I lack the ability to articulate
Well, tonight’s lesson was pretty good. I rode—I’ve been riding in since last Thursday—the Wintec Isabell I picked up at Dover Saddlery (gullet kit included free!), to see how riding in a treed saddle would affect my ability to ride more effectively. I love how the treeless Flexion puts me in the right position, but I was feeling the lack of lateral stability in the canter work. Plus, I need to sell it and pay down my credit card, and if the cheaper Isabell works for me and Clover as well as the Pro jumper does, that would be a good deal.
Anyways. Still having a hard time getting forward and consistent contact, but it is coming together faster. Michele showed me a technique to use to help get her into the contact—basically riding forward into widened contact, but knowing when to stop using it and use proper elbow-mouth alignment. Not rely on it as a crutch. We did a lot of canter work tonight, and Michele said she could tell I’d been doing my homework, which means something, considering I only do flatwork 3 or so days a week, the rest we do conditioning and jumping. We finished up the canter work with cantering down (up?) the diagonal, trotting at X, and picking up the new lead in the corner, hey, that’s practically first level! It went pretty well, only one transition bobbled in the corner. In general, our work is always better after the canter. So remember that when warming up for a test.
Other points: ride through the short sides, ride the outside aids through the turns onto diagonals, bring circles in smaller and leg yield the haunches out. I should have written about last week’s lesson, because that was a really good one, and we did a great canter exercise that I forget … canter up the quarterline, leg yield to the track, trot somewhere? Was there a circle somewhere? Shit. It was a really good exercise.
Anyways. Still having a hard time getting forward and consistent contact, but it is coming together faster. Michele showed me a technique to use to help get her into the contact—basically riding forward into widened contact, but knowing when to stop using it and use proper elbow-mouth alignment. Not rely on it as a crutch. We did a lot of canter work tonight, and Michele said she could tell I’d been doing my homework, which means something, considering I only do flatwork 3 or so days a week, the rest we do conditioning and jumping. We finished up the canter work with cantering down (up?) the diagonal, trotting at X, and picking up the new lead in the corner, hey, that’s practically first level! It went pretty well, only one transition bobbled in the corner. In general, our work is always better after the canter. So remember that when warming up for a test.
Other points: ride through the short sides, ride the outside aids through the turns onto diagonals, bring circles in smaller and leg yield the haunches out. I should have written about last week’s lesson, because that was a really good one, and we did a great canter exercise that I forget … canter up the quarterline, leg yield to the track, trot somewhere? Was there a circle somewhere? Shit. It was a really good exercise.
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