Mary Wanless Workshop: The Canter Mechanic

The main theme of the workshop this year was the canter mechanic. I was really glad for that, I think it's one of the hardest things both to see and to learn for a rider. And I think that a lot of trainers (myself included) struggle to get their riders to do it properly.

To set up this post, I wanted to go over the horse's canter mechanic first, which should be a review for everyone, but I want to emphasize a few main things about how we ideally want the canter to look that I'll later tie in with what Mary says.

From my most recent lesson, love this pony!

The Horse's Canter Mechanic 

The canter is a gait with three beats and one moment of suspension. On the left lead, the horse begins on the right hind leg (backswing/upswing) and rolls their weight forward onto the left hind leg and right front leg (diagonal pair), then onto the left front leg (downbeat/downswing), before jumping into the moment of suspension and landing back on the coiled right hind leg.

The head and neck of the horse are at the highest and shortest moment in the upswing and at their lowest and most stretched out in the downbeat.

Purity of rhythm is very important in dressage. The purpose of dressage is to enhance the horse's natural gaits, so having an impure gait is grounds for a 4 (insufficient). The canter can become impure by getting lateral or by losing the moment of suspension.

Baby TC shows several types of faulty oscillation, from nodding (at the
beginning, when it looks like he's pressing his forehead downward
into the ground) to not oscillating at all (frozen headset when he picks his
head up after deciding he didn't want to face plant)

TC these days, we're being all casual like because he was tired from our lessons, but you can
still see how reluctant he is to oscillate! It's improved so much, but he's not a natural back mover
at the canter unfortunately. 

To properly ride the canter, the rider must first learn to stay out of the horse's way at the canter, and this means not blocking the natural oscillation of the neck and staying "plugged in" to the saddle so that the horse doesn't tighten his/her back in response to a rider who is bouncing in the tack.

As young riders, many of us were taught to "polish" the saddle with our seats or "scoop" with the seat to be able to sit the canter. This is incorrect, so with that in mind, let's dive into what a correct following mechanic looks like in a rider.

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I want to separate out this post into two large sections: one about the actual sitting of the canter, the second about how to influence the canter in a positive way.

Force Absorption

The goal in perfecting the canter mechanic is to be more in sync with the horse and to have correct following mechanics, which directly relates to the rider position score. A faulty canter mechanic will squash the horse's gaits, make it harder for them to perform movements, and make it difficult for rider and horse to climb the levels while preserving the horse's gaits. You see it everywhere, a horse who at birth was a gorgeous mover and as they move through the levels, they get tighter in the back, lose their moment of suspension, and the canter rhythm breaks down.

Hey look, it's Rico. This is LITERALLY his school canter from
when we did the 4-1, he's put his right hind down before picking
his left hind up because I'm restricting him so much. Wow. Is it
normal to feel attacked by your own blog post???

Allowance of Oscillation

One of the first things to address with riders is to get them to allow the horse to oscillate their head and neck. Many riders will feel like they are because they open and close their elbows by rocking their shoulder forward and back, but this is incorrect. You need to see the riders' hands move. Forward toward the bit when the horse is in the downbeat, up and back (elbows swing backward past the rider's hip) in the backswing.

Very clearly not going to allow him to go down here

Many riders do the opposite, and probably because they feel the horse's head, neck, and forehand lowering and they try to prevent it in fear of the horse being "downhill," but every horse, no matter how nicely built uphill they are, will have a downhill moment in the canter. It's important to let the horse do this. By preventing the down part of the canter mechanic, the rider blocks the horse from using their neck, neck muscles connect into back muscles, so the horse tightens the back to prevent themselves from being pulled on by the rider. Without a supple back, impulsion is lost because the horse's pelvis is unable to flex at the lumbosacral joint (because the lumbar is frozen). And so the moment of suspension is lost. Again, see above.


The Cheese Wedge

I think one of the most common things we see in the canter mechanic is the cheese wedge. This is essentially the rider's seat making a wedge of space behind their butt.

See the space under my butt?

The reason why this happens is frozen hip joints. If you watch the saddle on the horse while the horse is longeing, the saddle drops downward as the horse goes into the moment of suspension and drops their hips to load their hind legs for the first phase of the gait. During this phase, the rider needs to flex their hips to drop their seat down to follow the saddle. When the rider doesn't do this effectively, they get that cheese wedge under their butt like I have in the photo above. 

Peony used to be really good at a cheese wedge, she and I are
also cheese goblins who shovel hoards of shredded cheese into
our mouths late at night, our faces lit only by the light of the
refrigerator, so it makes sense that we're both excellent at
the cheese wedge

Up and Back as Much as Down and Forward

Along these same lines, we tend to emphasize the forward and down motion of the canter. How often have we been told to scoop with our seats or polish the saddle with our butts? But what goes down must go back up, and Mary wants us to emphasize the up and back-ness of the canter mechanic to balance out how much we naturally want to follow the saddle forward and downward. 

Nicole used to be so good at polishing a saddle with her butt,probably because Murray wanted
 to murder her all the time, but if there's one thing we know about people I'm friends with, it's
that they're VERY STICKY PEOPLE. But you can see that there's a lot more emphasis on down
and forward in this video than up and back.

The Carousel Pole

This is actually something I've been teaching for a while, because of this video that was posted of Mary Wanless working with someone at the walk to keep themselves in a good balance. In the canter, the rider's upper body should appear to be a carousel pole. At all phases, they should land on their feet.

Would land on my butt, you can see me basically shoving his
saddle into his withers/shoulders here

Look how much I'm leaning back here, yikes

Shamelessly stolen from Nicole's recent blog post

The typical way this goes wrong is when the rider is rocking their shoulders backward in the downbeat of the canter. When this happens, gravity pushes the rider's weight forward and downward into the saddle and it rocks the saddle forward into the horse's shoulder. The horse is forced onto the forehand as the downbeat is emphasized.

Instead, the rider should make sure their shoulders stay over their hips even in the downbeat of the canter. This is HARD and most riders think it feels like they're leaning forward.

