Aligning Xs

I've been thinking about this concept a bit while riding and a bit while teaching so I figured I'd share to have it written down. I'm still trying to catch up on blog posts I meant to write in October and November. 

The inside leg to outside rein is a staple in most trainers' programs. I use it quite a bit with my lower level riders as I find it helpful for teaching riders to feel the energy transfer from leg to hand. For some reason, going from left to right or right to left seems to be more obvious than from back to front. I think it's because a lot of people (myself included) like to pull on the reins. Why isn't that all we have to do in dressage? It'd be so much easier and I'd be so good at it. 

Most horses have one direction where the transfer of energy from inside hind to outside rein is easier to get. I have one I ride regularly who is pretty aggressively left leg to right hand. Another client horse does the opposite, right leg to left hand is easy to get and going the other way it's a bit harder. We spend a lot of time in shoulder-in right trying to strengthen that direction.

Then there's TC, who is fairly equal in his Xs in that they both feel a bit weak. He feels very parallel to ride. His left hind and left rein connection are weak, his right hind and right rein connection are strong. 

He's very dirty but he didn't have these
chunky muscles at the base of his neck
this summer. 

I spent a day playing with the inside leg to outside rein, as I'm hoping to start teaching some lessons on him this next year and I want to have a nice bridge between what the riders I have in mind know currently and what he can offer them. For example, he's amazing at teaching forward thinking hands as it's really hard to get him connected without them. But he's bad at the inside leg to outside rein feeling. 

Sending him from left hind to right rein sometimes puts his right shoulder out. Sending him from right hind to left rein sometimes makes him drop his right ear. 

After we played with it in each direction, I realized that my issue with it on both sides was that when I circulated energy from one hind leg to the opposite rein, it felt like the two got further apart. Like it almost took his inside hind leg away from the midline? That was weird and so we schooled a bunch of shoulder-in to address it. 

I swapped back and forth between shoulder-in and counter shoulder-in during this exercise and realized that TC's trot was getting better and better, and especially in the changeover. 

Making progress

I started asking him to be straight for longer and I kept imagining both of those channels of energy traveling across his body. Sometimes the left to right would be more obvious, sometimes the right to left, so we kept playing with it until I got two equal feelings from the leg to the opposite rein. 

Just like in the beginning, he sometimes seemed to have the opposite shoulder too far away from each hind leg. Like, simultaneously. What helped a lot was imagining the X through his body get narrower. 

We do a huge amount of shoulder-fore, I mean the horse essentially lives in shoulder-fore, and the reason for that is to keep his hind legs close together to keep him in an unstable balance, where his balance is easily changed by my aids. But shoulder-fore has a single direction, so riding his Xs narrower gave me the same feeling I get in the shoulder-fore while being able to ride in a perfectly straight line. The hind legs became narrower and I felt like I could keep them engaged much more easily. 

It also had the effect of popping him up through his ribcage and withers. In order to get his shoulders to narrow, he had to engage the thoracic sling, which is not an easy feat for him. 

Starting to show a more normal neck,
we still have some filling in to do

Just one of the many things we're doing right now to change the way he's going for the better. And he has been feeling really good! His musculature is completely different from the summer, I should post some pictures of that actually. He is way more forward and lighter on my aids, almost too light in the bridle at this point. And I think both of us are way happier. 

The goal this winter remains to get him back into shape slowly so that his breathing stays good and to keep working on this type of work until the movements come back on easily. Yesterday we rode a bunch of lateral work and it feels so much more accessible. His canter is still very weak, especially the left lead, but it gets better and better every day. 

And most of all, I am much happier. He's more fun to ride, I don't cringe looking in the mirror, and the way I teach and the way I ride are aligned. A good way to end this ridiculous year!