Cob Jockey

Last night in my weekly virtual lesson, when GP trainer asked what I wanted to work on, I said simple changes, and the first one I did, I barely had to try for and it was effortless and flawless in a way I have never felt before.

"Holy shit!" I said probably too loudly into the microphone, "What just happened?!" 

"Balance," she said, "He was in a good balance from the moment you did the upward transition and he wasn't leaning on his underneck or either of your reins. The moment he uses his underneck against you, you're cooked."

He looks SO GOOD right now. Even over video GP trainer noticed how much muscle he's put on in his butt lately, and he has dapples and this gorgeous chocolate chestnut color that only lasts a month.

She had had me start the movement from the halt, where I briefly asked him to "look into a bucket," one of OLGW's phrases. I ask him to go slightly behind the vertical for a moment and completely release his underneck and make sure he's following his nose in both reins before asking him to walk on and then canter.

But I didn't just let him walk off however he wanted. I was to make sure his "breastplate" stayed up and that he didn't plow forward and down into the walk in a poor balance. If we didn't do the transition right, we stopped, did a reinback and did it again until it was good, because it mattered to the quality of the simple change that much. Connor naturally wants to initiate walking off from the halt with his front feet, which means I have to fix the balance of the walk first thing (and I often don't and just deal with the consequences).

I don't really have a good picture of it, but in this one you can see his weight is a little more over his forehand than his hind end, although this is way better than it can be. He's very comfortable keeping his feet where they are in this picture, but moving his bodyweight and torso more forward, to where the front legs aren't so perpendicular to the ground. If he walks off like that, we're asking for poor quality from the moment he steps off.

I asked for some first toolkit instructions for how to get him to walk off in better balance and start the transition from the hind feet, and she told me to ask the front feet to stay stationary by holding the reins steady while telling the hind feet to step toward the front feet by closing my legs.

Balance wasn't the whole problem though. Olivia really identified a key issue last weekend (which, credit where credit is due, my GP trainer has also harped on me about this for a year now, but her solution wasn't quite as crystal clear to me as Olivia's). If he's not supple enough to follow each rein, particularly the inside rein in turns, that means he's locked up against me in one or the other rein, and I have no chance of riding the simple change from my inside leg to my outside rein, which IT TURNS OUT is very important and I have not been doing that this whole time.

So while cantering, I would be on a circle, asking his body to follow his nose a la the Olivia exercise from last weekend, while also really exaggerating my inside leg to outside rein aids to prepare for and execute the transition. To the point that I was almost leg yielding him out of the circle in canter, which, I won't always do it that extremely, but it sure helped me understand the feeling of what I should be doing.

I still haven't found a reliable way to screen record virtual lessons, so how about another pic of the kid?

We probably did 15 simple changes total in both directions last night, and 13 of them were flawless. The two that weren't were both in his tough direction, and in both times she immediately said, "What rein did he lock up on during that?" and I said "Inside" and she had me get him following his nose again, try again and then it was perfect.

I'm trying not to let myself attach too much importance to last night or get too excited, because this is horses and Dressage: odds are I'll come out tonight and not be able to ride a single one. But it really feels like I'm starting to understand how the basics affect things like simple changes, and it feels like I'm really learning how to RIDE Second Level all of a sudden, which has me so excited for the future.

Last weekend, I hauled to Cincinnati for the first time since December to ride with my trainer's trainer, OLGW, on Saturday.

ROAD TRIP

I had a feeling I would like her. She comes highly recommended from Kate, she's well-indoctrinated into the MW School for Teaching People How to Teach Riding, and she's shortlisted for the Olympics, what's not to love?

She knew of me before this clinic even though this was the first time I'd ridden with her, because GP trainer had shown her videos of her riding Connor while the two of them were in Florida together last winter. And it was REALLY great to have the two of them sitting next to each other during this ride, GP trainer learning and commenting and collaborating with her on where Connor and I are on our journey.

OLGW on the left, GP trainer in the middle

You know how when we were looking for my current house we wanted something with A/C, a fenced yard and a garage, and we ended up with a 130 year old house that had none of those things but it was perfect anyway? That's how this lesson was. I said I wanted to work on simple changes, and we didn't even canter! But we did identify and fix a fundamental issue that is blocking the simple changes, and in the end I got exactly what I needed.

If you try sometimes well you might find you get what you need

From the beginning, she identified that I have a submission problem. "He probably feels like his body is going in several directions at once," she said.  Yes, this horse feels like riding a noodle at all times, lol. She had me put him on a circle and use the inside leg and inside rein to ask for bend and turning. That it. Oh, and a LOT of forward, because she identified that it's harder for him to be a noodle if we have enough forward (without running him off his feet).

"You won't ride like this forever," she said (anything in quotes I'm paraphrasing, btw), "But he needs to learn to follow his nose around a circle and maintain his shape without you doing so much. Maybe because of him starting his life as a driving horse where they don't do a lot of tight turns and bending, he doesn't want to maintain this shape very easily, but you can't micromanage that forever as you go up the levels. This circle should get easier to ride and more consistent as he gets better at this."

My outside aids during this were to remain supportive and neutral, with my outside rein allowing a pretty dramatic amount of "outside banana curve".

My outside leg, interestingly enough, she identified as blocking him from opening up and lengthening the outside curve of his body. I would never have told you my outside leg was active until she said that, and then I realized she was very right, AND that Aeres had practically screamed at me about this same thing last winter. So I thought about my outside leg remaining off or maybe neutral.

My outside leg is too active here and that's probably implicated in me sitting off to the left here too

The longer we went on (and oh boy, we did this for a long time, although we did throw in so LY and SI on the circle too), the more consistently he was able to maintain the shape, the less work I had to do to keep it, and the more his body felt like it was going in one direction rather than many. That doesn't meant though that he didn't continually try to find ways out of it. 

She made me laugh, because he would be going well and she would be quiet for a second, and then she would say, "He's thinking '...hm,' right now", and that's exactly what it felt like, like he was taken aback by this change and was trying to plan his next move to get me to knock this new stuff off. "He's like riding a boat with holes in it, you plug one hole and think you've got him and then he springs a leak somewhere else."

Connor going pretty well, but trying to find another place to spring a leak as we approach the trainers

I had audited some of her earlier lessons, and those were very biomechanics-focused a la MW, so I was surprised that her lesson with me was very different but just as effective. This is a trainer with a SERIOUSLY broad toolkit that doesn't get stuck in a single mode of teaching. And she didn't get hung up on the stuff that didn't matter, like me riding in a jump saddle, which she only mentioned once, in passing, to explain that I needed to ride a particular moment differently in a jump saddle vs a Dressage saddle and why.

It looks so similar to the previous GIF I had to double check I didn't post the same one, but you'll notice he doesn't shake his head around evasively in this one and is much more consistent around the circle

The thing I liked best about her was how horse-focused she was, and how she treated me as an equal even though I am many levels of atmosphere below someone shortlisted for the Olympics. She asked me to advocate for my horse if I thought he needed a break, complimented our training so far, and was very kind to him even though we were pushing him so far beyond his comfort zone.

I was so disappointed I could only ride one day with her this time, but she's here for three more clinics between now and the end of October, so if I can find the money (gulp), I am definitely signing up for as many rides as I can. Between how effective she is and the fact that my GP trainer is watching these lessons and getting more ideas for us, she's very, very worth the price of admission.