Cob Jockey

Whew.

Three straight weeks of work travel is over!  And I'm back where I belong.

On this fellow!

After spending last Saturday watching JenJ kill it on Taran at USDF Finals (You better blog about that!!!!!!!!), I came home motivated to get back in the saddle and work on some concepts JenJ and I discussed, as well as continue working on the concepts from my last Nancy lesson.

Tired, shaggy, sweaty, but also foamy!

He's really getting the message about bend and engaging the inside hind on the right rein, but I've noticed on the left he pushes out through his outside shoulder when I ask him to move the left hind underneath him.  Like, he's bent, overbent, with his shoulder leading and traveling to the outside, but his hind leg doesn't move at all.  It's like his hindquarters are stuck.

"...I wouldn't do that!"

It's not like me to insist on something like that normally, I'm not confident enough in what I feel to pick a battle like that, but I was pretty sure I was right about that one.  I trotted him left on a circle, with him very worried and not getting the message, asking asking asking, until he finally gave me the right answer.

I hesitate to call it a breakthrough, but it was good for us: I learned to be firm with him, he learned what I was asking for, he learned things can get a little scary (for him) and things will turn out okay, he learned to respect me. 

Blanket mane

Sometimes you just have to have a discussion, and that was a particularly productive one.  Our next ride after that (last night) proved he slept on it and really retained it, even if it took a bit of reminding in the beginning.  And he's got some anxiety when I use my left leg.  Gotta get over that sometime though, as Nancy said, he needs a bit of healthy respect for my aids.

It's good to be back.

Ahhhhhh, a lesson recap post.  It's been a while.  My lessons have been sporadic and uninteresting lately.  But tonight!

Tonight was fun, if formulaic.  The formula:

- "My horse isn't straight!"
- Trainer suggests an exercise, horse slowly gets straighter.
- We do something more challenging with newly straight horse, shit's hard, yo.
- The challenging thing gets easier after I remember how to ride.
- Tired horse.

He was standing evenly on all four feet here, but the only angle I got was from above.

To get him straight and balanced, we started with switching back and forth in the walk between half pass left -> slowly allow him to come straight -> half pass right.  At first, it's the entire length of the arena in one bend, but as he got more on my aids, she challenged my to change halfway down, then more often.  I need to remember, when I do these things on my own to try to get him straight, that even with my trainer it takes patience and time to get him to come around.

Once he was straight and on my aids, we moved on to doing it at the trot.  We can basically summarize this whole exercise like this:

Me: "Sometimes when I put my outside leg on absolutely nothing happens."
Trainer: "When that happens, you don't have enough bend.  It means his body is literally not in a position where he can do what you're asking."

And what do you know, I REALLY asked for more bend in the corner before our next attempt, and he moved off my leg!  Biomechanics is some black magic, I tell ya.

Although he was a bit heavy tonight, he was moving pretty well.  I was grateful for one of those rides that reminds me why I do this whole Dressage thing.  A good ride is absolutely therapeutic.

February 2, 2017: I am officially so far over winter, it's hard to get out of my warm car.  Come on, spring...

Now that I've shared a couple of good rides, it's time to break down why those rides have been so good,  what has changed positionally and what it has done for Connor and I.  Biomechanics nuts, this one is for you.


My trainer noted two things to the right:
1. He tips me to the left and keeps me there, and I need to keep my right seatbone "glued" to the saddle.
2. His canter moves laterally to the outside with every stride to the right.

And to the left:
1. He gets heavy in the right (outside) rein, and the solution for that is more right leg.
2. He really needs support from the outside leg in that direction to encourage him to bring the outside of his body around the inside.

So I started thinking about this.  When she corrected my right seatbone thing, it felt like my crotch was over the pommel to the right.  It wasn't, and it actually made it easier to keep the top of my outside thigh against the saddle and my outside leg on him.  Also, that's the only position in which I can get him to half pass - makes sense now why the left was so much easier than the right half pass right from the beginning. (I wasn't sitting on the right side).

August 2014 trainer ride video still.

In that position, I could really put him together by half halting in the outside rein, then imagining that I was riding the outside seatbone to the inside ear.  That's position and line of thought is where that medium trot came from.  I seriously felt the leg-to-hand cycle of energy.