I did my damn best, you can see how much I'm (trying to) moving my shoulders
and how much the downbeat is emphasized in poor TC who thinks I've had a stroke,
compare how on the forehand he is here vs in the other gifs, it's amazing

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Force Transmission

Once the rider has correct following mechanics, they can begin to affect the canter in a positive way.

Half Halt Timing

The half halt should occur in every stride at the top of the mechanic (the backswing/upswing), where the rider should essentially say to the horse "hang out here for a bit longer" and then the half halt should be released in the downbeat, the horse should be encouraged to quicken the downbeat and get their haunches back underneath them as quickly as they can. This means the half halt is FAST. It's a split second. Then you HAVE to let go.

I always tell my students the half halt at the canter is a seat aid, not a hand aid. Sure, your hands can half halt during the upswing, but ONLY in the upswing and after that, it's on your seat to hold the horse's balance within the mechanic. The hand just assists the seat in that one moment of the canter.

Slingshot

The slingshot is a great way to balance the canter and emphasize CANada versus mozamBIQUE. This is another fun chair exercise from Mary. Sit in ideally a hard chair with both feet on the ground. Feel your seatbones against the seat of the chair. Now see if you can engage your hip flexors and pull your seatbones backward across your flesh. That's your slingshot.

On the back of the horse, this needs to happen in the upswing of the canter, the outside hind hits the ground and you are holding your hips backward, having shifted your seatbones across your flesh backward toward the cantle during the moment of suspension. This encourages the horse to stay in that upswing for as long as possible as you are holding them there with your seat and thigh. This has been a GAME CHANGER for TC's canter, which is his worst gait.

Can we talk about how unfair it is that this is the same rider (Peony) from above? While before
she was showing an excellent cheese wedge, she's showing shit for cheese but she's showing
an excellent slingshot! See how much she's emphasizing the up and back-ness of the canter
mechanic AND how much she's following with her hands AND how she's a carousel pole??
Just fabulous 

Down Up

In addition to the slingshot to keep the horse on the hind end for longer, the rider also must emphasize the "sit" in that moment too. Anne had a great visual for this, she imagines falling back into an intertube during the slingshot moment to emphasize the down part of the mechanic. The horse must be DOWN on the outside hind leg, then as they shift their weight forward to the front legs, they must be UP. So as a rider, you must emphasize the down on the outside hind leg and then emphasize the up on the inside hind leg. Nicole wrote about this first hand and it's a really great read.

It's hard to keep all these straight, I believe this is me trying to ride properly. I'm nowhere
near perfect, but you can see a) minimal cheese wedge, b) not much shoulder rocking, c) my
hands are mostly following his neck (esp at the end, then I really get it right) 

Overall


The canter mechanic is probably one of the hardest things to learn, at least in my opinion. Also the connection. I feel like 80% of the lessons I teach are about the canter mechanic and the connection at this point. But it's an absolute game changer to get these things right.

I've done my best here in this post, but it's really hard to explain. It takes a lot of hands on work with a rider and a lot of lessons. I've had one rider get it in maybe three lessons. That rider has other problems, don't worry (it's not Peony, she worked hard like the rest of us). I still can't sit the canter properly. It's just so damn hard.

Major shout out to TC for being the best demo horse even though he wouldn't let me ride completely bat shit crazy because he kept stopping to check on whether he needed to take me to the hospital. Also big thanks to my wonderful friends for letting me steal their canter mechanics and put them on the spot. 

Mary Wanless Workshop: Connecting the Dots with My SI Injury

Nine years ago, right around this time, I had an accident. It wasn't even a real accident, I didn't come off. I don't come off nearly enough, so many of my injuries have occurred when I wish I'd come off but I didn't.

This injury in particular occurred when I was working at the event barn I worked at. Winter is tough and I went to get on a particularly rude horse (looking back, he probably was in pain) and thought he'd been longed the day before. Turned out he hadn't been out in a week. He went to buck me off and twisted while pulling downward.

I was a tiny person, about 15-20lbs lighter than I am now, and weak. He yanked my back and I was in instant pain.

At the time, I had no health insurance and was quickly skating around debt, desperately riding horses for people for as little as $15 just to pay my bills and survive the winter. So the last thing I wanted to do was go to the doctor.

You can see me falling left here

Fast forward nine years and I am out of pain, been out of pain for a while now. Occasionally I'll piss off the joint by doing something weird, get some crazy sciatica or just have a lot of pressure on the right side of my SI joint, but it goes away with a lot of walking and rest. For the most part though, it's been fine!

I've long thought that my right side weakness in riding has something to do with this injury. I've been told by instructors that I pop off that seat bone, have had every horse I ride go through the right side of their body. But I can manage it, I got through the Grand Prix with it, and when I sit in front of the mirror, my body is even, I can feel both seat bones and everything.

So I figured it's fine, I'll just keep strengthening the right side and that'll help both my riding and to support this weakness that's been there for so long.

Definitely love the left side

At the Mary workshop, we had a lab session where we sat on saddles and got realigned. I didn't necessarily want to take up a bunch of time being realigned, because I'm fairly happy with where I'm at and I've also found that sitting on a fake horse makes me sit weird, so it's not the most helpful. But Agi was playing with bands with Nicole, finding out where her weaknesses were in her stability, and I wanted to play too.

We briefly chatted about my desire to twist left, so I wanted her to try to twist me each way and see where my weakness was. When she went to do that, she saw something weird. Just sitting still on the saddle, both seat bones were weighted the same, I always thought it was interesting that trainers said I popped off of the right one because I honestly feel that one on the saddle all the time. BUT when Agi went to shift me, apply forces to my body, my right glute immediately popped my right seat bone up and forward, away from the saddle... protecting my injury. She put bands on and the same thing. When I go to resist being jostled, my body goes into protection mode.

She talked me through keeping my right seat bone on the saddle while I was resisting her push/pull/twist and I was in immediate pain. INTERESTING. Sounds like whenever I'm having to absorb/transmit forces from/onto TC, my first priority is to protect the injury. But then when I stop and work on my position, I sit just fine.

Me as a child, I could not lean right like this now!

