigh and picking him back up, I just shifted my weight left and settled in. This caused him to lean even more to the right. Excellent, I'll just shift a bit more to the left.

It felt awkward to drive my right leg straight down (because I tend to bend my knee and overuse my right heel vs my right calf and thigh, sure enough, TC has some bent hairs on the right side of his clipped ribcage and none on the left side) and grab on with my thigh. Especially because he was so off balance that it felt like I might fall right the hell off. It did work, of course, but it was hard to maintain and I felt less secure in the tack. Probably one reason why I fling myself left, security.

With the leaning, the natural progression of the lesson discussion landed us on bend. She told me to pay attention to where his chest was pointing, which was really helpful imagery! I know a lot about bend, the horse must rotate the ribcage away from the inside leg, step to the midline with the inside hind leg, step around the inside front leg with their outside front leg, and remain upright. But all that imagery for some reason really didn't help me with the leaning issue. Alexis asking where his chest was pointed really drove home the mechanic in a different way, which was really cool!

Such a nice day

We then addressed this issue in the corners. I am fairly terrible about riding corners. I have never been a corner expert by any means, but there's something to be said about riding a horse who DOESN'T take every opportunity to leap out of the dressage court. TC jumps out so frequently that I feel very uncomfortable taking any sort of risk, so we cut corners, especially tracking left (because he mostly jumps out right), because jumping out of the court is an elimination, while ignoring corners just irritates the judge. But Alexis is right, I need to address this, and I can't let TC affect my riding of other horses.

Alexis had a specific set of aids she uses in the corners. Come into the corner in shoulder-fore, half halt outside rein to start the turn, then push outside hand forward to allow the horse's outside ear to come forward while leading the horse around the turn with the inside rein, keeping the inside thigh on to keep the horse upright and having them turn around the inside leg. The main focus was keeping the haunches on the rail.

Snow!

After doing some basic work, Alexis said I could school the single flying changes to get a good feeling for TC. I was excited but nervous, this horse is complicated enough to ride just at the walk, trot, and canter in large figures. Riding movements is not something we typically do, we mostly work on my weaknesses in the basics, which is exactly what I need.

The flying changes are not something I've had lessons on since beginning the Mary Wanless journey. I've had a lot of lessons from Tracey on them prior to that though, but not recently.

The main takeaways I had from this part of the lesson were that I ask for the change too slowly, which makes the aid muddy. Alexis is a very accurate rider, so my muddy aids were ignored. When the horse ignores me, I fling myself about trying to get the horse to change. A lot of sweet horses will just change, but this one ignored me. It was EXCELLENT.

I can't believe how much I want to shift my seat bones laterally in the changes, and just generally how much I want to get myself dislodged from the saddle. I think it's me trying to be a little bit less plugged in to protect my back from any bucking that might come with the changes, or maybe it's just a lack of strength, or just muscle memory from learning them poorly. But regardless, it was a great dissection of a movement that will haunt me for eternity.

Such a beautiful place

It was a FABULOUS lesson as always and I had a great ride on TC the next day, focusing on getting him more responsive to my aids, which I was focusing on getting more clear. TC gets so amped when he's that responsive that it gets me a bit nervous, so no wonder I didn't want to ride him this way. Don't over-horse yourself, guys. But I'm powering through because I'm stubborn and despite mildly fearing for my life when he's like this, it feels amazing when he coils up before a canter transition.

I love having access to a trainer like Alexis, even if she's too far away to ride with regularly. She is such a great resource too, as she just graduated the r program and did her L semi-recently as well. She gave me some GREAT advice for my program and I'm definitely going to be asking her a lot more questions.