Kate and I were chatting about her horse and she gave me a really good visual. Both her horse and mine are tricky to get influence on. There are some horses I get on and I think to myself "I feel like if I threw this horse off a cliff, the horse would totally go" and TC is not that horse. I think I've fought tooth and nail to get every ounce of rideability out of him that I could and we still have a long way to go. Kate mentioned that she felt like she had trouble getting her strings on her also very difficult to influence horse and it gave me an immediate visual and a new way of discussing influence. I love it.
So you know those marionettes:
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| These things |
Some of my body parts have really good strings attached to some of his body parts. Like I feel like I have pretty good strings from my hands to his mouth, I can put his mouth anywhere with those strings. I have good strings down my left leg. That left leg can make a wall and push him over, it can have good suction and draw him out. I also feel like I've got some good strings in my seatbones at the canter. At the canter, especially when he's all pumped up, I can put him almost anywhere, or at least, that's what it feels like. My strings are strong in canter.
Some times and in some places, it feels like the strings break in certain movements. Like I've got my right seat bone pretty much plugged in and influencing his right hind... except during the half pass left. Then I snatch the right seat bone away from his body and I break the string.
Some places, I have no strings at all. Whether I'm the one not attaching them or he's the one ripping away from them, sometimes I don't know. I have no strings in my right thigh and down my right leg. The more I think about it, the more I realize that I don't have strings really at all down my entire right side. My left side can be moved around in an organized way to move him around. My right side flops around trying to thump him around rather than attaching strings.
The other place I don't have strings attached is to his withers. I have ridden horses where I can literally pull them up in a way that makes me feel like I'm grabbing them by the scruff of their neck. Because I aggressively try to get TC to do it, my effectiveness on other horses has actually gotten way better, other than TC, it feels like there's rarely a horse I can't improve the throughness on in this way (not that I ride 8 horses a day though). But with TC, there's no amount of effort that works, because there are just no strings attached to his withers. It's like me flinging my hand around while hovering it over a stuffed animal. The stuffed animal just sits there, unaware that if I only have strings, I'd be moving it.
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| Being the weirdo taking pictures in the mirror while other people are in the ring. |
I have a lesson today with a new trainer. She's a Mary Wanless person and happens to be my physical therapist who I can't wait to go back to when the virus is less of a threat. My main goal is to come in, explain my strings to her, and see if she can get me to develop more strings on my right side and to connect my strings to his withers. Because at this rate, the horse is exactly on track for cantering down centerline next year with Tanya's program. Now it's time for me to learn even more about my riding so that I can better put Tanya's program into effect. I really want to wear my damn shadbelly next fall.
I'm curious, does this at all make sense? If so, what strings are you missing?
