Cob Jockey

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!

In my weekly virtual lesson last night, we started out by talking about my revelation in the warm-up of Dressage Seat Equitation last week, which I hadn't really gotten to discuss with her much yet. (Also very much related to my recent Edges post).

"It feels like my position of strength on the right side comes from a place where my right side is collapsed and kind of pulled inward toward my spine, and my right seatbone is pulled off of the saddle with my right thigh creeping up" I said while exaggerating it for her while it sitting on Connor in front of the Pivo. "So if I think,' push my right side forward', he immediately goes better."

We are having THE MOST beautiful weather for late June. In between devastating rainstorms, naturally.

"Ohhhh, interesting! It's your cereal box," she said. "Your cereal box is nice and straight and strong with right angles on your left side, and it's collapsed down on the right. But you're trying to solve this problem with your bones alone, and that won't fix it. This is an internal pressure problem more than it's a bones problem."

And here she dove straight into five straight minutes of Mary Wanless theory meets an anatomy lesson meets Pilates. She had me touching different parts of my body, identifying different muscles, pointing out their relationship to my diaphragm and various ribs, and feeling how different it all was when I was "bearing down" with high internal pressure vs just sitting there.

No filter at all, really

It was SO fascinating, but of course I don't remember the "why" nearly well enough to explain it here, so I won't try. But I so appreciate her ability to take my fumbling description of what I'm feeling, translate it into more sophisticated language and then use that language to explain in greater detail back to me what I'm feeling and why. I came away with a whole new understanding of what I was feeling from that 5 minute anatomy lesson.

(Side note: Are virtual lessons as productive without this Mary Wanless teaching framework?  Do Mary Wanless people get more out of virtual lessons because they can short circuit big nebulous conversations so easily? Thoughts for another day.)

My desire to bushwhack a super tricky trail through the ravine on the barn's property is so strong. It goes almost straight down another 50 feet from where I'm standing, which is already 15 or so feet below the level the barn is at, and runs the length of the property.

 

When the anatomy lesson ended and I started riding while focusing on my internal pressure, Connor gave me that same feeling from the DSE class where his back lifted and felt so stable and swingy. Quickly, I could feel a bunch of small muscles on my right side engaging and tiring, wrapping around the side of my body from my serratus muscles to my QL to my SI joint. Several hours earlier, I had tried and failed to engage those same muscles in my weekly 1:1 Pilates class - because I was trying to do it with my bones and had no internal pressure!

Exploring the ravine with my dingo

He went amazing in all three gaits, just as good or better than he'd gone on Friday. "Wowwwwwwwwwwwwwwww," she kept saying, "This is just lovely! Look at how nice the contact is." "He always tells me immediately when I'm doing something right," I said. "Apparently all he wanted was for me to sit straight!" 

Probably the most telling thing: when I rode with high internal pressure, he initiated the strike off into the walk from the halt with his hind feet - every single time, at least 6 times that I remember. This is NOT normal for Connor, like, if we've ridden 10,000 halt-walk transitions over the last 10 years, 9,990 of them have been initiated by the front feet. It tells me that I must be putting a kink in the energy hose somewhere when I'm riding with low internal pressure.

Now to remember to ride like that all the time...

There's a lot you get out of riding with MW.  There's the obvious - thighs of steel and being in better harmony with your horse's movement - and the less obvious - the communication framework, and learning how to learn.

Part of what makes Mary's methods so successful is that she not only uses images and language that make sense to the rider, she also makes that communication structure standardized and repeatable, because unlike most clinicians, she also has a series of clinics in which she teaches trainers how to teach.


A lot of her images are designed to build on each other.  So for example, in my first clinic with her last May, I heard "weight in your thighs, make a wall with your stomach and push your guts against the wall, lean into my push" and several other things on repeat over three days.

Last weekend, I heard simple phrases that combined the first clinic's images together, like "remember your laces", which stood for "imagine there's a string zig zagging from side to side starting at your abs and going down past your bikini line to 2/3rds of the way down your thighs, like a corset, and you can pull on the string to tighten it".  The "laces" trigger reminds me to do several things she taught me in May with a single phrase, because I've internalized the first set of images.

