Cob Jockey

Back in late August, Kate stayed overnight with me when she was in town for a wedding, and ended up giving me the most incredible gift: figuring out how I've been blocking him.

She watched me set off from the mounting block at a walk, and almost immediately said "Your right hip isn't moving." She had me stop, take my foot out of the stirrup, and told me to "drop" my right hip, straight down. "That actually hurts, I said, "But not a pain hurt. Like I can feel it pulling in a way that tells me I haven't stretched that part of my body in a very long time."

When I set off at the walk again, with Kate walking next to us saying "drop, drop" every time my right hip should have been traveling downward to match the left, it felt like a tsunami of information I'd gotten from so many other people crystallized in that moment. The PT telling me my hips didn't "sway" enough when I walked, and that my right hip was stuck up and forward. CGP and I figuring out that if I thought about putting my right side "forward", Connor suddenly went better. Why the left SI was impossible for me to ride but easy for CGP. Celeste telling me I needed to give him space for his body on the right side, especially on the left rein, and that it would surprise him if I did, because I hadn't been. Even problems I'd been having while running and doing CrossFit suddenly made total sense.

I ran a 5k without pain - my first time running more than two miles in ten years! - as a result of Kate's discovery. It was far from my college PRs, but I ran just over 23:00 to win an age group that had over 60 runners in it. And had NO KNEE OR HIP PAIN during or after, which has not been normal for me for a long time.

That right hip was frozen, in a chicken-or-egg situation with my disused right oblique, and all these years, I haven't been moving with him or allowing the energy to flow on that side. Even now, six weeks later, I can feel it plain as day when I go back to the old way I used to sit on him, and I want to apologize to him for asking him to do so much when I was only 50% there. It feels like the difference between walking with him/sitting on him, and walking against him/sitting above him.

It's certainly possible to get too wrapped around the axle on biomechanics, but in this case, it was appropriate to do so. It has changed everything, including Connor. Where he used to be hollow and curved on his right side, if I just remind myself to walk with him when I feel that, he suddenly fills that side out and becomes straight - no messing with the reins required. 

It's a far cry from schooling Third, but it's a relaxed horse with an open throatlatch moving freely under a rider that is not a burden, and that's the goal right now.

Likewise, if I feel myself getting against him in the reins, I often find I've forgotten to walk with him in that moment, and when I do, he drops his head, licks and chews the bit, and relaxes. And in return, the work is coming so much easier to him - it's amazing how much easier ToH and SI and all that becomes when you're moving with the horse.

Since Kate came, he has even started standing with equal weight over both forefeet in the crossties recently, for the first time I can ever remember. Like, seriously?!

Making my rides as pretty as possible has also helped motivate me to get back into the saddle

This is the other reason I'm not taking lessons right now - this has to become my default way of going before I layer anything else on top of it. Just like Connor not using his underneck for balance has to become his default way of going before we layer anything else on top of that.

So, as always, we are taking the slow bus to progress, but we are enjoying the journey while we do it 💗

Hello, my name is CobJockey, and I've ridden three times this week!

(This is a recent record.)

"Excuse me what?" PC: Barnmate Leah

It feels good to get back to it, even if what I'm doing looks wildly different than what I was doing a year ago. So let's look at what has changed. First up, with Connor.

I mentioned that we had a session with Celeste last winter. While I haven't been faithful about doing every single one of her exercises regularly, I've done enough to see a huge change in the way he moves and his musculature. It sort of drives me crazy - there's a lot about the way it's marketed and the cult-like fanbase that puts me on edge after my "cult-like clinician experience" from several years ago, but I think she's onto something, and I'm so grateful that I did it for him.

My current theme with him is "Okay, you can do the thing, but can you do it with your underneck relaxed?" One of the things Celeste told me that stuck with me is that his underneck had become his pillar of strength over the years, and he was actually afraid, truly fearful, to let go of it. He wouldn't even try to put his head down for a full 20 minutes when I started asking, and you could see fear in his eyes. In his mind, we were asking him to walk off a plank, or let go of a life preserver in the ocean, and we hadn't even touched the under saddle stuff yet - he was still just wearing a halter and lead rope standing next to me in the arena!