Anne, who puts on these clinics, is a physical therapist and dressage trainer extraordinaire. She worked on Nicole the day before, just briefly, and I saw the difference she made. I wanted to talk to her about this injury because she specifically understands dressage. A regular doctor or physical therapist would probably think that because I'm not in pain, whatever. I figured Anne would understand why I wanted to address it and how to help me both on and off the horse.

Luckily, she had time to set up an appointment for Tuesday, yesterday! So I audited some of Mary's riding clinic (my work from home days are excellent, I got some good work in AND learned a ton) and then headed into Anne's office.

The first thing we did was put me through some of Anne's tests. She pushed lightly downward on my shoulders while I was standing and was able to feel a lack of mobility in my... left SI. Turns out that the frozen part is the problem, not the painful part! More tests revealed that my SI as a whole has almost no flexibility in it. She asked me several questions that were really on point, things I've just kind of minorly struggled with for the last ten years or so. Nothing enough to even think about but when she mentioned it, I was like "huh, yah that describes me" and such.

Hyper-mobile right SI causing my seat bone to come off the
saddle and shoving my right leg back

The PT itself didn't feel like very much. She first pushed on my pelvis (lightly in comparison to a chiro) in all different directions, finding that my left SI was stuck frozen upward, she said I essentially dislocated the joint at one point and now it was stuck. It had a lot of mobility going up but no ability to be pushed downward. Meanwhile, my right SI was all over the place, making up for the frozen left side. The way I understood it, and I'm sure my interpretation is off, is that the pain in my right SI is a strain caused by my left SI having no ability to move.

She basically just loosened up my left SI and then worked on my vascular system to calm the area down again. During this work, the hurting part of my injury felt like garbage at times and wonderful at others. I had everything from intense pressure in the original place to sciatica all the way down my leg, to a tingling feeling, to a totally relaxed feeling.

At the end, she had me stand again and felt my shoulders. I could feel the pressure down to my feet (so essentially, I was able to be in neutral spine for once), which was a huge change from earlier in the day. She then told me that I would feel weird, that I should take it easy physically (no climbing, no lifting, no sitting trot, minimal riding) for 48 hours as my body relearns how to operate after nine years of being totally frozen.

How cute is baby TC? Also look at my right side unable to get
into flexion pattern

As time went on over the few hours afterward, I felt WEIRD AS SHIT. I couldn't balance on uneven ground, I felt like I couldn't stabilize my pelvis, I could actually activate my glutes in an insanely different way - it felt like I had way more ability to turn them on (maybe that's been my issue in my squat over the last few years!), and I could stand on my right leg really easily, but couldn't stand on my left leg anymore.

Anne gave me permission to ride lightly, so I did. TC was foot perfect and so many weird things happened. When I first got on, I felt completely off balance. I sat more on the right side than I ever have before and low key felt like I might fall off to the right, but also felt safe there? That doesn't make sense, oh well. I struggled with my stability in posting trot, unable to put my butt back in the same print that it left seconds earlier. I could feel my right stirrup for the first time, possibly ever, I don't know if I've ever actually felt it before. TC felt amazing, super soft over his back and very willing to stay into the bridle, more so than usual. That could easily be the training plan we've shifted to, but at least I wasn't messing him up. He was such a good boy, Anne warned me about how horses sometimes respond to PT and I told her that TC was wonderful and he absolutely was, god I love this horse.

I'm still too early on to know how well it worked, but I do feel different and way more able to move around! I still have a bit of pain on the right side (as of Tuesday night), so I'm treating it like an injury (like I should have in the first place) and resting it a bit. I ride with Tanya on Thursday and Saturday, so we'll see how much I can do. Then I hope to get another PT session soon and also ride with Anne to work through some of this weird stuff on TC! Nine long years, I cannot wait to have this worked out so I can continue down the pathway toward my intimidating goals.

Mary Wanless Workshop: Some More Theory

I've done two posts on this before, here and here. I'm going to try to fill in additional gaps that I haven't written about before. Later this week, I'll post about the canter mechanic more and how I'm going to apply a lot of this stuff with TC, so there are some things missing.

A whole post on this coming soon!

Polyvagal Theory

This honestly deserves its own post but I don't have enough knowledge to post about it fully yet.

Essentially, the vagus nerve is one of the few cranial nerves (most nerves originate in the spinal cord) and it was long thought to be a singular nerve and now there is a theory that there are two of them: the ventral vagus nerve and the dorsal vagus nerve.

There needs to be more research done, I haven't looked into it deeply, but I have read enough to know that this isn't a well fleshed out theory. So, that being said, taking this with a grain of salt but I still think it's good information about why some riders and some horses have fear issues and how to deal with them. And by doing one of the things that Mary said to turn on the vagus nerve, I've actually found that I can reduce my anxiety (which I've been low key struggling with again the last week and a half, don't skip morning CBD, Megan!) when it's happening vs only preventing it. And that could easily be the placebo effect, but I'm a big fan of the placebo effect.

Anyway!

The vagus nerve has influence over the digestive system, heart, and lungs. The dorsal vagus nerve is an old nerve, found in reptiles as well as mammals, while the ventral vagus nerve is only found in mammals. The DVN is related to primitive survival instincts (think further back, evolutionarily, than fight or flight), which Mary classified as freeze and fold. Freeze is when animals, well, freeze, in the face of danger. You can see this in all sorts of situations. Fold is when the animal essentially accepts its death, apparently mice sometimes do this in the jaws of a hawk, the hawk bites down and occasionally will drop the mouse because it feels different than expected.

The ventral vagus nerve regulates the social engagement system. When an animal feels safe, they are in social engagement. When they feel unsafe, they turn on the spinal sympathetic system, which is fight or flight. When this happens, the animal loses the ability to use higher processing and they begin to make stupid decisions (like the mouse who runs back to the cat after escaping). If the animal feels especially unsafe, they will be scared stiff (freeze) and beyond that, they are scared to death (fold), these happen when the animal cannot aliviate the fear by fleeing (flight) or fighting (fight). Essentially, when the spinal sympathetic system fails, the DVN takes over.