This is how you learn - you internalize the A-F concepts, and then you get a G and an H to work on, and you keep internalizing and learning down the alphabet.  She had a good metaphor about how people learn riding that made me feel better about myself and I suspect I'm not the only one, so I'll share it here.

Mary telling Connor the Cincinnati geography isn't his scene, and asking him if he misses the mountains of Wales 😂

A naturally talented rider (let's call her Charlotte for no reason at all 😁) might be born innately knowing the A-G skills - the second she sits on a horse she accidentally does the basics correctly, so she never had to struggle through learning them.  So by age 15 or 16 Charlotte's already working on K and L, and then quickly she gets to Y.

But when a less naturally talented rider (let's call her Jen) asks Charlotte how to do X, Charlotte can't break it down as deeply as Jen needs her to in order to understand it, because half of Charlotte's recipe for X is "be born knowing A-G", which is a recipe ingredient Jen will never possess.

So Jen thinks X is this mysterious movement that she'll never master because she's a bad rider/not smart/a slow learner/etc, when at least part of the problem is that Charlotte isn't explaining X in a way that someone at Jen's point in the alphabet would understand.  (And side note, that explains why I can't get a straight first toolkit answer when I ask upper level riders things like "how to ask for collected canter").


I wasn't even gifted the letter "A" at birth, and have had to scrap and struggle for every letter I've learned.  This is why, as grateful as I am for being included in Karen's clinic and as cool as it was to ride with an Olympian, I have to admit KPG wasn't nearly as effective with my lesson as she was with Karen's.   KPG is one of those naturally gifted riders who, I suspect, has not had to teach many lower level riders yet.

So it's not that I'm a bad rider or slow learner, but it IS that I'm not a naturally talented rider and that's important for me to understand.  That needs to inform who I choose to ride with; there are instructors out there that will start too far down the alphabet for me to get anything out of riding with them.


This is part of the reason CGP - who has been riding with Mary for 10 years - has been so effective with me, and it's also part of the reason I've had a great lesson with my own trainer since the Mary clinic, which she attended with me.

My trainer can now say things like "Remember when Mary talked about the water wheel..." and jump a whole bunch of alphabet letters with me, and likewise, I'm also much more capable of articulating back to her what I'm feeling - something that Kate can attest I have not always been good at.  But my lessons now are a constant flow back and forth of feedback and communications, and they're better for it.


I'll leave you with one final anecdote that illustrates why this communication stuff is so important.  There was a trainer riding in the clinic this time, riding with Mary for the first time, who made some great positional changes, but when Mary asked "How is this different from your old position?", the rider kept saying variations on "It's different." And Mary would reiterate, "But HOW is it different?" and started to get frustrated after several awkward minutes of this, back and forth.

Finally Mary said, "It's great that you made these changes in your position, but all this is for nothing if you can't articulate what's different.  You will go back to riding the way you were before."  Basically - nothing sticks until you understand it enough to describe the change out loud.  And that nails it for me - in addition to helping me make the physical changes, she's also given me a language for them, and that has made all the difference in actually helping it to stick.

Me five months ago - I have since sold every single piece of tack he's wearing except the polos, the pad and the irons, lol

Twas the week before Mary Wanless and all through the barn, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

Yeah that's not right at all.  We're busting our asses over here guys 😂

Connor and his mini-me

It's been six months since I last rode with Mary, and it feels a little bit like I'm in college about to have a final exam leading up to my second clinic with her at the end of this week.

Yes of course I've been showing up to all my classes and doing a lot of homework over the last six months, but I also know I've let some things slide, and I need to cram.

Mary DGAF about ribbons!

So I've been reading her books, which is interesting because SO much of my last lesson with CGP was straight out of the part of Ride With Your Mind Essentials I hadn't gotten to yet, and it was great to get more of a deep dive, off-the-horse explanation of what she taught me.

I've also been doing position hacks out in the field, where I focus almost entirely on what my own body is doing and only ask him to do transitions on big figures.  I'm also planning on riding with my weight belt on Wednesday of this week, and I have a lesson booked with CGP on Thursday, since we'll be at her facility Friday-Sunday for the clinic anyway.  What's one more night of hotel?