He was just clinging to his pillar of strength as we went further and further up the levels - and the left lead canter depart is still the one thing he desperately clings to the underneck on. PC: Blogger Leah

So we've taken things all the way back. My rides look more like training or First Level rides these days. And I love it. He's never been more relaxed, and he hasn't had a head shaking episode in months at this point. There's a softness in his eyes after our rides that hasn't always been there, and even standing in his stall or the crossties, his posture has changed. It's honestly kind of incredible to see.

Given that, and given my biomechanics discovery from Kate (more on that Wednesday), I'm still not taking lessons at this point. I know what I need to work on, and I know what needs to be solid and ingrained before I add in the pressure of thinking about someone else's opinion of where we are. I love my GP trainer madly, but right now it just needs to be me and Connor.

It worked out well that my saddle arrived last week, since I already had an in-person lesson scheduled with CGP and she could take a look at it.

The bottom line at this point is that we're both really happy with it, as long as the point billet is as loose as can be. I mean, look at how effortlessly he lifted his back on Saturday. I didn't even really have contact here and certainly wasn't trying to affect his way of going aside from riding biomechanically well:

Breastplate up! My barnmate from home who's known us since 2015 was also at CGP's for a lesson on Saturday, and she commented to me and CGP that she was stunned to see Connor both stretch AND keep his chest up.

The whole reason this saddle search took so long is that in most saddles he's not been willing to lift his breastplate like that, which is why the reinback is such a good diagnostic for whether he likes a saddle or not. 

He'll reinback in both saddles he likes and saddles he doesn't like, but in saddles he doesn't like, he buries his chest into the ground rather than shifting his weight back over his hindquarters and lifting his chest. It's subtle if you're not looking for it, because in both instances he willingly moves backward, but once you see the difference you're like "OKAY, I GET IT!" just like the fitter said to me in June.

I want that right hind more underneath him, but again, last weekend was 0% about improving the horse, so this is just whatever! And I'm thrilled with his breastplate here!

I discussed the missing features extensively with CGP. She thinks the billet move can be done without sending it back, but the serge panels would likely mean a trip to England. And while it's disappointing that they were left off, the point was to get a saddle the horse likes, and clearly, he likes it as configured. The primary downside to leather panels is that the flocking adjustments are less precise since fitting tools can only enter the saddle in one spot, plus they're warmer in winter and are less fussy about maintenance.

But is any of that worth sending it back to England, likely while he's at the trainer's for flying changes? No, it's not. I want him in a saddle he loves for that, and he clearly isn't missing the serge panels. Especially not when the leather panels on it are so soft, my trainer asked if they had memory foam in them (they do not).

Another benefit of leather panels: I can ride in my glitter pads without worrying about glitter getting embedded in the serge panels, lol #imachild

As for me, during the lesson on Saturday she asked if I was ever actively engaging the too-big blocks. I laughed, "I did Dressage in a jump saddle for years, no I am not using the blocks." She said, "I thought so, I'm just going to take them out." And that's how I rode most of that lesson.

Shown: no blocks

Because it's a monoflap with a two-sided pocket at the front for Velcro blocks, just the knee pad and the pocket combined already feel like a skinny block to me. So while we will order a teeny tiny thigh block, I really don't need them right now.

(As she pulled the blocks out, I joked that she's the reason I wanted Velcro blocks, so that she could play with my leg position without me freaking out that I just spent *mumblemumble* on a saddle that's all wrong, lol)

I mean really though, if you have a biomechanics expert in your corner, why limit her with a single block configuration?

So hopefully they do still make the error right in some way, but it likely won't end up with serge panels, and that's okay with me and Connor. 

This whole thing feels like a lesson on trusting the talented people you put in your corner. Sure, people make mistakes, that's human, but the way this saddle fits us both doesn't just happen by accident. With a saddle we both like and a great fitter and trainer, it feels like the sky's the limit now for what we can accomplish next year.

Before my in-person lesson with CGP on Saturday, my head was already spinning with so many new thoughts about riding and biomechanics, and then CGP proceeded to completely blow my mind.