I have no pictures for this part, so look, TC feeling
very skeptical of the indoor round pen

We see this in both horses and riders. When horses are put into situations where they are fearful but can't escape, they begin to shut down via the DVN. Many of these horses are praised for being quiet horses, but they are actually in shut down, think of learned helplessness, they begin to feel at home in their shut-down-ness. DVN horses are low tone, lazy, quiet. Being in fold is not consent, but it can look like that.  Riders can be in this place too, they tend to be depressed, prone to self destruction, they have a feeling of stuckness but feel like nothing is worth doing to fix their situation. They again, feel at home in their helplessness and seek it out.

When animals (horses or riders in this case) go into fold and then recover, back to fold, then recover again and again, it gets easier to go to that place and often times their sense of risk/danger becomes skewed. They will not recognize danger as easily because they are so comfortable with the pathway toward fold. Mary spoke of a rider recently out of an abusive relationship who would get on horses who were not safe, just because she was so used to the feeling of being unsafe.

I found it really interesting, but honestly don't have much else to say about it. I've run into shut down horses before, worked with shut down riders. Mary gave us one exercise that helped me a lot, so I'll just share that and maybe will post about this again when I've drawn more conclusions and done more research.

Interlace your fingers and put them on the back of your head, like you were about to lay in a hammock. Put pressure back there and then look to the left, just with your eyes, and sit there for a while, until you have some kind of release. Mary's release was yawning, mine was taking a deep breath. Same thing on the right side. Then see how you feel. If you do this, could you let me know what you find? I'm very curious. It halts my anxiety in its tracks, it doesn't last forever, but it does help me reset momentarily and that's helped a lot.


Extension vs Flexion Patterns

To be an effective rider, you must balance extension patterns in your body with flexion patterns. These patterns encompass your entire body, it's essentially, are you more the type of rider who closes your angles or who opens them?

An extension rider will default to opening their angles, you'll see this particularly in the last beat of the canter, the down beat, where the rider opens the hip and shoves their hips forward. Adults tend to be stronger in their extension patterns. Extension patterns tend to shoot a horse away from them, horses can't sit down/bend their hocks when a rider is too much in an extension pattern.

A flexion rider will default to closing their angles. Young children tend to ride more in flexion patterns, think of tiny newborn babies, they are way more likely to curl up (fetal position) than to open their arms and legs away from the body, that takes time to develop. This rider tends to put their horses on the spot and can sometimes lose the horse's swing through the back if they're too much in a flexion pattern.

Riders need to have equal amounts of flexion and extension to ride properly.

Flexion pattern in the down beat of the canter (see the engagement
of my hip flexors to keep myself upright?)

Extension pattern in the down beat of the canter (see the shove
with my hips forward in the down beat of the canter and how my
shoulders are behind my hips?) Look at the relative positioning
of the horses too, TC is at Intro level, Rico is at Fourth... hmmm

Up vs Down Riders

A rider can be more of an up rider or more of a down rider. Up riders appear "popped up" on the top of the horse while down riders appear more plunged down on top of the horse.

An up rider is effective at suctioning the horse upward, drawing the back up. They find passage easier than piaffe. A down rider is effective at weighting the horse's hindquarters. They find piaffe easier than passage, you can also see their effectiveness in a canter pirouette. Neither is better than the other. Being a down rider means just utilizing the plunger-down part of their mechanic more effectively than the suction-up part of their mechanic.

There can be ineffective up riders and ineffective down riders too. If the down-ness of the rider is not distributed through their thigh, the rider will clonk down into the horse's back, making the horse more hollow.  Neither is better or worse, but an up rider who is hollow and not effectively using suction is not good, just like a down rider who is round backed and simply landing hard on the horse's back.

Like the flexion and extension patterns, our best riders have a balance of up-ness and down-ness. They can utilize the down-ness in the piaffe and pirouettes and utilize the up-ness in the passage.

Not nearly enough down-ness here, I'm practically not even in
the saddle!

I am a very up, extension pattern rider, I found piaffe and pirouettes very difficult because they require more down-ness and flexion patterns.

Do you think you are more of an extension pattern rider or flexion pattern rider? What about your up-ness vs down-ness?


Front, Back, and Lateral Lines

To be an effective rider, the rider must have a certain amount of internal pressure, which Mary calls bear down. Sit in your chair (or on your horse) and put your fingers into your abdomen, then say "psshht" and feel your core engage. There needs to be a good amount of stuffing in you, just like when you say that, when you're riding.

The front, back, and lateral lines assist with adding tone/internal pressure to the rider. Some people are better at engaging them than others. These lines are fascial lines, fascia being the sausage casing like structure around your muscles. You can engage these lines in a relatively easy way.

Sit in your chair and have both feet flat on the ground. Push forward against the ground with your feet to engage your front line. See how far up you can feel it.

Same thing, but now pull your feet backward against the ground and engage your back line. See how far up you can feel it.

When I first started with Mary, I could feel my front line until my abs. Now I can feel it easily to my collarbone on both feet. At first, my back line wouldn't go up through my butt (that sounds so bad, sorry), now I can get it up to my midback, and am working to feel it into my neck.

For the lateral lines, which we did for the first time this year, push your feet outward against the ground. It's way helpful to have a chair that has four legs so you can push outward against the legs. This line I can immediately get up to my armpits.

All three lines (well, four, since there are two lateral lines) must be engaged to have enough tone as you're riding. A rider with a weak back line tends to lose their feet out in front of them, I find that runners especially struggle with weak back lines, as running is a very anterior chain exercise. A rider with a weak front line will lose their legs out behind them. To fix, play with resistances. If you have a weak backline, imagine someone is trying to push your foot out in front of you and resist their push. if you have a weak front line, imagine someone is trying to push your foot back under you and resist their push. For lateral lines, imagine someone is trying to push your ankle toward the horse's body and resist their push. It's way easier to imagine when you actually have someone do it to you at the halt!

In the comments, please let me know what lines you think are your strongest and how far up you can feel each line! I'm very curious. It's tough to describe over the internet, so sorry if it's tough to feel anything.

How easy would it be to push my leg forward? Back?
I think I've got a soggy back line here, it'd be very easy to push
my foot out in front of me even more!

Some more tidbits:

- No one rides poorly on purpose, everyone is doing the best they can with the body they have and the words they have heard.

- Imagine the two long back muscles of the horse as hoses, which one is spraying water harder? Should be even.