Fingers crossed we win the completely-non-existent-made-up Most Improved Award!  And holler if you live in range of Cincinnati and want to come audit!

Ever since the Mary clinic, I'd been tossing around the idea of riding with the GP rider that hosted it.  She's been riding with Mary for a decade, is a certified Mary instructor, and her students have been killing it at USDF shows on all different types of horses this season, including drafty little ponies.

Plus I was feeling the itch to get off the property and GO somewhere. I don't know why this is a thing for me right now, but it is.  Plus, this barn has miles of mirrors, which is SO helpful.

ROAD TRIP

This is going to be epically long, and I'm not apologizing, I need to digest this and this blog is how I do it.  It was a great lesson that made me feel like a beginner rider, in the best way.  It felt like Part II of my Mary Wanless rides from May, and I was tickled that she did a lot of the same things Kate, Megan and Mary all did with me.

Right off the bat, she said regardless of how much warming up I'd done before she got there, the horse she saw was not ready for sitting trot, and that the back needs to be swinging before I sit. So we posted.

When I started posting, she had me look in the mirrors at how much my hands moved up and down with each post, and pointed out what that did to Connor and how that influenced me feeling like I have to pull. This was pretty eye opening, I had no idea I was committing this particular sin.

So the next thing she did was tie my hands to the saddle!  Not exactly "tied" of course, but she took two lengths of baling twine and made loops that she attached to my D rings and had me put my hands through, with the loop between my thumb and my hand.

The loops were a devilish but effective trick.  If my hands continued to move up and down, the twine went slack and then snapped taut with each step.  If my hands were still, the twine stayed stable.  I also couldn't pull back as easily with these, even though I tried.

Trailer tack room so cozy in the dark

This also highlighted how dependent I am on the reins for things like steering.  She said she wanted me to steer entirely off my seat, the most I was allowed to do with the reins if he was leaving the circle was to give him one "bump" with the inside rein (but by bringing my hand out from the elbow/into the circle and NOT back) and outside leg.

She said the loops should give me a feeling of pushing a shopping cart forward or holding a tray on my hands.  Those were both very effective images that NK has used with me before.  My elbows also had a lot to do here - I had been keeping them closed (which is why my hands were moving) but they needed to slightly open and close with each post.

Next we totally blew up my posting mechanic, which ended up being more challenging than I thought it would be in my jump saddle, which puts my feet out in front of me more than I realized with my stirrups at Dressage length. This was the part of the lesson that was most similar to what Mary did with me in May, but this trainer (who I'm going to call CGP) took it further.

First she pointed out that I don't have enough tone to post actively, that I'm letting gravity take me down, which is not creating a space for Connor's back to come up.  She had me pull my leg waaaaaaaaay back, to where my thigh wasn't even touching the back of the kneepad on the CWD.  She showed me in the mirror how that got my heel under my shoulder and how having my ankle under my shoulder allowed my hip to move all the way forward at the top of my post.


Then she had me post with Connor halted, very slowly, and told me not to actually sit in the saddle but to lower myself almost all the way down (slowly) and then come back up (slowly).  This felt like a CrossFit workout!  She pointed out how much more tone I needed in my thigh and calf to achieve this, and how if Mary's (or Kate's!) hand was in my stirrup right now, it would be crushed by the weight of my foot in the stirrup.  I needed to get my foot onto the front of my stirrup and be more active in the post, especially through the thigh, and think about my knees pointing down.

After demonstrating some serious improvement in relaxation, stride length and shoulder freedom in the trot once I got a little better at the posting and my hands, we moved on to the canter, which I think is where my mind was most blown.  This is also where I wasn't quite able to digest her explanations well enough, but I'll do my best.

First, we worked on my hands in the loops.  She got onto me for closing my elbow angle and causing his head nod by not letting my hands go forward enough through the stride.  She had me shove my hands into the loops until the twine was really digging into them, and it felt like my elbows were REALLY moving, and also staying in front of my torso.