THIS. FEELS. SO. CROOKED.

In the picture above, she had just physically grabbed my left thigh (after asking permission, lol) and yanked it down the saddle while moving my quad muscle behind my leg, then put her hand underneath my left seatbone and asked me to drop my weight down onto her hand. "There," she said. "Now you're straight." "Um don't take this the wrong way, but I don't believe you. I feel like I'm falling off to the left." So she went and got my tripod and took the above photo to prove it to me.

Mary Wanless teachers and touching people, name a more dynamic duo

When we moved onto doing this at the trot, she had me stand in the irons with 75% of my weight over the left side, then go back to sitting or posting. I'm doing that in the below GIF, and while it feels to me like I'm about to fall off of his left side, I'm actually pretty straight.

We also worked on my posting mechanic. It took both of us quite a while to get through to each other on this, but when she said "You're getting to the top of the rise and adding this extra...motion," I suddenly realized what was happening. I was using my glute maxes to lock out my hips like a CrossFit air squat, and it's that lock out motion that causes my leg to swing in the posting trot. You can clearly see it here:

Ingrained movement patterns are hard, yo

She had me think about keeping my hip bones pointing more forward instead of down and shortening the distance from my boobs to my pubic bone by keeping "crunched". And just to complete the CrossFit air squat thing, she also got onto me about sending my hips backward in the post, saying I need to kneel down more than sit back.

A lot of the posting mechanic work ended up being about my shock absorbers. I tend to neutralize my shock absorbers by not allowing my joints to flex in the saddle:

I lose my balance and post once partway through this GIF because I'm not allowing my shock absorbers to absorb his motion. I look still, but it's not a good still.

But it wasn't until she told me to soften the underneath of my foot to allow my arch to also act a shock absorber did things really change. The irony is that I teach a running class at my gym in which we begin our form analysis by jumping with a totally straight leg so they can feel how the shock moves through their body if they neutralize all their shock absorbers, and then jumping while allowing the joints to flex, allowing the arch to act as a spring. But for some reason I had never thought to apply my own lessons in the saddle before.

The last piece of the puzzle Saturday was my left arm. See, (and I have a whole other post on this, lol) Connor loves to toss me onto his right side using diagonal force that goes from the left hind to the right fore. I spent a lot of this lesson learning to identify and fight that, and you can see it clearly in this GIF right as we come alongside the door:

She's not wrong, you can see it in tons of my photos over the years. And sure enough, keeping my left elbow by my side felt like the last piece of the puzzle Saturday.

We didn't work on Connor AT ALL, he was practically a glorified lunge lesson horse, and yet:

Mary was like "What did you DO? I've never seen him move like this before!"

Literally nothing, except fixed my position!

...and bought him a saddle. "None of this would have been possible in any of the other saddles you've had since I've known you," she said. "You are not wrong!" I said.

One of the things I love about my GP trainer is that she's just as fascinated with biomechanics as she is with winning classes (you know, that whole Mary Wanless thing). With the season basically over and just a month left before he goes to her for training, she's enthusiastically dove into my request to focus only on biomechanics for now.

Two lessons ago, last week, it was the posting trot. She identified that my left lower leg was kicking forward in the posting trot, and my right one didn't have enough internal rotation, which meant I didn't really have my right thigh on him, and I had more of the back of my calf on the horse than the side. In other words, that old weak right glute med problem that I had thought I solved. And she also pointed out that this was just as or possibly more important than my crooked pelvis discovery. A week of playing with that later, and I can say she is definitely not wrong about that.

After a week of focusing on that both in and out of the saddle (and one very tired right glute med later!), last night's lesson was sitting trot. I picked it up, and she was like okay, we gotta fix this.

My phone is full of pictures of this browband in different lights because it's so damn pretty!

I've never found Connor's trot hard to sit, but I also was annoyed by the "lack of swing through the back" comments we got a couple times this year, and I know I have a tendency to come down onto the saddle harder than he probably prefers, especially when I'm nervous in the show ring!