- Is the rider just accepting what the horse is giving them or are they influencing the horse? This is not possible without bear down.

- The rider should be "well stuffed" but many riders run out of stuffing down in their feet, so they flop.

- Who has the remote? Hyper-vigilant horses will snag it from the rider, change the channel, then yell "CHANNEL FIVE SCARY MOVIE," the rider must take it back and change the channel back, saying "channel one, forward and round"

- If we took 100% of the rider's weight, 80% should be in the thigh and 20% should be in the stirrup. When rider's weight is too in the stirrup, they push themselves upward and become less stable. If rider's weight is too in the seat and not enough in the thigh, the horse becomes hollow.

- Is your bear down stronger than the hold on the reins or is the hold on the reins stronger than your bear down?

- Many people feel that if they aren't riding movements, they aren't progressing, this is not true and more people need to do their time on a 20m circle finding out what feels best.

- Rider should look like they are hung in a harness and if they were picked up, the horse would come with them.

- In trot, landing too far back in the saddle pushes the horse's back hollow and the rider falls in (mantrap).

- The canter should sound more like CAnada than mozamBIQUE, emphasis on the first beat, not the last.

- Think of the rider's upper body as a carousel pole, especially in canter. It should stay upright and not fling itself back and forth. Diving deeper into this concept, the pole can be located in front of the rider's spine or to the back. Bring the carousel pole further back in your body to have a better effect in canter.

- If you want to examine running water, you do not put it in a bucket, turn the faucet off, and then look at it. You must look at it while it is running. Don't stop riding when the horse goes round, they will come off the bit, think "make it again"

- The rider must have a correct pelvis alignment to get their internal rotation correct. If the rider is too rocked back on the seat bones, their thighs cannot internally rotate (attention round backed riders).

- If you are sitting on an oil drum, do you have even amounts of drum on either side? Or is there more on one side or the other?

- Protect your horse from your seat bones (pad them with your glutes). Mary spoke about a chiropractor she spoke to who said that the worst back she ever saw was on a horse whose rider only rode him bareback.

- Think of the thighs like chopsticks, If you had long enough ones, they would cross over behind you. Make sure the cross happens in general and specifically happens in the middle of your back. Keep both thighs on at the same angle, basically.

Mary Wanless Workshop: Teaching Questions

Another year, another Mary Wanless Workshop! This is the third year in a row I've gone and it's turning into one of my favorite (and most exhausting) weekend of the year.

For those of you who are new, I tend to post an entire week's worth of biomechanics/Mary Wanless themed posts. So if that's not your thing, check back next week! To find the old posts, see here:

2018
Post 1 - Mary Wanless Workshop: The Structure
Post 2 - Mary Wanless Workshop: Truncated Theory
Post 3 - Mary Wanless Workshop: Realignments
Post 4 - Mary Wanless Workshop: The Unexpected Emotions
Post 5 - Mary Wanless Workshop: The Effect

2019
Post 1 - Mary Wanless Workshop: The Lead Up
Post 2 - Mary Wanless Workshop: More Truncated Theory
Post 3 - Mary Wanless Workshop: Riding Takeaways
Post 4 - Mary Wanless Workshop: Teaching Takeaways
Post 5 - Mary Wanless Workshop: The Non Emotions

I was beyond thrilled to be able to attend this year. I thought my niece was going to be born this weekend, so I had paid for it and then hoped she'd be early or late. She's a good future pony rider because she came early enough for me to be able to attend the whole thing! Thanks kiddo!

Best demo riders (you may recognize the one on the gray)

Once again, it was an amazing weekend! I've got a ton to share but it's tough to organize it all, so I'm still figuring out what I want to write about for the rest of the week. I do have a couple of really cool things that came out that I'm super eager to write about, but if there's anything that you're particularly interested in, please let me know.

We began talking about teaching, with Mary saying that we need to help our clients answer two questions:

Where are you now?
Where do you want to be?

Many people know where they want to be, as they point to Charlotte Dujardan or what not, but they have no idea where they are right now. How far along the scale of Beginner to Olympian are you? I honestly have no idea. I'm in the pocket that you fall into when you don't have anyone buying you super fancy horses? Is that a place to be?

We spoke about what struggles we, as a group, were having with our teaching:
- Focus: we assume all of our students pay attention, just like we do, that everyone has the same level of focus that we do.

- Influence: how do we get our riders to have more influence over their horses? When you first start riding, you tend to not have any influence, then obviously when you canter down centerline at the Olympics, you do. When does this shift happen and how?

Lab time

- Self Direction: I doubt anyone who blogs needs this, but many riders struggle to draw their own conclusions and make their own decisions. Many riders don't feel like they have "the right" to ask for more or make mistakes. I honestly don't have this issue because all of my clients are either clinic clients or only ride with me once or twice a week. Plus I give them a ton of homework always and ask a lot of questions. The trainers who were complaining about this have a lot of full training clients who only ride in lessons.

- Responsibility: what responsibility does the student have? What should they do with the information. Many trainers get bored teaching the same lesson over and over again, honestly, I've dropped a few clients for that reason. In addition, there is SO MUCH INFORMATION to impart onto someone, it really hit me this weekend that if I only see my trainer for four hours a month at max, there's no way I'm learning enough to get good at this sport. If you want to get good, it takes more than just lessons to do it.

- Selling change: change is terrible, I hate it. Even the smallest changes (like when Mary asked someone to bring their collar bone forward about an inch) feel ENORMOUS (and the person thought they were going to fall off the front of the horse) and awkward. It takes a lot of deliberate practice in a position that feels uncomfortable and wrong. How, as a trainer, do you sell it?

- Fear: we talked a TON about fear, including a deep dive into polyvagal theory, which deserves its own post if I felt like I knew enough to write it. But Mary says that very often a fearful rider will "have more competence than confidence" and a rider who is too bold will "have more confidence than competence."

We look our most cultish all doing the same
things, but really, it's all amazing

We then walked our way down this question: Are you a rider who teaches or a teacher who rides?

I'm definitely a rider who teaches. If you put a gun to my head and told me I could either ride horses or teach people to ride horses and I couldn't pick both, well, sorry clients, I'm getting me an amateur status.

