Things I Can't Unsee

Over the last year or so I've been developing my eye for seeing faults in dressage and it's honestly been really terrible! So, in hopes of spreading the terribleness, I want to share some of the things that I can't unsee anymore in pictures and videos. 

I will of course be using pictures of TC and Rico for this post. But because of this, this post is going to be full of pictures that I don't like. It sucks to put yourself out there and be like "I hate so much of this" so I just wanted to say that I don't need help disliking these pictures. I'm going to try to put good examples in but it's hard because my main issue right now is that I *can't* get TC to do all the things at the same time. And Rico is long retired so won't be doing any demonstrations except on how to be a bad horse to pony lol!

Here's a palate cleanser first: 

Sunset walkies were so fun

Dip in Front of the Withers

The neck should come out of the withers smoothly vs having a dip in front of the withers. The dip means that the thoracic sling isn't engaged and the horse is on the forehand. Often times it will be accompanied with the poll not being the highest point too. See this picture of TC: 

He may look uphill but he is not

No dip in front of the withers, also note the uniform
muscling in the neck, the lower back being lifted, 
the throatlatch being open, and the jugular groove
being mostly visible, probably the best picture I'll 
show here, but there are still issues!

One Legged Trot

Another way to see if the horse is on the forehand is to look at the relative weighting of the front and hind legs when they are on the ground in the trot and especially looking to see the moment right before the moment of suspension. When the hind legs unload, you get a one legged trot, as TC is demonstrating here in a green lengthening: 

Left front is the only leg on the ground, right hind
has left the ground way before left front, but he's got
his poll the highest point and nose is not btv

If you get really obnoxious, you can even see the relative weight distribution in the trot even when both legs are on the ground. See how Rico's front pastern is flexed more than his back pastern: 

Also showing the broken at the third and dip in front
of the withers, this was prior to changing trainers so
that's good at least

Front Leg Behind the Vertical

If the horse is collected and lifted through the thoracic sling properly, they should pick up their outside front leg in canter and both front legs in trot just after the leg has passed vertical. When the horse's front leg goes behind the vertical, it means the horse is on the forehand. This picture shows that Rico was on the forehand even at the Grand Prix:

Left front leg well behind vertical and not yet
picked up, this is literally at the GP level

Outside front leg well behind vertical, you can see
how far TC had to go to come off the forehand as
this is when he was four years old

Hind Legs Not Matching Front Legs

Everyone should know that this means the horse is not properly engaged or lifting through their back. There are two ways you can see this, one is when the hind leg angle and the front leg angle are different, such as in this picture of Rico: 

Compare the angle of the hind cannon with the angle
of the front forearm

But there's ALSO the distance between the hind legs vs the distance between the hind legs. When the horse is moving, the triangles made by the front and hind legs should match. See here how they do not, even if the angles match: 

See how the triangle made by the hind legs is smaller
than the triangle made by the front legs?

Behind the Vertical

Obviously rolkur is a bad thing, but we have really been conditioned to think that being behind the vertical a little bit is actually being on the vertical. And actually the rulebook says that the horse must be slightly in front of the vertical! I am not interested in being the kind of person who vilifies a horse dropping behind the vertical, but I am also not interested in having my eye blind to it. Here are some pictures where you might think "that's pretty close to vertical" when the horse is well behind the vertical:  

Very much btv

Definitely btv

Yep btv here too

On the vertical

In front of the vertical just barely, but those hind
legs though... boo

No Moment of Suspension in Canter

Rico was the king of this, but a canter with no moment of suspension is not showing correct rhythm. You can see this when you take a screenshot of the horse in the moment that the outside hind leg is about to hit the ground. The inside front leg should not be on the ground

Btv, poll not the highest point as well!

This is a little better and has a lot to like about it
in other categories but the moment of suspension
is not very apparent here (and also his poll isn't 
quite the highest point) 

Not even trying there, Rico but again I love his
neck and poll and being in front of the vertical there

There's a moment of suspension for you, but his
neck is retracted and he's also very much on the
forehand here

Inside Hind Leg in Canter Landing Too Early

When the horse's back is tight, they do not drive the inside hind leg forward enough and don't have enough "split" behind. See below: 

Looks so uphill! But inside hind leg hit the ground
under his hip and not under my seat

Lots of faults but landing too early behind is not
one of them here, but btv, dropped in the wither,
and closed throatlatch are...

