Cob Jockey

On Monday, one of my friends shared a Dressage Today article about horses that have trouble coming back after a lengthening in the canter.  The author said horses like this often tend to travel with their outside shoulder to the outside of the hindquarters which gives them the ability to roll along unimpeded (my paraphrasing, I can't find the article now).

I don't know anyone who travels like that WHY DO YOU ASK????

That's something NK has said about us as far back as early 2012 - "This horse likes to travel diagonally!"  And while it's better now, it's still not great, and I've noticed he tends to go really well when I focus on containing the outside shoulder.

Connor's preferred method of travel

So I thought I'd play around with that a bit on my own on Monday night.  I greatly oversimplified it by thinking "I should be able to get 1-2 steps of turn on the forehand feel anytime I want them."  Sometimes I made it a little more dramatic, sometimes it was subtle, but it was non-negotiable. 

Perhaps taking it too far in the opposite direction here, but I needed to get my point across

I have a tendency to ask for something and accept a half-assed response from him, which now that we have things like SI and HI in our tests, is a real, visible problem.  In everything, I can't accept him tuning me out anymore (and really shouldn't have from the beginning).  If you want to see this in action:

This movement is travers (haunches in) from B to M

Okay...

Passable for our first time ever doing this in a test...

Wait what's happening here... (Please note we are halfway through this travers, which by the way is a double coefficient)

It was a schooling show so we got a generous score and "needs more angle" on this movement, which like...we're not even doing it here so...thanks?

Back with his shoulder plastered to the rail, because he totally has my number. Thanks Karen for taking these!

I am not qualified to say whether the ToF idea is the right way to go about things, but we did get our first c-w transition Monday night!  We got it once, and then we weren't able to get it again.  I did 1-2 steps of thinking ToF, then picked up the canter, then asked for it within 5 strides of takeoff.

It's much more difficult for me to get the ToF steps to the left than to the right.  It's partially because my right leg has a tendency to not be on him so he just escapes out that side rather than stepping under, but it's also just his harder direction to get the inside hind (yes, those two things are definitely related, and I am fixing the problems I created!).

Having a "discussion" up the long side

So in conclusion, this is yet another thrilling chapter in the dramatic saga of learning that inside leg to outside rein is important.  You're welcome!

Last night in my lesson with my regular trainer, we continued what we started on last week, which was turn on the forehand > change bend, walk pirouette > trot or canter out of it.

The idea is that we are taking the ToF NK has me do, focusing on position and not pulling, and adding more to it.

Not perfect, but effective.

The canter felt really good to me coming out of the walk exercise, but my trainer accurately diagnosed that his hind legs weren't "punchy" enough in it.  Pretty easy to see in the video.

Oops, posted the wrong video earlier!  This is the correct one.

To work on that, I focused on half halting on the upbeat, giving a gentle bump, and keeping my hands in that "tray carrying" position NK put me in.

You can tell we're both starting to get tired here, and we lost the bend coming out of the corner.  Also I was UNSPEAKABLY sore for this lesson thanks to Bulgarian split squats and bodyweight sled pushes (MY NEMESIS!) the day before in CrossFit.

Overall, he felt fantastic.  My vet happened to be out at the barn during my lesson, and she asked me afterward if we were showing right now.  I told her we'd taken the season off to get the basics down at Second and she said it looked like we were schooling Third.  We are nowhere near Third, but after feeling down about riding for so long, I will totally take that compliment!

I think NK would say my torso is moving with him here...I think.  She would also tell me "needed a couple of half halts across the diagonal."

Of course, the season's not over yet, and now that I'm feeling so much better about how he's going right now, I'm seriously toying around with hitting a show or two before the end of the year.  We'll see!

When I last left off writing about actual riding, I confessed that this has been a mentally tough summer for me when it comes to riding, and that post was my breaking point.  I needed to do something, anything, differently in order to snap out of it.

Like take Bitsy to the dog beach in Chicago while visiting Connor's Aunt Mary last weekend.

So I took a lesson with NK yesterday, first one in three months.  I'm going to deviate from my usual post style to really chronicle this one, because I'm suffering from lesson amnesia pretty badly lately.  So, this one's for the die-hard Dressage and/or biomechanics nuts, sorry about the rest of you!  😂

TL;DR: We are on the right track, but my position and my lack of half halt is making it impossible for him to do what I think I'm asking him to do.  AKA, I once again got to hear NK's constant tough love refrain of  "Your horse is fine, your saddle is fine, your trainer is fine, YOU are the problem!  But that's okay, because Dressage is hard and takes a lifetime to learn so let's get to work!"

Sunset by the barn last night

First part of the lesson: She zeroed in on the fact that I was so tense in my seat, I was standing in the saddle.  It felt like sitting to me, until I followed her instructions to relax and sit deeply, and Connor immediately softened in response.  Hmm.

Media ended up being basically non-existent, but I did get a minute or two of video.

Next part of the lesson: the position of my seat is encouraging him onto his forehand.  She quoted Kyra Kyrklund saying "Feel like you're plugging your seatbones into the pommel".  I did that, and Connor responded so well.  Things that normally took a lot of leg took a "bump bump" instead, I actually had an effective half halt (NK's words, not mine!) and the contact felt amazing.