But in the last several years, I've worked very hard to improve my teaching. Previously, I just taught what I'd been taught. The problem with this is that I'm bound to only be good at teaching the things I have problems with. If any of my clients pull on the left rein, I'm set! What if they don't though?

Anything that naturally comes easy to someone, they are shit at teaching. And the further away the trainer is from the rider's level, the harder it gets. It's been a very long time since I cantered for the first time, I could not teach someone how to do it now. They'd probably fall off and it'd be my fault for talking to them about the specifics of the canter mechanic rather than just telling them to... literally have no idea how to end that sentence because I DON'T KNOW.

Mary encourages trainers to remember to keep our implicit knowledge of these things. Remember back to my first time cantering (I don't, I was like 3 riding double on the trails, I don't remember cantering alone either) and remember those feelings so I can teach from it. I fucking can't though.

This is what Mary says is a huge problem with our upper level riders because they aren't teachers, they're riders. They have automated so much of their riding (because you have to) that they teach PQRs instead of ABCs. So Carl Hester says "I row my arms in the extended walk," but that's just what he thinks he's doing, he's also doing ten thousand other things that he has no idea he's doing. But come on, everyone, let's all go row our arms and get 10s!

Nicole, our most intrusive friend

I thought those were super interesting questions to answer as trainers! I think the more self reflective I get about teaching, the better my lessons get. Like I said, I love riding and want to be a good rider first and foremost, but I also do love teaching and want to get better at it. I want to be like some of the higher level trainers we saw ride at the workshop: fabulous riders, fabulous horse trainers, and fabulous instructors.

And this workshop has been one of the best decisions I've made to continue working to achieve those goals!

So basically, it was an amazing weekend and I can't wait to share more. I also have really exciting, related news happening tomorrow. I'm auditing Mary's riding clinic and am also having my very first physical therapy appointment for the SI injury I had 9 years ago. Looking forward to fixing this thing once and for all. More on those later!

Mary Wanless Workshop: The Non Emotions

This year I had way less emotions about the clinic! It was still a lot. But instead of being kicked by Mary for 8 hours a day the whole time, Mary was just kind of kicking sand on the sandcastle I was building. Like yeah, I need that sand, but you could stop kicking at me real quick so I can organize all the sand you're kicking my way. Also some of it is getting into my eyes.

Disclaimer: Mary Wanless did not kick sand on my sandcastle.

I think there are a few reasons why I didn't have as many emotions as last year.

1) I knew what to expect

Having been through the clinic before, I knew roughly what was going down. I had been teaching it all year, riding like it all year, and thinking about it all year. Being prepared like that really helped me!

There were overlapping concepts during the clinic that I had already heard from last year, so I was able to take mental breaks like "I know this stuff, phew!"

Unfortunately this dog, or the sun, was not at the clinic this year

2) Riding during the clinic is bad

Every morning last year I would ride beforehand, which meant that I was thinking so so much about all these changes and trying to make them at 7am before getting in the car and driving to the clinic. As much as TC was a complete dingbat as I was trying to get my right edge on him on Monday, I'm glad that I had a horse-free weekend to just think about everything. The most life changing thing for my riding of TC was said at the end of the day on Sunday.


3) I had way more Mary-validation and way less non-Mary-validation

As I wrote about in a previous post this week, it's hard to sell to riders who have been successful already without good biomechanics and it's hard to see that Grand Prix isn't really where things end but rather where things begin. I went into the clinic feeling pretty good about how far I'd gotten, pretty confident in myself and my riding, I wanted to build upon what I already knew.

Instead, I got my house of cards flattened pretty much immediately, and then people kept stepping on them while I was trying to rebuild them. Instead of building upon my previous framework, I had my framework destroyed and rebuilt. I got to the end of the clinic feeling raw and remembering the beautiful house of cards I had built that sure, had some issues with large gusts of wind, but was generally very nice. Where it stood was now a sturdy foundation of concrete... but that was it.

Over the year, I built the house again, this time in a very different way. And this clinic was all about how to do some of the plumbing for a fancier bathroom rather than how to pour concrete.

I mean I'm not perfect but I am way better than I was

4) I have a way more learning-centric mindset now

I've mostly been the sort of person who wanted to learn more and more and who questioned tradition. I still remember very vividly back in 2009 when I was riding with my previous trainer, asking her to please break down what she meant by "rounder" and being told that I was a fourth level dressage rider and I should be able to put my horse on the bit.

I think I sometimes take for granted the community I am part of. My friends who I am always discussing theory, exercises, books, etc with. My instructors who participate in furthering their education, who don't write me off when I ask a "silly" question. Being able to learn and grow without worrying because everyone else is learning and growing too. I love it all. It kind of gets me in trouble (not on here) when I assume that everyone operates within this mindset, but I still love it (even if I need to keep my mouth shut more).

But I've not always felt free to admit that I am still learning, free to admit my faults. I love that I feel like I can stand here and shout "I CAN'T TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TONE AND FAULTY MOVEMENT PATTERNS" and not have anyone judge me. A rosebud is no different than a rose.


5) My friends were there

Having my friends (some of whom ride with me) there made a HUGE DIFFERENCE. Glancing over to see L's hilarious facial expressions, hearing Nicole laugh loudly when Mary said that you needed to find a lot of different places to put it (the information) in (to the rider), letting Jan know that we'd find her a fan at Walgreens when we were all picking up hand warmers, going to lunch and chatting merrily about horses, discussing the clinic in the evenings, even sitting in the hot tub in the rain... it was all so much fun.

I can't tell you how lucky I feel to have found all these people. I missed them immediately (but am actually heading up to see two of them today!). We are so supportive of one another, cheer when things go right without feeling resentful, are there for each other when things go wrong, even if it's just to text "fucking horses, they're the actual worst" to one another.

Spending a whole weekend with them learning and laughing was an absolute gift. I really hope that we spend even more time together in the coming years. I'm not letting any of them go ever. They're totally stuck with me.

And now we're all way closer to one another because we've felt each others' butts.