First she pointed out that my torso was leaned back behind the vertical a bit, and every time that happened, my hands immediately and excessively started bouncing up and down. Torso on the the vertical, hands still. "When you're leaned back, the energy goes out your shoulder blades rather than out of the top of your head and the bottoms of your feet like it should."

She had me play with this by asking me to exaggerate leaning back behind the vertical with my hands in front of me to see what it did to them. You should try this at home, I looked like a cartoon character playing the piano, my hands moved so much, lol.

What, me, lean back? PC: my mom

Once I had internalized "leaning forward" (sitting straight) enough, she had me stand up in the saddle at the walk. "See how hard that is? You need to put your pelvis forward so it's over your center of gravity and then kneel into your knees. Your spur should point out behind you, not angled toward his belly."

She did her best at explaining this to me, but it wasn't until I was sitting the trot a few minutes later and she said again "the energy should go out the top of your head and the bottoms of your feet" that suddenly it all clicked. Actually, a lot of things clicked, going back to Kate and Megan's lesson and Mary Wanless saying "don't crush my hand" with her hand between my boot and the stirrup tread. I can't even describe it well, but the foot thing, as soon as she said that, I felt like a transformer that clicked into "the good sitting trot place". 

The energy is definitely going out my shoulder blades here, and of course my shock absorbers are totally neutralized, look at where my feet are! Although I'll be a little kind to myself and remind everyone this was my first real ride in this saddle, and my leathers were a hole too short.

I wouldn't have told you before that I didn't have enough weight in my stirrups (but lol see previous photo!) because I never lose them, and it's not like I jammed my foot into them when she said that, but by thinking about the energy coming out of bottoms of my feet and the tops of my head, I felt my legs lengthen a smidge and I put maybe 5% more weight into my irons, and suddenly my whole body felt like a tense yet elastic rubber band that was easily able to absorb the motion of the sitting trot, without my butt leaving the saddle at all.

"I've never used that cue before!" she said. "Well I'm glad you did, something about it just totally clicked," I said.

May...have done a thing. More to come, lol

Connor, for his part, thoroughly enjoyed being a virtual lunge lesson pony and trotted around like a good boy the whole night, but REALLY started to swing through his back when I got it. We got our first "Wowwwwwwww" in weeks from her.

At the end, we worked on encouraging him to bend and flex a little bit more while maintaining my new position, which was about as complex as I could have probably handled in the moment. "See, when your position is like this, everything else becomes a lot more effortless," she said. "I don't want to do anything more, this is a good place to get to and gives you good homework."

It's a good feeling when you can't wait to do your homework!

It's been a couple of weeks since I had a lesson, first because Pivo didn't play ball, and then because GP trainer had to cancel due to being at a show. I really don't mind this though, because between a break from lessons and show season "ending", it's given me a chance to take a step back and focus on my own biomechanics.

And I've come to a couple of interesting realizations, the biggest of which being that my pelvis is STILL crooked in the way my PT friend helped me discover last summer.

I'm just on the buckle here, having just got on, but in this moment I'm intentionally thinking "fall off the right side of the horse", and in reviewing the footage I discovered I was actually centered...oh no...lol

At Waterloo, in the warmup, I discovered if I put the right side of my body forward, he suddenly raised his back and went really well, but I don't think it was really my right side at all. I think when I did that, it made me focus on my torso to the point that my hips leveled off, and THAT'S what he responded well to. I mean:

I still feel like I'm falling off to the right here, lol, I cannot even tell you how crooked this feels to me!

You might be asking why my GP trainer hasn't caught this, but I think it's a very difficult thing to see because this is not a "the way I'm sitting in the saddle thing", it's a true asymmetry that impacts every aspect of my life (sitting, standing, CrossFit, Pilates, everything), and my torso compensates for it. I can have a lot of weight in the left seatbone, the right one floating in space above the center of the saddle and the bulk of my torso over my right/floating hip, which places my center of gravity, well, relatively centered, even if it feels awful to the horse.

Not going for a tiny pirouette here

As I explore this, I've completely taken out all of the Second Level movements and any expectation of collection temporarily, and have stuck to big figures and long leg yields in basically a First Level frame, and Connor has responded so well. To feel him lift his back and reach for the bit without seemingly any effort on my part is so cool.