Then I thought about that concept going to the left, where I have a harder time putting him together.  That's how I realized that my entire pelvis is still in right bend positioning when going to the left, even when my torso is in left bend positioning, which explains why I hate being on the left rein and find it uncomfortable and blame it on Connor's inability to bend.  Newsflash: he's doing the best he can at bending left when my reins say 'bend left' but my seat and legs say 'bend right'.

Horse doesn't have a problem bending left.  I have a problem preventing him from bending left.

I have started focusing on that feeling I get on the right when I go to the left, of the top of my outside thigh touching the saddle, and really making sure my pelvis and torso are aligned together in asking for left bend.  Or as my trainer says "make sure the saddle is facing in the direction you are going."  Often, mine is not, but that's changing now.

Ahh!  We got it!

(And as a side note, this is why we didn't make a lot of progress this winter.  I need to be able to quietly figure stuff like this out on my own after my lessons, and I wasn't able to ride consistently enough to do that this winter.  That stops now, this week, now that it's going to be in the 50's and 60's!)

It's probably because he was wearing white boots, a Dressage saddle and a sparkly browband.  #lookingthepart

In our ride yesterday, I worked on exactly what we worked on in my lesson on Saturday.  It took a while, but I finally felt his back and poll lift the way she said it would, and I also felt him carry the movement himself like she said he would.  It didn't last forever, but I felt how to get it and what it was supposed to feel like.  It's much easier to the right than the left.

Foam!  Also notice the lack of goat beard.  Phew, finally got around to that.

Funnily enough, I didn't really "get" either alignment or the right tempo until I asked for a halt too quietly, and he did the exercise at the right tempo and in the right bend (and didn't halt.)  That's how much quieter my seat needed to be in order for him to go the right speed.

"I bring the Dressage skillz, you bring treats, yes?"

I had to really focus on keeping the tempo in my core, which I forgot often, and I also had to keep my outside leg back pretty far to keep the squirrely hind quarters in check.  It feels REALLY far back for my leg which is used to the jump saddle and bareback more than the Dressage saddle.

Training braids actually look really cool from 20 feet above him.

I know we got it, though, because when he was doing it absolutely perfectly, I asked for a halt, and it was a perfectly square halt.  More square than that horse has ever gotten in our 3 year relationship.  And his back went up into the halt instead of down.  I am able to feel so much when you slow it down that far.

I like this new program!

It was almost 50 yesterday, so he got his braids redone and his bridle path, ears, and goat beard clipped.  As soon as it is above 50, the mane pulling will begin.  That's going to be a long, multiple day process.

I've never wanted a jump lesson more than I did last night.  I didn't even ask what seat to tack up in, I just threw on his jump bridle, and a grab strap (which she recommended last week and I've never used before) and jacked up my stirrups to 12...

...and every single pole, standard, and long forgotten pile of fake flowers had been moved out of the indoor because someone is getting married in there on Saturday.  Sigh.

(Side note: Of all of the more beautiful places on this property, and all of the places that are easier to walk than our deep, shifty indoor arena, why would you choose to get married there?!  Side note #2: I am totally betting Mr. Congeniality photobombs their wedding since his paddock is right next to the indoor.)

Anyway.

Scarfing down his dinner in a cooler after a very hard lesson.

We ended up having a Dressage lesson in which the entire time, we did an exercise in which we started with a really small circle (I think to get him bending and on my aids), and then leg yielded out onto a larger circle.

It was hard and not pretty.  I told my trainer, "This is one of those 'sleep on it' lessons for him, isn't it?"  She said yes.

We tied our objective of getting him to be more responsible for himself/me to do less work into this by first asking for the leg yield out on a circle with a light inside leg, then if he didn't respond, a couple of boots with the inside leg.  The whip was too much, even the leg got him skittering sideways immediately.  That's the nice thing about this pony: I never have to ask for more of anything more than once.

By the time we were doing it at the canter, I knew what I needed: a small, controlled gait from the very beginning, and remembering to keep my outside leg on him especially in the small circle.  The 10m circle at the canter felt like this at first:


And I'm not going to say it got much prettier, but he did learn from it.  Once, going to the left at the canter, I felt him really bend his body, comfortably make that 10m circle, and then did the best leg yield out we got all night.  I felt him go "Oh, I CAN turn that small!"  Every single one before that and every single one after that was just okay, but that's okay.