We got home around 8:30pm and it was already pitch black. :(  I'm not ready.

Finally, we worked on his down transitions out of canter.  I had started the lesson by showing her my last Dressage test (the 62% one) and telling her about the c-w tx strugglebus. 

She had me pick up the canter on a 20m circle, then take my hands out of the loops and push my hands all the way forward, arms straight toward his ears, with loops in the reins.  Then she had me ask for the down transition like that, using only my seat and no reins whatsoever.  She didn't care how fast he went, or what he looked like, or how long it took to bring him down, and we did spend a long time on that canter circle before we figured it out.

She said the two of us currently rely on the reins for balance, and that we need to break that habit and re-teach Connor how to perform his own balanced down transitions without that crutch of leaning on my hands.  That's Step 1 in a broader plan to improve the canter and get c-w's reliably, and is our homework, along with riding with the loops.

The most fascinating thing about this?  During that long, forward canter while my hands were up by his ears and I was trying to figure out how to bring him back with my seat, his front end elevation scores at the canter were the highest they've ever been by a solid 1-1.5cm, sustained over several minutes.



All in all, it was a great ass-kicking of a lesson, and it didn't deviate from, but did expand on, all the things I got out of the Mary Wanless clinic and the things I get from my regular trainer.  I'm looking forward to going back once a month-ish for more.

My lessons with my regular trainer have been fairly sporadic lately.  Mainly this is my fault, it seems like even when I'm only traveling one day a week, it's always on Tuesdays. 

But when we do get to lesson, she's been making it count.  Case in point: at my last lesson three weeks ago, she helped me finally crack the half halt code.  And a whole bunch of things started to make sense.

I can't remember exactly what she said, it was weeks ago at this point, but I remember what she did.  Connor hadn't been going particularly well for me that night, so she got on.  Pretty quickly, he started looking tons better.  It was clear he wasn't having a bad day, that I was just riding poorly.

First, she said something to the effect of "He's not just going to come on your aids, you have to make it happen".  It's not that I think that way, but I do ride that way, like he has to feel a certain way before I'll ask him for anything, when in reality I should be asking him for things in order to make him feel that way.

All this media is from the night she taught me this, so before I put any of it into practice.  And with the old bit.

Then she seriously broke down a half halt farther than anyone has with me before - visually, verbally, physically, slowly.  She showed me how with a moment of resistance in her core and arms, and a simultaneous slight movement in her pelvis (she called it forward, I called it backward, but we both meant the same thing!) his balance shifted and he came onto her aids.  It was SUCH an effective teaching moment.

The final piece fell into place when I got back on after watching that.  She asked me to move with him more, and to let the motion of his head pass all the way through to my shoulder blades.

I won't say I totally got it in that moment, but in the rides after that, as I worked on it, a whole bunch of things from the last six months started to make sense.  Megan telling me to use my lats more.  Mary telling me why I won't stop pulling until I learn to bear down and use my core.  A Chronicle of the Horse post about the differences between the mechanics of Western collection and Dressage collection.  Nancy telling me I need to let him pull on himself instead of me pulling on him.


After my Megan and Kate lessons last winter I was riding in a slick jacket so I could hear it when my arms stopped moving, because I knew that meant I was pulling.  I didn't really understand WHY I was doing that though, besides pulling = bad.  But now I get it.

There's a good tension that is necessary for collection.  Without it, the energy just splats out the front end and does nothing useful. 

There's also bad tension - pulling.  But I think subconsciously, I could not separate pulling and good tension, because good tension requires core engagement in order to happen, which I did not understand before riding with Mary Wanless, and it requires my whole arm get involved in the following motion from his mouth to my shoulder blades, which I did not understand, fully, until this lesson.  If my whole arm isn't involved, if the energy stops at my elbow, I am pulling, 100% of the time - which is why the slick jacket thing was an effective cue.

Oh also, this isn't my saddle, and it's like 1.5" too big for me, can you tell?  Haha

I can feel it.  When I'm doing it right, it's like I make a wall that I can gently push him into from behind.  Instead of going splat, he goes up. 

