Cob Jockey: Weight

September 14, 2015

Weight

The new job has turned out to be 95% working from home, unless I go to a customer site, and I'm really trying to toe the line by not blogging at work so they continue to allow me to not commute the hour and a half to the office! So between that and the house taking up my free time after work...you see what's going on here.

But I have to get my last lesson down! My trainer figured out two enormous things.

Last week's lesson was about using my obliques more, which I am doing and has made a big difference - when my hands are also soft, he 'hears' my seat and core aids so well.

But all this week, our walk work has been great, but no matter how hard I try to maintain it through the upward transition to the trot, he got supremely stiff, and would not bend to the RIGHT, his good direction.

Trainer diagnosed the following:
- My weight was way over to the right (where he also was), when what I needed to do was move my body weight over the left (where he wasn't) to encourage him to go there. Not my hips, those stay level, more like my shoulders.
- When I use the inside rein when going right, I contract the right side of my body down, like a crunch. This puts tons of weight on the inside and collapses that side of my body.

When I corrected those two things, we got THE BEST trot work we ever have, I've never felt anything like that, it was so good she whipped out her phone to record it. She has never done that before. Sadly the video is private, but here's a screenshot:

The right side thing especially, I have never noticed that before, but I know now that it's something I've done forever. It feels very natural, and when I do it, I weight both the right foot and seatbone so hard. So many habits of Connor's make sense now that I've noticed it, and I've had some amazing rides since correcting it.

To fix it, (this is mine, not my trainer's) I think of a circle tattooed in the middle of my right side, with an arrow pointing up and an arrow pointing down. This helps me lengthen the side and keep the right shoulder up rather than driving down.

She said I have to start feeling this stuff myself instead of her telling me about it - it's not that the right will always need more weight, or the left. I sit pretty straight in general, but Connor needs me to be the pilot, he needs me to think more deeply than he is capable of in order to make us both go better. His stiffness isn't a result of soreness or not being trained, it's a result of me not being there for him, positionally.

That's my brief lunch break stream-of-consciousness. Two lessons this week, since my trainer will be gone for two weeks starting Saturday and I want to ingrain these new concepts as much as possible before I'm on my own. Gulp.