I wrote last week about my crooked pelvis, which is one of the two things that I wanted to explore once show season was over, the other being my hands.
In Chicago, GP trainer made an offhanded comment about my contact being inconsistent in the warm-up, which niggled in my brain for a few weeks after the show. My contact didn't feel inconsistent to me, or so I thought. But the more I paid attention to it and the more video I watched, the more I saw and felt it, especially in the right rein.
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| PC: my mom |
On the right rein, he likes to carry his chin to the inside of his midline and bulge out from the C4 region through to his shoulder on the left, which has the effect of disengaging the right rein, giving both of us nothing solid to feel in my scapula or in his mouth, which makes the rein contact kind of bounce a bit.
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| All kinds of interesting and bad biomechanics going on here, lol. You can see his head is kind of curled around so his chin is in front of his right shoulder rather than the center of his chest. He's in his happy place with a lot of weight on the right fore. PC: my mom |
I started to wonder if maybe his preference for straight bar bits was actually him preferring stability in the bit because he wasn't finding it in my hands, so my focus for the first couple of weeks was just to feel like I was pushing the reins forward as if they were sticks and to make sure both reins felt the same. I wanted to always feel a solid connection in both, but paid particular attention to the right. This was surprisingly hard! I've gotten very used to having a different feel in both reins.
But I did good with it, and to really challenge the bit theory, I put him back in the 3 piece Myler bradoon last week. It's now been about 10 days and 7 rides, including a lesson, and he hasn't even thought about getting his tongue over.
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| We were in the Myler here |
I'm a long way from properly internalizing this, but just like the pelvis thing, it seems exceptionally important to solve this before we really start working on Third.
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