Afterward we tried on his new grooming halter, a gift from my mom's childhood best friend, the girl who would scrounge for riding lesson pennies right along with her and then beg for a ride to the barn with her, my "Aunt Dawn":

I have never had a grooming halter before, but I can see it being really nice for trimming the goat beard!  Although he did shake it off one ear within 30 seconds of me putting it on...hmm...

Aunt Dawn and Connor at Fox River Valley

And then he got his 200g liner put under his sheet, because it's supposed to be a low of 27 with SNOW tonight!  What the heck!

(Stay tuned for an awesome CONTEST kicking off tomorrow!)

Lately, a lot of our focus has been on Connor's bend - or typical lack thereof.  I'm finding that I actually don't use the inside rein enough, or insistently enough.  This feels strange for someone whose entire riding career has been a series of discoveries that inside-leg-outside-rein is where the magic happens.  So I'm thinking, alright, if I have to ask this insistently in his loose ring, maybe I'll try the french-link Baucher we rode in for the second half of last year and see if that helps my cause, since it's got fixed sides:

Modeling his Baucher last summer...minutes before he got his tongue over the bit for the first and only time in his life.  In Dressage.  Wheels Himself ended up leapfrogging the field from second to last after Dressage to second in our division because we were one of two pairs to have no time penalties on XC.  In Starter.  I still find this hilarious.

I have never been so wrong in my life!  Of course, it could have been the dump truck right next to us dropping a ton of sand down the length of the track that runs alongside the outdoor (the only thing that bothered him was the air brakes), or the fact that we were in the outdoor for the first time since November, or the fact that it was 65 degrees for the first time since probably even earlier, but even when I had his attention his mouth never softened and he never mouthed the bit.

Back to the loose ring, and our very next ride was not quite on my aids, but with a soft mouth.  And our next lesson was on the aids and awesome.  (We're in that phase of learning something new where my rides on my own lag 2-3 weeks behind my lesson rides.  It'll come.)  So, lesson learned: right now, he needs me to ride well more than he needs a bit change.

Sign of spring in Indiana: still light out at 7:45pm.

Sign of spring in Indiana: muddy pony.

This is it, this is the last piece of my biomechanics puzzle that I've been working through over the past few weeks.  I know it was, because for the first time ever, with any horse, my horse improved between lessons.  If you know me, you know we usually regress between lessons.  This is a huge deal.

"What did you do after work?" "Braided my pony's mane..." "Oh...that's nice little girl."

We both have worked pretty hard on those neck muscles, let's show them off with a non-feral looking mane, shall we?

I'm liking this dialogue that's happening about leg and hand and being on the bit.  I wish it was more of an actual dialogue, this blog template doesn't allow me to reply to you guys, which makes things awkward.  I can only post a new comment, and would love to be able to reply without giving up this template.  Any Blogger template experts out there? Figured it out, I now have threaded comments!  Comment away!

I started out in the grass Dressage arena with Connor yesterday, doing more of the same from my lesson, but he was getting frustrated - flies, me, too much sandbox time, whatever - so I took him on a hack, still asking for the same things I was in the arena.

Seconds before we got attacked by a swarm of murderous biting insects.  They followed us for 1/4 mile!

I ended with large canter circles in the open stadium field, and had a chance to play and think.  If I let go of the inside rein while cantering on the left lead, he goes right.  If I give him half a chance to go right (i.e. stop asking with every step for left bend), he gets stiff and unbendable.  To the right, if I let go of the inside rein, he stays bent and going right.  It's much easier to get the right bend in any gait.

I think that means:
1. My weak left leg (riding accident in 2007) isn't strong enough to ask for the bend in the same way I can with the right leg.  My strong right leg might be encouraging right bend, too, even going left.
2. I compensate for his lack of bend by holding the inside rein to force a left bend, but never get bend through his whole body, just his neck.
3. Connor's muscles responsible for maintaining the left bend are weak, making it harder for him, so he leans even more on my left rein, causing me to take even more left rein...vicious cycle.

I've never thought about my legs so much before until my trainer rode Connor and told me how much leg it required to keep him together.  What, leg isn't just to get him moving?  Paradigm shift.  Spurs are helping, especially on the left side, where I can get a reaction with less leg power.  It's all rider-induced, and can be fixed, but I think I am going to have to strengthen the left side first.  I'm planning on lots of left lead canter, and of course talking to my trainer on Thursday.  We've worked through this before, with doing the square exercise counterbent and doing turns on the haunches at the corners when going to the right, and being bent to the inside and doing turns on the forehand when going to the left.