And he can feel it.  You should see the way he reacts to me having good tension in the canter for the first time ever!  When I started riding like that, he kept stopping in the canter, like "Wha...what...why?  Why would you do that?  Why would you ride like that?  This is hard!"  And guys, this is NOT a horse that stops in the canter, ever!  He's just so used to leaning on me and rolling around on his forehand like a bowling ball, it was a serious paradigm shift for him when my body position wasn't allowing him to do his favorite things anymore.

The proof that something is changing?  We're starting to get canter-walk transitions! 

Just before I went into the OR for LASIK last Friday, the optometrist tech was going over post-op instructions with me.  I've not exactly been great at following the doctor's orders in the past when it comes to like limbs or illnesses, but eyes are a different story, so I was peppering her with questions as I tried to find my boundaries.

Me: "What about dusty environments?"

Tech: "Try to avoid them if possible.  If you can't, wear goggles."

Me: "How about horseback riding?"

Tech: "Horseback riding itself is okay, even trotting and jumping would be fine, but what we'd be concerned about would be a fall damaging the eyes while the flaps are still healing, so we recommend avoiding it."

Me: (in my head: I am so due for a fall after not ever having fallen off of Connor, I am NOT tempting fate on this one.)

Tech: "No heavy lifting and only light exercise..."

Me: "Define 'light exercise' for me, like, REALLY explicitly."

Tech: "Like, light weights are okay, we just don't want you to like...[here she clenches her fists, tightens and shortens her core and grunts]"

I said I understood, but in my head I was laughing so hard.  What she had just done was a "bear down" in Mary Wanless parlance.  And what the doctor doesn't want is to increase the internal pressure on the eye.  And when she told me riding was okay, she didn't expect anyone to ride with internal pressure like that, only to lift like that.

So to sum up my (tongue in cheek) post-LASIK riding instructions: riding is okay, as long as you haven't been to a Mary Wanless clinic in the past and you don't fall off.  You're welcome!

Yep, I know I still owe you all some more clinic recaps.  Honestly, I'm waiting to write them until I review the videos during my next couch lesson.  Since the clinic, I've substituted lessons on the horse for lessons on my couch (with wine because duh) where my trainer and I go back and watch my clinic videos together. 

Enjoy some pictures of Connor, who is ridiculously gorgeous right now

The couch lessons ensure:

1. I won't totally butcher Mary's theories when I recite what I learned back to my trainer
2. She gets to actually see what Mary did with me
3. It gives me more time to play with Mary's concepts on my own and hopefully solidify them before riding in a lesson setting

 And I think it's safe to say we are both enjoying the couch and wine time!


In the meantime, I've been riding on my own.  The things I am mainly focusing on (some of which I've written about and some of which I haven't and you'll have to wait for an explanation on) are:

1. High internal pressure
2. 80% of my weight in my thighs, 20% in the feet/bring knees closer to chest
3. Lean into Mary's hand forward/accurate vertical balance
4. Holding the reins the way she showed me (she totally changed the way I hold the reins!)
5. Keeping my seatbones paddling like a duck (yes I will explain this later)

Almost at the very beginning, Mary's first book talks about identifying which new positional cue you're most likely to cheat on, and focusing on that one.  For me, that's internal pressure.  I forget about it constantly, but when I remember to do it, a number of other things naturally fall into place, such as accurate vertical balance (it's very noticeable when I am not upright when I have high internal pressure) and not pulling anymore (I can feel my high internal pressure holding the resistance that my arms otherwise would be). 

(I don't feel like it's totally accurate to use high internal pressure the way I am here, most people would say "core", because there ARE active muscles down there and it's not just the pressure, but that's what's working for me so I'm rolling with it)


The other thing I've done is stop riding in my Dressage saddle.  I can't ride in that and work on what I learned from Mary, as scary as it is to ride in a setup she hasn't seen (my jump saddle).  My jump saddle isn't ideal, but it gives me a lot more freedom to play and adjust and make mistakes than my Dressage saddle does. 

Plus I may or may not have a test ride scheduled for a Dressage saddle built on the same tree as my jump saddle so...😁  (Yes, that is the sound of money being sucked out of my bank account, pray I luck into another CWD unicorn like I did with my jump saddle or this is going to get expensive fast).