Closed Throatlatch and/or Underneck Bulging and/or Can't See the Jugular Groove

This usually happens together but it can happen separately. Basically the horse will bulge the underneck and cover up the jugular groove and the throatlatch will be closed. See the following: 

Closed throatlatch and also btv, no jugular groove
to be found

Underneck bulging

You can clearly see the jugular groove here

Bulging Parotid Glands

When the horse has been ridden compressed, they will have bulging glands at the side of their cheeks where the cheek meets the neck. 

Baby TC, even at four years old here, was showing
that, see the line right behind his browband?

Even as he got older, they were still there, I don't
know if they'll stop, honestly his throatlatch
conformation is really poor so that is probably some
of it and that he was so quick to retract as a baby

I guess you can still see them a bit here with Rico,
who was ridden in draw reins a lot as a young horse,
but they are definitely not as bad as TC's 

Retracted in the Neck

The neck should be long, or at least not overly shortened. I don't know of a really good way to tell where the line is, but retraction is obvious to me at least because it makes you think "omg let go of the reins and let his neck out" and in TC's case last year when we were having these issues, that meant he'd just run wildly away because he wasn't on my seat. This took a lot of dedicated work on getting him more on my seat and reducing pressure to fix. I can now ride his neck long all the time and not have him run off!

Retracted

Retracted

Reaching for contact

Bulging Muscles Near C3/Broken at the Third

So when developed properly, the neck should be a fairly uniform thickness, if not thicker at the base of the neck near the withers (cervical trapezius muscle well developed). When ridden incorrectly, the neck will bulge near C3. This often means (but not always) that the horse is broken at the third vertebrae aka poll is not the highest point. See the following: 

Thickest part of the neck is up by C3

Good bulge right up there

A fairly uniform neck but that's a one legged trot
and a slight dip in front of the withers yay we 
just can't win here, can we?

Lower Back Dropped

Ideally from the back of the saddle down the buttocks should be pretty uniform. If the slope from the back of the saddle goes up to the hip, the horse's back is not lifted properly. It should go straight or slope downward. 

Back is dropped

Back is lifted (but horse on forehand, poll not the
highest point, behind the vertical, etc) 

No one is perfect. Obviously. I don't know a single horse who goes around without showing any of these faults ever. Even those who are developed carefully. Even those who are developed by our top riders. Perfection is unachievable. There will always be something to fix. 

Because horses are not robots and they have their own tendencies and personalities and bad habits just like riders do. We are all on a quest that has no finish line. There is no winning in dressage, really. 

Unfortunately this year, I've become way more adept at seeing all these things and it's caused me a lot of mental anguish. One of the reasons why I started jumping again was to be able to stop caring so much and actually have fun riding again (which is working so that's good!). But I love TC and don't want to sell him or turn him into just a trail horse. And I do love the art of dressage despite all of this. I just want to enjoy riding him again without being a crazy person. 

So the plan remains the same: find a saddle that does not prevent him from moving properly, find a trainer who has the same values, continue working with bodyworkers to assure that TC is as comfortable as possible, and try to relax a bit about all this. Watch the Olympics and realize that everyone, EVERYONE is struggling with these same things. 

And most importantly, don't let TC know how imperfect either of us are, he doesn't deserve to carry that burden. 

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! 

Ride the Horse, Not the Test

I was asked recently to write a blog post on test riding. I thought about it and realized that I had a lot of opinions on it, more so now that I've gone through part one of the L program, probably even more in the future when I've gone through the rest of the program and the following programs.

As always, theory posts only reflect my own experiences as a rider and a trainer and my own perspective. I'm always learning and thinking about this stuff, so what I write now may not reflect how I feel about these things in the future. Read at your own risk. That being said, I've got some competition experience in all levels of this sport.