Thoughts?

No pictures or video from today, sadly, but I am definitely going to ask for some tomorrow after everyone, including Cathy, was gushing over how improved his canter is from the spring.  I can certainly feel big improvements, but it didn't feel that good.  However, my judgment may have been clouded by the fact that Connor was tense, bracing, up, tough and distracted this morning, and I really had to ride aggressively in order to make lemonade out of those lemons.

My biggest takeaways from today are:
1. Don't rush him during the canter departs: When she told me that I was rushing him during the depart and that his feet needed time to catch up to his brain (part of the reason he picks it up crossfiring so often), I giggled, because that's exactly what it feels like.  "He's a quick study in other things, but not this.  It has to get from your aids to his brain to his feet."  He looks and feels like a pile of uncoordinated limbs during the depart, and like he has to think about where each foot is placed.  This was a really good thing for me to hear, take more seriously, and work on.  Not rushing feels more like using softer aids and a better half halt.

2. We have a sweet walk-canter depart...where did that come from?:  I think we only picked it up through the trot twice, and we did a LOT of transitions.  He got it bang on every time, and is beginning to sit back and really use himself in that transition.  I think this is just easier now that he's developed more muscle, but it's also some education.

3. I need to weight my outside seatbone a lot more while asking for a canter depart: I realized today that my whole body is twisted and contorted while asking for the depart, and that my weight is often on the inside - another reason for crossfiring.

4. I'm being too polite sometimes about the left bend issue: Cathy wanted me to get firmer with him if he did things like ignore my request for a left bend so completely we almost ran into a jump standard, and she asked me to pull his head to the left.  She wants me to try a full cheek snaffle with him tomorrow, and remarked, "It is just amazing, he is a completely different horse [to the right], you were not kidding."

5. Jumping needs to become a normal thing for us: Our Dressage work really is improving our jumping, but jumping is still unusual and strange in his brain, which makes him wiggly, or makes him jump huge for no reason, or makes him hesitate.  I'm really glad I didn't enter in any jumping classes at Octoberfest - just like with Dressage, I feel like you should be schooling slightly above what you're showing, and we would not be setting ourselves up for success by showing over fences in 2012, even if they were little.

I was told that everyone was commenting on how much Connor has improved, and Cathy said that since she last saw him four months ago, he's made a complete turnaround at the canter and his "neck looks better" and that his topline has noticeably filled out with muscle.  It makes me feel good, even if it was a really tough, physical ride.

And then I got sick, and I am struggling to sit here and type this post, so I'm going back to bed in hopes that this passes by tomorrow!  I am also planning on responding to the awesome comments left on yesterday's post when I feel better - you guys are awesome!

To read the build-up to this post (last week's lesson), please go here.

Tonight's lesson was not pretty.  But before I get into that, please don't think that I am negatively down on myself, or discouraged, or depressed.  (If I was down on myself, I'd be again thinking "I'm going to ruin this pony," (See also: January/February 2012) instead of "I can work through this.") I am a competitor in all that I do, and that constant drive to improve myself has led to some awesome sports achievements for me, but behind all that, it also leads to these rock-bottom moments that themselves always lead to improvement.  I strive for candor and honesty in my training journal, because it's the good as well as the bad that shape you as an athlete.  That said...


That left side stiffness showed itself from the beginning of my lesson tonight, but unlike last time, he was also stiff on the right.  Within minutes, my trainer had changed into her breeches and requested the reins so that she could figure it out herself and make a game plan.  Almost immediately she noted that it was as if he said "And by the way, this is mine," (referring to the left rein) the moment she got on.  He would throw his head in the air and simply brace against the left rein, really quite belligerently.  This is fairly new, having started just before my last clinician lesson mid-August.

She ended up riding the rest of the lesson, alternating between explaining things to me and riding deep in concentration for several minutes at a time.  She pointed out that he was ignoring my lateral leg aids and had learned to tune me out, and had also learned how to contort his body to get me to carry him on that rein.  As I've suspected, he's so tight and strong on his left side, that his weak side seems like the easier direction because it's easy for him to get that shoulder around.  But now, his development has gone so far in that direction that he's overbent to the right when we're tracking right and left.