If you know of any children or small adults in need of a Dressage saddle, send them my way!

[I am really struggling with how to write up this much information, so apologies if this is a little more literal and less organized than my usual writeups]

Within seconds of seeing me walk and trot Connor in my warmup, Mary called me over.

"We're going to shorten your stirrups, probably a couple of holes."

Turns out having your leg this straight:


is not productive.  She shortened them by two holes on Friday, and actually shortened them one more hole on Sunday, but we'll get to that later. 

After doing that, she said that my thigh blocks are now a problem, and I agree.  This saddle has to go - but I had been feeling that way for a while now, so no big deal.

Thigh blocks very much in my way

After she shortened my stirrups, we spent the next 20 minutes at the mounting block.  She diagnosed that I like to be tall in the saddle - too tall - and I press down into my feet, which is pushing my body up and away from him.  She helped me get into the right position, slowly.

First, she had me put my thighs over my thigh blocks, and used her hands to manipulate my torso into the right position and to help me identify and activate the right core muscles...which is not at all where I usually sit or the muscles I usually use.

I am not kidding when I say the position in the photo above feels like the fetal position to me.  It feels like my nose is in his mane and my shoulders are rounded and I'm leaning forward.  I knew when I watched the video that it would not look like that, but I was honestly shocked just how badly my brain is tricking me into thinking I'm vertical when I'm really typically behind it.

Getting me into position - "resist my push"

Next, she worked on the concept of internal pressure with me, something we had explored in the off the horse workshop a few hours before with the help of, yes, blowing up balloons.  This is something I have literally never done on a horse before.  Even when I think I'm using my core muscles, I don't have any internal pressure. 

The only time I typically have any internal pressure is when I'm weightlifting and wearing my belt, because that's exactly what the belt is there to remind you to do.  Turns out, your default state while riding should be a state of high internal pressure.  This is what a lot of trainers refer to as "use your core" but that's a lot less descriptive than a short British lady actually touching the muscles you should be activating and telling you to say "psh psh psh" while you're riding around to find the right muscles.

"Pull your tummy in to make a wall and push your guts against the wall"

After an eternity, we were finally cleared to walk in a 20m circle, where I tried to maintain the position I had at the mounting block while in motion.  She started to talk about how 80% of my leg pressure should be in my thighs and 20% should be in my feet.  I'm often the exact opposite of that, pressing hard into my feet, partially because I did have a bad "clamping with my thighs" problem at one point.   This was extremely hard for me to remember to do.

"Put more wrinkles in the front of your breeches"

She diagnosed my pulling hands - no surprise there.  She did an exercise with me where I push into her hands, but the real changes to my hands didn't come until Day 2.  But we'll get there.

Pushing on Mary's hands

After that, we went into posting trot mechanics, where she said I wasn't completing the top of my post - wasn't doing a full wipe of my windshield wiper, as she put it.  This is something Megan saw too in my lesson with her.  Just to give you an idea of how much touching is involved in a Mary clinic, this is Mary working with me on that:


After the change, my crotch was over my pommel with each rise, which is a dramatic change from where my post ended previously, but it made me feel like I was more in sync with him than normal:

Literally before - before my lesson started, before my rise changed, before she shortened my stirrups, before anything Mary

Day 2 preview - big changes in internal pressure, posting mechanic and obviously stirrup length.  Still haven't really paid attention to Connor at this point.

At the end of Day 1, I got some time in the hotel room to review my footage, where I was absolutely floored at how not-in-the-fetal-position she had me.  I also digested the internal pressure thing more, which really helped me on Day 2...

Last weekend Connor and I rode with Mary Wanless over in Ohio.  On the third day Mary walked over to Connor and said, "I'm sorry little Welshman, this is the first day of the rest of your life."

"Wait, what now?"

At the risk of sounding overly dramatic, she's not wrong: I can't overstate how helpful this clinic was.  The way I ride changed so drastically over the course of three days, even just sitting in the saddle feels different.  If you get the chance to ride with her, TAKE IT.  Yes it's a lot of money, but more than any clinician I've rode with before, she's worth every dollar.