Gotta bring out this picture one more time! Love all these people

This year my emotions were all of hope. There were some realizations about my teaching that feel raw, but after winning reserve champion high score in the Open First Level for my chapter of our GMO, behind a rider who won... like basically everything else in addition... I feel excited at how raw I felt about certain things.

I'm already feeling bad for my clients... not that bad though.

Mary Wanless Workshop: Teaching Takeaways

Despite getting quite a lot of things for my own riding, I went into this clinic wanting to focus on my teaching of the Mary concepts. I feel as though I understand them, I can talk about them, I can see them, but the actual teaching of them can be a little tricky.

First, I don't take a lot of biomechanics-focused lessons, and you teach the best what you are currently working on. Second, these are relatively new concepts. I, like many of us, started off in dressage by riding with very second-toolkit trainers. Tracey, who I began riding with in 2013, just six years ago, was my first first-toolkit trainer.


Increasing my Mapped Area

One of the main things that Mary drilled into us was how trainers find it way easier to teach the things they've been taught or the things they've struggled with. Elite riders tend to be those riders who have "natural talent" or their natural movement patterns are good. Unfortunately our elite riders are often our high level clinicians. No one is going to pay me $350 for a lesson! They're going to fork that out to someone who has been to the Olympics though.

The above graphic shows the linear path from beginning to end, which no one will ever take. The shaded area represents the areas of the path that the instructor has mapped. On that mapped area for me is my rogue left hand, I can see one of those instantly and can help someone fix it, my faulty posting mechanic, which I cannot unsee at this point, my previous tendency to run a lazy horse off its feet.

The pathway inside the blue area is a rider who I can teach in my sleep. But the line that ventures outside that blue area is a rider I would struggle teaching.

My main goal right now is to identify the movement patterns that come naturally to me, to determine what it looks like when my rider does not have this movement pattern, and to learn to teach it. I think I'll be taking a lesson in a few weeks that will be very interesting. Most of the lessons that I take are focused on what I am doing wrong, but I think my teaching would benefit from a lesson where the instructor tells me what I am doing right. Requesting that will be interesting, I think saying "I'd like to ignore all the things I'm doing wrong and just have you tell me how great I am" is maybe not the right way to sell it.

I worked hard for those movement patterns

Riders who have had success are harder to get to buy-in 

At the instructor dinner, I asked a question about new clients, specifically how to take a rider who has already been successful and help shift their perspective. These riders are harder to convince. They've been rewarded for what they've been doing. I've had numerous students come to me wanting to work on the harder stuff, hell, I've been that student coming in saying that all I need is a pirouette and I'm ready for PSG. When really the reason why I'm struggling to get to PSG is my fundamental understanding of connection, straightness, and collection.

So instead of the rider wanting help to expand their knowledge so they can do something different and stop bashing their head against the brick wall they've hit, they just want someone to help them bash it harder and more effectively.

As you get better as an instructor, you get higher level students. It's not hard to get the kid who I'm teaching to buy into this stuff, she's been on this planet for less time than I've been doing this sport. It's not hard to get my Training level riders to buy into this stuff because I can get them to improve their bear down and suddenly their horses come on the bit.

It IS harder to get my Fourth level riders to buy into this stuff. They're so close to PSG, they want their silvers, they want to school pirouettes and piaffe and passage. And they've been rewarded for their work already.

Mary's advice to me personally was to give my upper level riders just enough rope to hang themselves. Put them in an exercise that I know won't work unless they have correct biomechanics. Like doing transitions within shoulder-in, oh but you've got to get the neck longer, I need more energy, more cadence, more engagement. How are you going to do that? Well, by bearing down. Can't do that while doing transitions within shoulder-in? Hey let's go back to the circle and see if we can do it there.

I'm excited for gaining new clients, and I would like to find some more upper level clients, but I'm starting to feel like I'm valuing my lower level clients more. They take less convincing!




Types of Riders I will Teach

Knowing what types of riders I may teach on what types of horses is really important. Mary drew this diagram for us:

This is only one small diagram of the types of riders you could acquire as a trainer. The hollow backed rider on the hot horse, the hollow backed rider on the lazy horse, the round backed rider on the hot horse, and the round backed rider on the lazy horse (out of curiosity, where do you fall on this spectrum?). I've for sure been the hollow backed rider on the lazy horse (Larkin, Leo, Rico), the round backed rider on the lazy horse (Rico), and the round backed rider on the hot horse (TC).

Some trainers have a lot of bubbles (concepts they are good at teaching) in some quadrants and not others. Theoretically I'm quite good at teaching a hollow backed rider on a lazy horse since I spent a long time being that rider. Now I'm more round backed and am on a much more forward horse, so the recency effect says that I'll be good at teaching this type of rider too. The other quadrants, maybe I'm not as good at teaching.


Other Teaching Takeaways

- It's important to find a common language with your students by asking them to describe what they are feeling in their own words and then using those words

- You cannot change a habit until you can feel it, so you must help the riders feel what they are doing because it is difficult to feel their habits

- Is your trainer (or you) a teacher who rides or a rider who teaches? Best to find a teacher who rides (but I am a rider who teaches, sorry clients lol but hey this is why I go to these workshops)

- This weekend I found out that I struggle to differentiate between rider tone and rider movement patterns. I want to think way more about this before I start writing more than this observation down though.

- I'm way better at seeing front-back mistakes than side to side mistakes. Therefore I need to come up with some tests to have my riders do so that I can see the side to side mistakes better. If I can't see it, I can ask questions (can you feel your seat bones, does one feel heavier than the other, which movement patterns feel more like home to you, etc).

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!

Mary Wanless Workshop: More Truncated Theory

Last year I wrote a bit about the theory that we went over in Mary's clinic. We went over some of the same concepts this year, so I am going to skip those and focus solely on the concepts I didn't write about last year. If you read both this post and the one from last year, you'll kind of get an idea of what was gone over in both clinics.

Talent Has a Structure

Mary's big thing is that talent is not this mystifying thing that you can't explain. We do know what it is, we do know how to explain it, and we do know how to teach it.