Best show pony

Here are my best tips:

Know Your Test

Obviously. But not just like, can you tell it to someone out loud or do you have it memorized? I mean know the SHIT out of your test. To the point where it haunts you. To the point where you're dreaming about it. To the point where I still have the Grand Prix memorized 6 years after my last one. I've not had a reader in years because if I feel like if I need one, I don't have my test memorized enough.

For every moment you have to think "wait, does this happen at V or K?" or "I think this transition happens here" OR for every brain cell that has to focus on what your reader is saying and then translate it to what you're doing, that's a brain cell or several that aren't riding your horse. And you need all your brain cells to ride your horse in a dressage test. You actually need more than the number of brain cells humans have, and that's why no one gets 100%.

I'm so happy how white I got his tail!

Have a Plan

Obviously having a plan is a good idea, this is such a stupid tip, but I like to memorize my tests AND my plan at the same time. Rather than saying, up centerline, halt, trot off, track left, shoulder-in, half circle, half pass.... I'll say:

"enter centerline tracking right, he'll try to zip up to X because he's eager so take that energy and recycle it twice, first at D and then at L, halt and make sure to keep him in my left rein so that he halts square and doesn't think about pawing, trot off, keeping him in the left rein until he's trotting well, then half halt around G to put him into shoulder-fore left and then track left, pushing him into my right rein as I do that. Use the corner to talk to his left hind to warn him about the shoulder-in, half halt coming into the shoulder-in and then for the love of god, Megan, do not run him in the shoulder-in, half halt outside rein to turn his shoulders into the half circle, then keep him on that outside rein into the half pass, making sure that I don't let his haunches fall in on the half circle so that I can keep his shoulders leading while also keeping him up to the outside rein"

Best pony last fall

Visualization

The number one thing I make sure I do prior to signing up for a show is visualize my tests vividly. I don't test ride too often, I rode the 3-3 once before our first show at the level and the 3-1 about five times, which is unusually high for me. But I do ride it a TON in my mind. If you can't visualize yourself riding the test perfectly, you won't ride it perfectly.

I've not only ridden my current Third level tests in my head, I can't tell you how much I've ridden the FEI tests on TC in my head. We will have cantered down centerline in my shadbelly together hundreds of times mentally before we ever do it in real life. It makes me think about each individual little thing in the test and helps me with my training of him now. Given the horse I have today, I know that the steepness in the Grand Prix half passes is a PROBLEM and so I keep that in mind while schooling my half passes at home. I know that he might get behind me in the canter pirouettes, so I am schooling the hell out of the quality of the canter at home. I know that he'll get crooked in the tempi changes, so I'm working on changes on the rail to prevent having that problem in the future.


Ride The Damn Corners

You only get a certain number of steps in the show ring. How many steps does it take to prepare for each movement? You can get more steps by going further into the corners! And the corners are a free chance to establish a better bend, more throughness, fix a straightness problem, and make sure your horse is responding well to each aid. Don't cut them like I want to do all the time!

Me thinking about how I'm going to cut
all my damn corners and not be prepared
enough for the movements

Stress Yourself Out at Home

Lots of times, we dumb down the work we do at home. I am guilty of it as a trainer saying "when you have a quality walk, head into trot" when in no test does it say "eh just show us all the movements whenever it feels right, try it again if you mess up." You don't have to practice your test to get good at test riding. Just set yourself up for failure at times. Examples:
- put transitions at specific places and force yourself to ride them, for example, ride a transition at every quarter of a circle while also riding a serpentine and/or ride a transition EXACTLY every ten steps
- combine lateral work and transitions like leg yield to canter to ten meter circle to trot to leg yield and again and again
- ride test patterns at home, I only school full tests occasionally, but I school test patterns constantly
- drill lateral work zig zags and staircases (leg yield to straight to leg yield, half pass to shoulder-in to half pass) and count your steps in there too


Focus on Flow

One of the best ways to reduce your score is to make the movements not flow together. Take for example the 4-1. You have to ride half pass to centerline, a ten meter circle, then ride shoulder-in up centerline. If you ride the half pass, then go "oh god the circle" then faulter onto the circle, then ride straight out of it and think "oh yeah, shoulder-in" and start it a step late, it all looks choppy and weird. The movements that happen right after one another need to flow together. Your half pass should end when you turn onto the ten meter circle, your shoulder-in should start on that ten meter circle. Choppy tests lose in the submission, rider effectiveness, and in the movement scores.