I'm also working hard on transforming my contact after GP trainer pointed something out to me in Chicago, but that's a post for another day.

The hard part about this is that he REALLY wants to tip me into my old position. Stride by stride, I have to constantly fight it. There's this specific movement he does from the left hind to the right shoulder that gets me every time, and that's the kind of thing that I have to be policing for myself. It's also the kind of thing that's hard to actively pay attention to when I'm learning movements and other things I've never done before in lessons, which is why it's so great to have a brief break from lessons like this every so often.

It may seem like a step back to just be working on First Level stuff right now, but it's all the more important to fix stuff like this now, because I doubt I can do good flying changes with one hip stuck up into the air all the time!

Reading about Megan's rides with the Equicube lately reminded me that I've had one sitting on my tack locker for a year. The last time I rode with it was 11 months ago, when I learned I couldn't ride my horse straight while holding it, because it forced me to ride with even reins and apparently I did not do that on a regular basis. Which kicked off the whole Pilates/biomechanics/learning to use my abs/full training hero's journey you're all familiar with.

But now that I have the ability to use my core and my body is a lot less crooked, I wondered what I'd get out of it now.

Good pone

To be honest, while I was riding with it, he went so poorly I wondered if I was making a mistake.

What is even happening lol

Now that I'm so strong in my core by default, holding the cube wasn't really that hard or tiring, but it was curious to note which muscles were tense but not contributing to supporting the cube or riding in any way, chiefly my "underneath" muscles as MW calls them, so the pelvic floor and glutes. When I relaxed those muscles but kept my core engaged, I was able to follow his motion a lot better.

Love what the cube does for my hands in posting trot

Once I sat the cube down though, from the moment he stepped off it was like "...whoa, the cube actually did something." The contact felt solid but elastic, just the way it did at GP trainer's, when I imagined I was still holding the cube. I suddenly realized if I put leg on and "held the imaginary cube", he lifted his back and came together in the best way.

Even more interestingly, when I relaxed my underneath muscles, I had effortless down transitions. Something that's been happening lately that I haven't written about is that I've had a hard time halting him since he came home from GP trainer's (lol) which is obviously a "me" problem and not a "him" problem.

I think with that much tension in my underneath, I was driving him forward and his back down with my seat even as my hands and torso motion were saying "stop".

To recap, on Tuesday I learned to put my left shoulder forward and to use subtler aids. On Wednesday, I learned just how important the way I sit is to my "new" horse.

On Thursday, she really drove home the key concepts that will make or break us over the next couple of months without her, which are 1. my hands and 2. his neck.

The two things are related. She says more than most horses, Connor is uses his neck as a weapon against me. He'll put his head up just slightly too high (to where the casual observer would still think he was in a nice "frame"), stick his underneck out, lock onto one or both reins, and drop his "breastplate." When he does that, I lose the ability to half halt, he pulls me slightly out of the saddle, and the whole picture, while not unpleasant, just looks dull.

To counteract that, she has me focus on keeping his poll lower than I think it should be, keeping the top of his neck longer than the bottom, and has me regularly check whether I'm able to flex him left and right in any movement, at any time. If I can't, I have to fix it by asking him to release on the stuck rein while using the leg on the same side.

In trying to fix that yesterday, I observed that I always feel like he's stuck on the left rein. CGP said she always feels like he's stuck on the right rein. I said she's probably right and it's probably a perception issue for me: my left shoulder and hand being behind the right probably makes it feel to me like he's stiff on the left when in reality that's not the case.

So she had me hold the reins like driving reins:

"How does that feel different from what you were doing before?" (Mary Wanless instructors have this sentence tattooed on their eyeballs, I swear, lol)

"I can't not follow his mouth, and my left shoulder is naturally in the right place. Also my left hand is cramping..."

So it turns out that I so thoroughly don't close my hand on the left rein that the muscles in my left hand cramped when the driving rein position, which forces you to actually hold the rein.

"GREAT. This is your homework, to ride like this." 