It makes a trainer's job way easier if their client believes that there's something inherently different between the two of them. If you think that there's no way for you to ever ride as well or better than your trainer or than the elite riders of the world, you won't mind when your trainer says that "you'll just have to feel it out" when you ask what the timing is for the flying change. If you get it, you can pat yourself on the back for being a great rider and the trainer can pat themselves on the back. If you don't get it, you're just not talented enough and don't have enough natural feel.

The timing for the flying change is to ask when the inside front leg is on the ground.

Ask just before this moment

Premature Automation

A lot of the time, we automate patterns that are not perfected yet and then we move on. By not automating anything until it is perfect, we avoid plateaus that can be reached when the rider automates. But this is really hard, we all have automated movement patterns that are destructive to our riding and the first step is to notice them.

Automated patterns are not all bad. You have to automate movement patterns because you simply can't do everything all at once, some of it has to become muscle memory or none of us would even be able to walk on the back of a horse.

Elite riders have many automated patterns that they do not even know they are doing. Mary told us an example of Klimke teaching Hilda Gurney, who was struggling in the piaffe. Klimke had Hilda ride the final GP centerline (passage - piaffe - passage) and his instructions to Hilda were to "do nothing" when she came into piaffe. Her horse halted and he asked her why she stopped. Hilda said she was quite literally doing nothing, and then Klimke apparently said "no, do nothing something!"

It's VERY hard to teach what has been automated. And this is why, Mary says, we get Xs presented as As. If you imagine an iceberg where everything showing above the water is movement patterns that the riders are aware of and everything below the water is automated movement patterns, the rider will be the best at teaching the conscious patterns. If the rider is not actively thinking about kneeling and bearing down and engaging their lats, they will not be able to teach this consciously.

All they may be thinking about while doing all of the things they are doing is "quiet with my hands" so maybe that is what they tell their students.

Posting Mechanic

This year we got some really great information on the posting mechanic.

Imagine the knee is at the center of a circle and the radius of the circle is the length of the thigh bone. The knee is going to stay in the same space and the thigh will act as a lever to bring the upper body up and forward. The thigh should go to vertical (12:00 on a clock) and then come back down to 45 degrees while the calf stays in the same place.

Common mistakes of the posting mechanic:
- not getting to the top of the rise
- going beyond the rise
- kicking with the lower leg

Many riders post too shallow and don't actually make it to the top of the rise. Even on a hot horse (who many people are encouraged to make their posting smaller on), getting to the top of the rise (in a controlled way) is important.

Many riders go beyond the rise, meaning they shove their seat forward over the top of the 12:00 marker and make themselves unstable by opening their hip angle too much. I did this and was encouraged by my trainer to not use so much of my glute at the top of the rise as it was causing me to shove my hips beyond where they needed to be. I've been accused of the same thing in kettlebell swings.

And the most common issue that I've seen at least, a rider kicks with their lower legs as they post. This is quite unstable and very noisy for the horse. It's caused by not enough weight being distributed in the thigh and rather the weight of the rider being pushed into the stirrup, which presses the rider's center of gravity upward. For my students, I often hold their lower leg and knee still so they can feel what the correct posting mechanic does feel like, then ask them what muscles they feel turn on. The posting trot mechanism should be quite a quad-dominant exercise.

To practice this, Mary had us kneel on the floor with our butt on our heels and then post upward to vertical. It was important to maintain a cereal box (equal front and back lines, not hollowing or rounding the back). If the cereal box is distorted (leaning forward, hollowing back is common) then it's way easier to post.

On the horse, the rider should be able to balance at the top of the rise and be able to slowly lower themselves. Many riders allow the horse's momentum to throw themselves up to the top of the rise and then allow gravity to pull them back down. It's important to resist gravity and control the descent.



Suction

Elite riders draw the horse's back up underneath them by using suction with their seat and thigh. Suction is all about opposing forces, making contact with the inner thigh and pulling the back up with the outer thigh. To perform this, start with three positional fixes:

1: feel a resistance on the top of the knee (engages hip flexor and quads)
2: feel a resistance outward at the ankle (imagine being a snow plow with toes in, making a triangle)
3: feel a resistance outward at the knee (but without removing the inner thigh)

The inner thigh (adductor) should be on and connected, but the outer thigh (abductor) is also on and pulling apart. When done properly, you'll see the outer thigh flatten a bit.

As a better image, imagine sitting on gum and that as you rise in your posting trot, you can feel the sticky gum strings pulling the horse's back up with your seat.

I don't know if I can find a picture that illustrates this so like...
look, it's Rico! 

Other Concepts

- If you go to a clinic and the clinician is saying the same thing to everyone, be suspicious

- All you do in life is trade your problems for better problems

- When you breathe in, how far down does your breath go? Should go deep into the body

- Is the rider influencing the horse's patterns or is the horse influencing the rider's patterns

- We talk a lot about force absorption but we don't talk enough about force transmission, you must transmit force through your body and match forces with the horse rather than absorb the horse's forces

- A rider's torso should be like a cereal box, it can be distorted in four key ways: hollow back vs round back, and leaning forward vs leaning back. You can lean back with a hollow back or a round back. You can lean forward with a hollow back or a round back. Important to know the difference

- You should feel like you are pressing your body up against a glass door in front of you.

- If your skin was a bag, it should be filled with putty. Low tone riders are filled with things like mochi (yum!), jello, or loose sand. High tone riders are filled with things like plywood, iron rods, or concrete. You should be evenly stuffed.

- There should be 80% of the rider's weight in the seat and thigh at all times, leaving 20% of the rider's weight in the foot. Many riders weight the foot way more than the thigh. Guilty as charged...

- Keep yourself in a discovery learning process rather than trying to do everything right all the time. Mary recommends focusing on three things at a time.

- Imagine someone has put three skewers in your abdomen. One at the base of your sternum, one at your belly button, and one at your bikini line. Are all of these skewers pointed the same way? They should be.

- Body awareness gets worse as you get further from the brain. This is why ankles are hard to control.

- For those riders who celebrate getting a concept by letting go and going "splat" they should think "make it again, make it again, make it again"

- When the horse goes hollow and presses their neck back at you, you need to make a forward force (in your body by bearing down) that is more effective/stronger/more powerful than the backward force.

- "This is so much information, if I were a trainer, I would quit" Wise words from Jan lol!