TC says, these tests are so easy, mom, what we do at home is
way harder

Gimme Movements

When I'm working with TC, I think a lot about how many times I have to do a movement in a row before I like what I'm getting. For example, his shoulder-in is as good as it's going to be the first time we do it, there's no improving it with doing a second or third shoulder-in. This, to me, means that the shoulder-in is show ready.

In comparison, when I ask for half pass, the first one is not show ready, we have to do it probably four times in a row to get one that I like and that Tanya has said is an 8. But we don't get an 8 in the show ring because they don't let you do four half passes in a row and then pick the highest scoring one.

So when I'm wondering why at home I get such a great half pass that my trainer says is an 8 and then I go into the show ring and get a 6.5, it's not that my trainer is a liar. It's that I need to get that half pass to be an 8 the FIRST time I ride it

This is also important for warming up (see below)...



Perfect Your Warm Up/Trust Your Training

Related to above, knowing how many times you need to school a movement to make it show ready is really important for designing your warm up!

When you're at Training, First or even Second and Third to an extent, you can totally ride every single movement in warm up a few times and still have a live animal to ride in your test. Once you reach the FEI levels, there's no warming up every movement or you and your horse will pass out before going into the show ring.

You need movements that are good without any warm up for those levels. That takes a long time to develop. An old trainer once told me that you aren't ready for the next level when you can get all the movements right, you're ready for the next level when you can't get any of the movements wrong.


In addition, know the difference between what you'd like for yourself in warm up vs what your horse needs in warm up. I'd love to ride more changes in warm up for myself, to really know that they're going to be good, but too many changes is not something TC can handle right now.

Rico's warm up for the FEI levels was about ten minutes long. It wasn't about me in that moment. It was about him. His first set of one tempis was as good as we were going to get, so I had to go in cold as a rider. His canter half pass zig zag was great every time, so I had to go in cold on that. It's nerve wracking as a rider. It's really rather scary to canter down centerline very aware that the last time you rode a canter half pass zig zag was much earlier in the week. But I did it for him and I can 100% tell you that this is why we were successful at those levels.

Still love this picture so much

The Test Should Improve The Horse

The tests aren't set up to be unfair to the horse or rider. They are made to improve the horse. Every movement you ride should make your horse better, more through, more responsive, more submissive.

Figure out what the purpose of each test movement is and how to use it to your advantage. TC gets out behind in the mediums, but he does have a better outline in the medium and it helps to get more power in him. So I can tell myself, okay, I'll use the medium to get him more powerful and more out to the bridle, but I'll use the down transition and the corners to get him more engaged because I will have lost the engagement in the medium. I use the shoulder-in to get him better connected. I use the half pass to make sure he's staying upright. I use the extended walk to get him to loosen up his back and use the walk pirouettes to put him in a better collection before we have to do a walk to canter.

Judges look for this, they look for a better quality trot after a medium, a more connected horse after lateral work, and so on.

Happiest horse hanging with his new best friend, every ring
steward ever

Mistakes Happen, Recovery Matters More

TC and I have been showing together for three years now and we just had our first clean test last show! Every test we've had a spook, a bolt, a lead swap, or a break. Every single test except that one. The horse has scored very well regardless.

Mistakes can happen in a few different ways but it honestly doesn't matter what the mistake is, what matters is how you ride afterward. If the mistake happens in one movement and then you recover immediately and your test sheet looks like "7, 7, 4, 7, 7" then that's totally fine! Whatever, a singular four, even in a double coefficient, shouldn't affect your test significantly. BUT if your test looks like "7, 7, 4, 5, 4, 3" then there's a big problem there. In the last situation, the mistake wasn't the problem, the recovery was.

At home when making a mistake, it's easy to stop and go back or to ride some circles to get the horse back to you and then go back. Instead, force yourself to learn to recover and go back to normal ASAP. Make yourself ride through the test movement that you're practicing even when it goes poorly. Learn to recover from mistakes and the mistakes won't be a big deal even when they do happen.