We'll fluff this post out with more Bitsy in the Big City photos.

But then it got interesting.  My glute cramped up, because I was using those muscles to maintain that pelvic position.  When I stopped to massage the cramp out, she was like "No wonder your seat is tense, that's absolutely the wrong muscle to use to maintain that.  It means your hip flexors are too tight to be able to sit properly.  You need to stretch them, every day.  I ride 4-5 horses a day and I still stretch mine every day."

You can practically see my hip flexors screaming.

For the rest of the lesson, I kept going back to her shortcut to find the right seatbone position, which was to put my legs over the knee rolls momentarily and then bring them back and maintain that pelvis position.  (Spoiler alert: practically could not do this because my hip flexors are so tight)  I also kept going back to her "bring your knees up a bit" to sit around him more and to neutralize my tendency to stand in the saddle and brace.

Bitsy hates Wrigley...hahaha

A couple of times, she had me come into the center of the ring and do a turn on the forehand - WITHOUT pulling.  And she did not let it slide for a single second if I did try to pull.  I was totally stumped by this at first, but eventually did it right (which involved not letting him dump me to the inside, thinking about sitting to the outside, and not giving up with my bumping inside leg when he tried to weasel his way out of the movement).  When I did it right, I felt his front end come up in front of me, his back level, his body get totally straight, and the contact get light.

She said "Don't be afraid to use that.  If he's pulling on you and you're pulling on him, this is a tool to break that cycle.  I don't care if you have to do it sixteen times in a ride, you do it.  This is important!"

If you live near Chicago, this dog beach is AMAZING

After we were done, she spent a long time talking to me about everything as she saw it, even though I didn't give her any backstory besides joking that Second Level was making me strongly consider taking up Professional Trail Riding (TM).  She had no idea what she was doing, but she really set me straight during this monologue.

"You what, ride with [regular trainer] once a week?  So you're doing things correctly with her one hour a week of course.  But then what, four other times a week, you ride by yourself?  So 1/5 of the time, you and him are both working the right muscles, but 4/5 of the time, you're working the wrong ones.  This position and this way of riding have to become your default if you're going to progress.

LOOK AT HOW SHORT MY REINS ARE #finally #slowlearner #smallvictories

"This is just what happens when you start to teach a horse like this collection, it's hard.  Think of him as a teeter totter.  Right now we're asking him to lower [the butt end] of the teeter totter.  But YOU are the middle of the teeter totter, and if YOU let your center of gravity get pulled forward, HE'S going to respond by making the [front end] of the teeter totter the low end because you're making him do that.  You have to plug your seat in and resist him like you're playing tug of war."

Overall, I'm feeling a lot better about the direction things are going after this lesson, and I have a clear idea of what I need to do in order to stop sabotaging my own forward progress.  Let's do this thing.

I think he's looking for spring. Indiana seems to have misplaced it.

I got my 'Wow' lesson, and it was the hardest walk lesson of our lives.

My trainer likes to save up training rides from my missed lessons and give him a pony boot camp when she feels we're stuck, or headed towards being stuck, or facing something like the clinic, so she rode him Wednesday and Thursday.  Turns out she felt the same things I did, only she A) properly identified what was going on and B) has the tools to fix it.  This is not a knock, it's an observation: I am terrible without a trainer.  The wheels just slowly start coming off and the pony slowly starts getting heavier and less responsive without lessons. Three weeks away was too much, thanks, work.

My observations were: I lost control of the shoulder, and he's carrying his nose to the right especially when going to the right.  Her observations were: he's arm-muscle destroyingly heavy, he's popping his shoulder to the right when going left, he's trying to take the left rein again, and while I fixed the forward issue she told me to work on last time, I sacrificed lightness for forward when I really want both.

To the left, she had me establish a real left bend, and was constantly reminding me that sometimes I was going to have to be pretty firm because I needed enough left rein to be able to correct the outside shoulder with the right rein without throwing him off.  Once she pointed it out, I could feel that the second we turned any corner, out went that shoulder.  So to the left, we did a square with that crazy (to me) left bend, a shoulder in on the sides, and a turn on the forehand to go around the corners.  She had me focus on keeping both hands slightly left (inside), keep my weight centered, stop bracing with my right leg/turn my toe and knee out, and focus on the timing of my aids.  Suddenly, there was my light, responsive, bit-chewing, slobbering suckerfish of a pony again.

To the right, his problems are different, so for this she had me think about a counterbend, when in reality I was just keeping him and his wayward jaw straight.  Again we did the square, but this time with a turn on the haunches for the turns, focusing on keeping him in that left rein and bringing the shoulder around.  Muscularly, he has more trouble staying correct to the right, so we didn't work quite as long here.

Finally, when he was going well, we trotted until he got heavy (sometimes 1/4 of a 20m circle!), re-established lightness at the walk, trotted until he got heavy, rinse, repeat.  Through it all she kept explaining and asking me questions, because she said unless I really understood WHY we were doing all this, it wouldn't really be effective in the long term.  I think I do, which is why I wanted to work through it in this (long, sorry) post.

I know it's hard without seeing him, but I am really interested in talking through this with people.  Thoughts?