Sunday Kate and I met up for her to give me a mini-version of her lesson of don'ts. She got on first to demonstrate. After about 10-15 minutes Pro stopped walking around counter-bent and was looking pretty good. When he does this correctly he breaks at the poll and tracks up easier and looks soft and forward. Unfortunately most of my pictures he's over-flexing or broke at the 3rd vertebrae (Kate didn't stay on him long once he was going correctly). But here's a fuzzy version to show how he looks when he's correct!
Then I got on and Kate yelled at me for about 30 minutes ;). Don't cross my rein over (and here I see why she got sucked into arguing with Gayle for awhile. The yelling started if my outside hand even got over his outside shoulder, well before it got to the crest). Trying to force my outside hand out and my inside hand forward to give felt like trying to ride with my feet. And Pro, of course, was all too happy to say "Oh, counter-bend? Ok, I can do that!" and torque his body to the outside or drop his head when my hands went down. I avoided beating Kate with the dressage whip, Pro avoided a melt-down from the confusing signals, and eventually we got a pretty nice trot. I brought him down to the walk intending to just reinforce the idea at the walk and get off and the turd turned back into a giraffe. I admit it, I bailed at that point. I'd had a very stressful week the week before and couldn't handle any more. Kate cheered me up and then Pro got a bath while I convinced myself I didn't hate him. He was super cute for his bath though, he liked the spa treatment, especially the mane massage.
Tuesdays tend to be my busiest days at work so I wasn't too sure about trying this whole thing out again tonight on my own, but I promised Kate to give it a try so off we went. It felt a little bit less like riding with my feet, but not much. Then the light bulbs started going off. Another "don't" for the list - DON'T tense your outside leg while trying to get him off your inside leg. That one made sense, if I tensed my outside leg his spine didn't have room to bend! Kate's talk of shifting your inside seat bone to the outside made more sense tonight, too. I sort of scooched the inside butt cheek towards the outside and that was a subtle enough cue that if he wasn't intentionally being dumb and I didn't have my outside leg braced he'd get off my inside leg. And then the major light bulb went off and I figured out the "why" of the outside rein being pulled out. It's to give him room to bend! So it's not so much pull the outside rein out like we'd been doing to the inside to get him to give his nose, but more of a holding the outside rein passively out so that he's not being held in this rectangle while I'm asking him to bend.
I vaguely remember someone teaching me that when a horse is correctly bent their neck should fill up the outside rein, but I always just figured that meant they'd magically bend into the rein. But just like with my outside leg I have to make the outside a pleasant place that he wants to go. If my outside hand is even over his shoulder than it's blocking the outside shoulder from going out and pushes him onto my inside leg. No wonder he's walking around counter-bent, I'm TELLING him to counter-bend with my old cues! After I figured that out Pro gave a big sigh and said "finally" and gave me an awesome ride. Before all the lights going off I was getting a quarter circle or if I was lucky a half circle of him going correct before I'd screw up a piece and it'd fall apart. After figuring out what was going on we walked and trotted in both directions with only momentary lapses (probably due to me dropping my hands as they typically resulted in him curling rather than staying up in the bridle).
I was so proud of Pro. Like everything in dressage, once I got out of the horse's way everything became very easy. I didn't get to play around with the awesomeness for very long because we were supposed to have company over at 7:30, but I think I've got it figured out enough that I can recreate it on Saturday. Now I wish I hadn't agreed to swap riding times with Kate ;). I want to see if I can do it again!
6 comments:
I'm so glad you figured out the "why" of the outside rein to the outside - I was confused myself! It does make more sense...I guess. I played around with it at the walk last night (post to come later) and found basically what you did - my hands don't cause the counterbending, my ass does! Well, my ass and thighs, actually.
Yay for the lightbulb moments. I can't wait to here now it goes on Saturday when you try again.
Oooh, I'm curious to see how Skate did with this. I'm glad someone else came to the same outside leg aids conclusion. I mean, it's sort of obvious when you think about it, but very hard to do while riding. I kept thinking I needed to use my outside leg to hold his butt in and that just made things worse.
Good revelations!! And I told you that you did a good job with him...it just needed overnight to marinate in your brain. :) Not to mention that I'm nowhere near as good (or as accurate) as Gayle when she explains it. So that wasn't helping him.
That definitely makes sense with your outside rein and leg...it helped me tonight!
Gotta love those lightbulbs! I'm glad you had a better ride. And I'm really interested by the "why" behind the outside rein thing -- the cues themselves seem totally counter-intuitive to me, but the explanation helped. Nice work!
Yay for the light bulbs! I love it when that happens. Another good explanation of all of this! Much appreciated! :) I'm glad you had a good ride!
Post a Comment