I need to blog about these rides for the same reason I blog about all of my lessons and rides, it helps me process, but I'm struggling to do it because you just get SO much information from her!  Strangely, I'm not having any trouble running through a list of "Mary sound bites" in my head during my rides on my own, but sitting down to sift through all the info and coherently blog about it is a monumental task - all the more reason I need to do it though.

Also: there was JAN and there was HORSE WINE!

So cute, I die <3

Look for some recaps to start coming out soon!  But don't expect them quickly - they are SERIOUSLY hard to write!

A couple of months ago, I told JenJ I was going to audit the Mary Wanless clinic that's held a couple of times a year at a barn two hours from me. 

"Why aren't you riding in it?" she asked.

"I don't know, I've never been to this barn before, I don't know these people, and I haven't seen Mary before, I kinda just want to figure it out without riding the first time," and as I said it, I thought, "Wow that sounds kinda lame," but I stuck with it.

Not too far!

Fast forward to last Thursday morning when I'm sitting in a hotel room in Santa Clara, CA, and JenJ texts me.  "Jan is riding in that Mary clinic you're auditing, I'm sending her your way."

You can see where this is going.  Somehow, an hour later, I had signed up to ride with Mary Wanless in the beginning of May.  It was a conspiracy, I swear!  But I'm grateful :)

JenJ subtly but pointedly told me it would be a really good thing for me to ride in it, and when I pointed out the cost of the clinic was equivalent to two rated shows, she said something to the effect of "What's going to help you progress more right now, showing two rated shows or riding with Mary?"  Well when you put it like that...duh.  I am eternally grateful for good friends that push me out of my comfort zone, because that was a really great insight.

Anyone else planning on auditing or riding in the Mary clinic on May 3-5?

I had my first lesson in a month last night.  While I was gone, my trainer rode Connor for an entire week, and then parts of the next two weeks.

Reunited and it feels so good! All photos in this post courtesy of the Pixio.

I could definitely tell a difference in him when I got on.  He was responsive to my leg in ways he wasn't before.  She also had had good success in teaching him to keep his front end elevated and hind end engaged, and even said she got a couple of good canter-walk transitions while I was gone.

Of course, her doing it and her teaching me to do it are two totally different things.

Starting to get a tiny bit more uphill...

Since Megan and Kate's Mary Wanless experience, I've thought a lot about trainer teaching styles and how I can be a better student - to recognize when my trainer is giving me a second toolkit instruction when I really need first toolkit.

With Megan's "Amnesia of Expertise" post from yesterday fresh in my head, when my trainer said something yesterday to the effect of "ride him up through your body into the contact" (second toolkit, at least for me), I replied with "I don't know what you mean by that, what do I need to do with my body to do that?" (Translation: Give me first toolkit plz)


It took her a second to put into words what she would naturally do with her body.  She had me stop while she explained it visually, with her body, and also physically, with my body.

She also picked up my leg and put it where it needed to be AND showed me just how much pressure is the right amount of leg pressure by slipping her hand under my leg and asking me to use it - and we both discovered that's pretty difficult right now due to HOW FAT THIS HORSE IS!  But that's for another post.

Asking me to use my leg the way I normally use it so she can feel how much pressure I'm using and where it's hitting him.

After that, she walked next to me and paid attention to what my body was doing.  That was so much more effective for this type of position overhaul than standing in the middle would've been:

Side note: this rein length feels SO SHORT, but I'm glad I recorded this lesson because that length actually looks great.

It ended up being a really effective lesson, but if I hadn't stopped her and made her give me a first toolkit instruction, it might not have been.  I might have tried to achieve the same thing by pulling, not understanding how to do what she asked me to do.

It's not a condemnation of her teaching style either - there are some students I think she could use second toolkit instructions with here and they'd get it.  I'm not that student.  But recognizing that and asking her to translate what she meant into my language turned the entire lesson around.

You can see his big belly pushing my right leg out here.  Forget the muzzle, he's been drylotted for the past two weeks.