In addition, change the perfectionist mentality that is so common in dressage riders. That's not helpful at all. You see tons of riders go in and ride one way when things are going well and then the moment they make one singular mistake, you see everything deflate as the rider begins to focus on how frustrated they are about the mistake. Don't worry about if a mistake will be made (it will), worry about how quickly you can recover and forget about the mistake.

TC after earning a 73% at 1-2 while making mistakes

Know Your Downtime

Figure out where there is downtime in the test. Downtime is anything that isn't a movement. At Training level, there's TONS of downtime, it's fabulous. At Training 1, you track left, do a circle, then you have half the long side, a corner, and half the short side to get ready to canter. If you made a mistake on the trot circle, you've got all that time to fix things before the next thing you get scored on happens (note: they are still judging you there, but the circle is the essence and therefore most important).

Downtime decreases as you move up the levels and is one of the reasons why the tests feel like they're happening so fast as you move up (pro tip: wait to show a test until the test feels like it ISN'T going by so quickly, time moves faster in the dressage court so if it feels fast at home, it'll be impossible to ride in the show ring). There's one significant bit of downtime in the Grand Prix, between when you pick up the canter and when you start your 2 tempis. That's kind of it unfortunately. But it was CRUCIAL to use it to get Rico forward and in a quality canter when I was showing him at that level.

Knowing your downtime means that you can identify where you can easily recover from mistakes. Any movement with tons of downtime afterward is where you can freely make mistakes. Doesn't mean you don't school those movements, but like, in the 3-1, you have SUCH a long time after each change that you can make a massive mistake without affecting your medium canter or trot transition that follows.

But in that same test, if the shoulder-in has a mistake in it, you have a half circle (that is judged with the half pass) before the half pass, that's it! So while the changes in the 3-1 seem like the most daunting part of the test, not having a good shoulder-in could have an effect on thirty points vs the change being worth twenty. In addition, those thirty points are way more steps in the test, so making a mistake in the lateral work at that test is worth more in the collectives than making a mistake in one change.

He was so dapply a couple years ago

Ride the Horse, Not the Test

It's easy to get in the ring and be like centerlinehaltturnleftmediumtrotshoudlerinohgodohgod and suddenly the horse is off the bit, drifting from the track, and you're sitting there shoving the horse through the movements, when at home, everything seems to ride really well.

I forget who told me this piece of advice, to ride the horse, not the test, but it's something I always think about. I think that this is advice that combines three things: having your test memorized so well that it haunts you, knowing your downtime, and also making sure the test improves the horse. But I think it's worth mentioning on its own too.

Basically use the test moments to ride the horse, don't use the horse to ride the test movements.

First level pony

What is the best piece of advice you have heard for test riding?

Stability and Instability

One of the many interesting things I learned in the A Session of the L program was the desirability of the horse's balance being unstable while the rider's balance is stable. Since then, I've used it a TON in my lessons, so I figured I'd write it all down.

Cutest pony ever

On a side note, one of the things that Mary Wanless talked a lot about at the instructor dinner at her workshop last year was buy-in. Many instructors teach second toolkit stuff, telling the rider what the horse needs to be doing in order to be more like our ideal horse ("rounder" "get him bending more" "more angle" "kick his hind legs under him" "half halt to shift his weight back onto his haunches" etc). Riders get it in their mind that, while maybe they could sit a bit better, they're effective riders, they get results, so rider position gets put on the back burner.

First toolkit teaching is very different, it focuses very little on the horse and more on what the rider is doing to influence the horse ("engage your lats" "foot light" "bear down") that will help the horse become more like the ideal horse. It's a really effective way of teaching, but it requires more thought from the instructor, who has to see the horse as it is, think of what they'd rather the horse look like, then let the rider know what their body needs to do.

Need to get more stable

I have some riders who want primarily first toolkit instruction, most of these riders are somewhat subscribed already to the biomechanics stuff, some of them have hit a wall and want to hear something different than just hammering on their horse all the time, and some are just happy to do whatever their instructor says. There are some riders though, who really don't subscribe to the first toolkit type of instruction. They don't understand that by becoming more secure in their position, that they will be able to influence the horse better, they think they're fine the way they ride. And why wouldn't you think you're fine if the last time you were told to make major changes to your posting mechanic was when you were nine years old.