Once all that was sorted, the rest of the lesson we worked on simple changes (still with the driving rein). These are still hard for us. If he gets me even a little bit tipped forward, they don't happen, especially on the left lead. 

Pictured: not happening

We had worked ourselves into a point where he had my number, and I had to get his number back or else the canter walks weren't going to happen (specifically on the left lead - fewer things have to be exactly perfect for the right to happen). She had me stop and reinback until he lifted his breastplate, then walk forward only if he didn't change his balance.

2/3rds of the way through this GIF, I ask him to walk off after a reinback and he immediately shoved his chest down, so I stopped him and asked for another reinback. Note that my hands are going to look busy here, we're trying to break my pulling in the reinback habit by changing the aid to bump bumps upward .

One of the hardest things for me going forward is going to be recognizing when he has my number like this, when the balance changes. There are times when I'll watch her ride him, and she'll stop him dead in the middle of a movement and be like "No sir, you do not get to lean on my hands like that," and I, the observer, couldn't tell at all that his balance had shifted. I have to be more proactive about identifying good and bad balance and fixing it before it festers into a dull ride, just like his neck (again, related).

Canter walks on the right lead are much easier, as long as I'm sitting correctly. This one happened before the balance shift coming-to-Jesus.

Canter walks on the left lead are incredibly difficult, even for CGP, and require everything to be perfect - my position, his balance, my aids, my timing. But, when all of that comes together, they're good.

Then I packed up a ton of tack and blankets and started the journey home <3

This week is Connor's last week at CGPs. Originally, I had planned on staying a week toward the end of this full training and taking a bunch of lessons, but between COVID and my, um, high energy new doggo, that plan got shelved in favor of me driving over Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday this week for lessons. It's long days and a boatload of driving, but it's worth it.

Husband: "YOUR DOG escaped every time I put her in the backyard today, please take her to the barn or something."

On Tuesday (yesterday) it was a lesson extravaganza. First up was Mary on Connor, then I had a lesson on Aeres (which I'll write about later), then after a long break (and a trip to Dover), I had a lesson on Connor myself.

IDK who needs to know this but Dover's house brand has paisley silicone full seats

Watching the Mary lesson was good for me. Mary is a very educated H/J rider, but Dressage is not her thing, so she asked me if she could take a lesson on him before he came home so she could understand the way he was taught. 

CGP gave her what was basically a "first ride with Mary Wanless" lesson (all the MW people in the audience nod their heads), and Mary described it as "feeling like I was driving on the wrong side of the road into oncoming traffic". It was really good for me to hear CGP explain why certain biomechanical things were important especially on Connor in such detail.

CGP demonstrating the difference between the mechanics of a H/J post and a Dressage post.

Despite her feeling like a "drunken monkey" up there, he went really well for her. It struck me how much he knows now, that he can take someone who doesn't know Dressage at all and at least go around in a straight and level First Level frame. In fact, seeing how well he went for her without her really doing anything to shape his body besides sit well made me wonder if I was somehow doing too much to him.

My horse can teach people Dressage now

As if reading my mind, my lesson later that day ended up being about exactly that. "You're doing too much, your aids are too loud. You're riding him the way you used to ride him and he's a different horse now, you have to be a lot more subtle to ride him."

It was about halfway through the lesson that she said that, and suddenly I had a completely different ride. He was soft and fluffy but firm in the contact, and easily directed with just my thighs, even for things that were hard before like 10m canter circles.

GUYS THAT'S MY HORSE OMG

Part of the reason she harped on this was that she had me doing SI with mixed results, largely because I was pulling on the inside rein in both directions. She does not pull punches when it comes to telling me what I'm doing wrong, and I LOVED hearing things like "No - that would score a 3, and here's why" or "That can only be a maximum of 5 because it has too much neck bend" and then "OKAY, THAT was a seven, now we're getting there."

And there's no video evidence of the SIs because #pivothings

Things really started to come together when she told me to think about putting my left shoulder forward, because I'm STILL riding with my left hand behind my right hand. "When you pull on the left rein, it makes the haunches go right. And the left side is his hollow side to begin with."