Cob Jockey

In the words of Mike Polk Jr, "I know there are more important things in life than (horses), but you are supposed to be our pleasant distraction from those things!"


(Funny video, whether or not you're a football fan.)

I've had an awful week.  Things are crashing randomly at work, requiring lots of overtime and early mornings and I wasn't able to ride Connor at all since my last lesson.  So I was looking forward to my lesson today as a nice bit of stress relief, but then Connor played hard to catch until we cornered him at the pipe gate outside his field after a half-hour of walking him down with tears in my eyes.  Not exactly my "pleasant distraction" at that point.


CrossFit really helped my jump form yesterday, as I had the best jump form of my life (says my trainer) after applying the principles I'm learning in Kelly Starrett's Mobility WOD website and book, Becoming a Supple Leopard.  "I've never seen you ride like that before!" my trainer said, "in a good way!"  I tend to round my shoulders forward, upper back out and lower back in all the time, and I've heard from both my CrossFit and riding trainer about that negatively affecting me lately.  Right now I'm working on the section in Becoming a Supple Leopard that talks about keeping your back straight and spine neutral by "resetting" it, which I approximated in the saddle yesterday.  It consists of three steps:

1) Tighten glutes as hard as you can to bring your pelvis underneath you.
2) Tighten abs to hold the pelvis there, release glutes (ideally, you should always have approximately 20% muscle contractions of the abs at all times for good spinal alignment without getting fatigued)
3) Pull your shoulders back by thinking about pulling the shoulder blades down.

After doing 2 and 3 in the saddle just before the jump exercise we did, I did not jump ahead of him (big deal for me), he did not break to the trot at all, and my shoulders were back.  My trainer was delighted and kept calling it a big breakthrough for me, because in addition to having my shoulders back I also had a flat back over the fence.  She kept telling me that my engaged abs were working to push him into the bridle, and that my lengthened inside leg was asking him to not blow through my aids and stay active.  I'm feeling aches in long-neglected muscles, especially the muscles in the middle of my back, as I try to ingrain this new and better posture into my body, but it's worth it since it made such a huge difference yesterday.

I really encourage you to check out the Becoming a Supple Leopard book, it's got so much in it that will help equestrians improve their form and lessen their chances of injury.  Even though it's designed for CrossFitters, the principles of good movement and balance are the same in everything.  I look forward to seeing what the rest of the book does for my riding.

This week's lesson started out with some really difficult (for both of us) Dressage work, and ended with some really difficult (for me) jump work.  It was one of those lessons in which you switch gears mid-lesson so hard that it takes you halfway through the jump lesson to realize that the Dressage work was absolutely related to and intended to improve the jump work.  Lesson learned.

Arrested Development fans?  Anyone?

Our previous lesson involved moving his ribcage, and we took that a step further by working on leg yields and haunches in.  I've never really succeeded in haunches in before, and I felt like a pretzel as I tried to do what she asked with my body.  I was concentrating so hard, I would often forget what direction I was supposed to be turning in.  Does anyone have any good recommended reading on haunches-in for those of us who can't coordinate their limbs, think and ride at the same time?  I need to study this and think about it while I'm not on a horse.

Happy pony loves the Micklem.

After that we moved on to poles, and then jumping.  She set up three ground poles in a "circle of death minus one" configuration, and here is where we really had to work.  I have struggled with our canter transitions, because I felt like I would ask, he would launch forward, and I would have to follow with my hands or else he'd hit them and break.  My trainer pointed out that when that happened, the canter was flat and runny from the beginning, and the circle of death was out of control.  What I needed to do was SIT ON MY HORSE and ask.  Less of a hand change, more of a body position change.  And, duh, it worked.

She then changed one of the poles to a crossrail, and here's where it got hard.  We would come off the rail on the left rein to the X at the 3:00 position, then a pole at the 12:00 position and a pole at the 9:00 position.  If we came in hot, or if his shoulder was bulging because I turned him too late, things went to crap.  Here is where she pointed out that if I just got the inside hind to move around that turn the same way I did in the Dressage portion of the lesson twenty minutes earlier, the whole jumping exercise was better.  Another 'duh' moment!  If I jumped ahead and stayed crouched over, like I so often do, things also went to crap.

Finally, she added another X 4 strides ahead of the X, so we would do one circle of death, then the second time around go straight at the X to the 4 stride line, and there was one time that I was so far ahead of him and things went so badly that she told me, kindly, that had that been an XC fence I could have gotten hurt jumping like that.  Tough love for me this time.  She said 'SIT UP' so many times in that lesson, and finally, by the end, there were signs of improvement; it was still a difficult and frustrating lesson on the whole.

The good news was that my drafty little pony was ON FIRE over the fences.  He was quick, sharp and into it in a way that I haven't often seen.  Then again, we haven't jumped much at all in months.  That's all going to change, as we now know what our first event is going to be...stay tuned!