I am a very laterally-unbalanced person myself, with the left being my very obviously weak side after a riding accident in 2007 (which deserves a post of its own, as much as it affects my riding), so this doesn't surprise me, but hearing that it was so bad (virtually unrideable) with Connor was crushing.  I'm still developing my sense of feel, but prior to these last few weeks I've felt like things were heading up. 

On a lighter note, I've officially decided that hunter green and white with red are our colors.

I watched as she did many turns on the forehand, leg yields, shoulder-ins, serpentines and 10m circles with him.  I watched as her acute sense of feel allowed her to make corrections when he didn't immediately listen to her sharp leg aids.  I listened as she described the process of using the inside leg and outside rein before giving on the inside rein to the left.  I observed as she got several strides of just stunning trot work from him, in which his back was lifted and his hocks were engaged, causing him to move with this big, lovely, flowing trot, and I realized that I have also been committing the cardinal sin of failing to ask for enough hind-end drive as we've started seriously working on the bit.

Our horses reflect ourselves.  Connor is reflecting my own weaknesses, physical and mental.  Those little things that we don't even realize we do, the way that my entire torso is always slightly forward on the left, my overwhelmingly stronger right leg muscles, add up so subtly over such a long period of time that it's hard to see what's going on until your creation has been born and all you can do is deal with it.  Thankfully, I don't have to deal with it alone, and two trainer rides will help set us back on the right path.

So, after what was essentially a trainer ride tonight, he gets two more, and I am not riding again until my lesson on Thursday.  It's a shift for me, as an AA who doesn't (can't, financially) rely on trainer rides, but it's so, so necessary to nip this behavior in the bud that I welcome her direct assistance.  That's fine, with the 7 inches of rain we're forecast to get from the remnants of Isaac, I don't think I'll much feel like riding this weekend anyway.

To be continued...

The best instructors can come in with a game plan, but also have the ability to change that game plan on the fly if they identify a different, more pressing need.  That was the case yesterday, when my trainer came in talking about a canter transition-heavy lesson with jumping at the end, but ended up working us through some bending issues that are very obviously my fault.

One of the things on which Nancy spent a lot of time with me last week was bending.  “Does your left bicep hurt after lessons?”  I answered that it did, and she told me I was just holding him up with that left rein.  To the right, it wasn’t as noticeable, because he’s supposed to be in that rein, but to the left, he’s going back to being hard to turn and not in my outside rein at all.  My trainer thinks that as he’s done that more, I’ve compensated by going harder on the inside (left) rein, and now it’s just an ingrained habit that needs to be unlearned.

So we ended up having a remedial bending lesson last night, in which she nailed me every time I lost feel in the outside rein, had me do lots of changes of direction, and told me that I need to give forward/reconnect instead of take back/release on the left rein.  “His only chance to respond and improve is in the absence of pressure,” she said.  I was told to reach forward and scratch his wither every three strides in an attempt to deprogram that left arm, and to make sure that my left hand didn’t go behind the pommel of my saddle. 

It was such a frustrating lesson because we just had to keep going until I got the feel and he got the message, and I was really struggling in the middle of it.  We almost crashed into the jumps once or twice because I had no outside rein and no steering.  Slowly but surely, we improved – at the expense, sometimes, of having the inside bend, but I was told that it’s more important to get myself right first right now, and I agree.  I’m the pilot and he’s the plane, after all, I need to have control over my own body before I can fly his.  It took longer than I maybe would have given it on my own, and then we lost it again when we took a brief walk break, so that’s something to think about as I go into my weekend homework rides.

Next week I might be put on a mature horse in order to redevelop that feeling on something that isn’t catering to my habit.  It’ll be the first time I’ve ridden anything but Connor in nearly a year, so that should be interesting.

"...what?"

My brain is a bit fried tonight, so we'll keep this summary short so that you're not stuck with a real rambler.

- Engage the right hind in both directions.  When circling/spiraling to the left, this manifests itself in that "turning a two by four" feeling.  To the right, he's overbent, especially through the neck.  Same leg, different direction, different outcome.

- Leg yield, starting from the hind end through the front end.

- Using the counterbend to help with the bending in circles

- Turn on the forehand: he's going to have to get over being frustrated as long as I'm setting him up correctly and giving him all that he needs.