This idea of stability vs instability has created a lot of buy-in for my riders in terms of rider biomechanics. So that's been nice! It's also had the effect of immediately putting a lot more tone in my low tone riders' positions.

I'm quite dislodged here lol

Back to the theory. The L program slides showed two images, one a sumo wrestler and one a gymnast, both in balance. To maintain balance, the sumo wrestler takes a wide stance, lowers their center of balance, they won't be moved from this position easily. To maintain balance, the gymnast gets narrower, walks along the beam, they can easily move from this position if they need to do another movement, or if someone walks by and shoves them off the beam (how rude).

The rider should be like the sumo wrestler, unable to be moved by the mechanics of the horse. They should be sturdy, in a wide stance, with a lowered center of gravity. Their balance should go unchanged regardless of what happens. If you walk up to a sumo wrestler and push them, they will not fall. Same with a rider, as you're riding, what would happen if say, Kate, came up to you and tried to shove you sideways, would you move?

The horse shouldn't be unmoveable, how ridiculous would dressage be if we rode sumo wrestlers? The horse needs to be like the gymnast, balanced, but the balance needs to be easily changeable by the rider. So the horse needs to get narrower, more responsive to the rider.

In order for this to go down though, the rider's stability has to be there first. Riders who are particularly stable will not be affected by their horse. They will not slide off to the outside during lateral work (hello yes this is me), they will not be left behind in the medium trot (hi also checking in here), they will not be dislodged by a fabulous canter mechanic (okay I'm working on it).

A stable rider can then affect an unstable horse, and again, unstable does not mean unbalanced. An unstable balance is balanced. The horse is balanced, but the balance is different between a collected pace and a medium pace, a canter and a trot. So the rider needs to be stable to be able to change the horse's balance.

My lats could be better here, also my leg gets so externally
rotated and I pull my thigh off of him

An unstable rider does not inspire a horse to be narrow, to be moveable. Horses want to be in balance, so when an unstable rider is on them, they will become wider, they will find their own balance and keep it amidst chaos from the rider. They learn that they can't trust the rider to remain in balance, so they find it themselves. These horses are then hammered on by riders who want to feel them be more responsive, more balanced. When they're the ones who are unstable.

I was teaching this concept a bit ago while a beginner lesson was going on. The kid was so cute, the pony was much cuter. The pony was on the longe line trotting and you could see how stable he was, how wide he got. The kid was practicing her posting like most kids do, learning about being balanced. She'd sometimes get left behind, post too high and then come down a bit hard, missing a beat. She was learning to be in balance and the pony was providing her with a very stable balance to do it on.

Then back to my rider, who was riding a green horse, we were working to get the horse in balance. Green horses tend to get off balance, then try to catch their balance in whatever way they've learned how, this one got quick. At first when the horse got quick, my rider got dislodged, slipped a bit sideways, got a bit left behind, the horse pulled her arms too straight. We stopped and talked about stability, looked at the beginner and saw how stable the horse was. I said she needed to be the stable one if we were going to be affecting the horse's balance. She then came out with more tone, more strength to her position, we had a quick discussion on timing of half halts and the horse was more balanced than we'd been able to get. So was my rider.

Still so excited by how good he is in the bridle in this bit!

It was so cool to see such a stark change in both horse and rider. It didn't take a change in equipment or harsh aids to get this speed demon to sit down and be more balanced, it took a change in my rider's stability. The minute the horse couldn't dislodge the rider, the horse's balance became dependent on the rider's, and she could move the horse around, including into a more balanced state.

I've been thinking a lot about this with TC too, the new bit has changed how my mechanic interacts with him, it's pulling me out of stability. I can feel now when that happens, because he loses tone and gets real wide, almost like he's saying OKAY I AM READY TO CATCH YOU WHEN YOU FALL.

So I've been working hard to maintain stability while dealing with the new weight in the reins. It's hard, but TC does feel more balanced and more rideable than he has been, so that's been fun to feel!