So we're trying to ingrain it as much as possible before she leaves.
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| Favorite Barn Rat taking a walk break on her ride du jour. |
All in all, it was really productive, mainly because I was able to get the same quality of work out of him as I did in my Saturday lesson, fairly quickly, without struggling, and it was not an accident.
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| My little drylotted air fern. |
There was one big learning moment, where I thought he needed my weight over to the left to straighten him up, and she called me out for not sitting straight. I said, "Okay, I think I'm doing what I'm supposed to do, what went wrong?" She said I dropped my left hip, when my hips always need to be level and parallel to the ground. It was my shoulder/torso, not hips, that needed to go over.
She also said he only needs me to do that to straighten him up, when his spinal processes are rotated, and I need to feel when that is.
Both concepts were challenging, both mentally and physically.
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| It's the mooost wonderful tiiiime of the year: dapples! |
Definitely the coolest thing to happen was legitimate sitting trot shoulder in, in both directions. And I also got a good feel for what to do when he gets too round/heavy - up in the core, bump with the inside leg. It really created an active trot with lots of lift in the front end.
At the end, he gave me such a relaxed, swingy, forward, through trot that my trainer just stopped talking and let me cruise, and eventually started teaching the next lesson. She was like "It looked like you were enjoying yourself and you were pretty much done, I wasn't going to stop you." It just felt so good. I could have done that trot for days.
One more lesson on Thursday then I have to try and maintain this on my own for the next two weeks!
I am imagining riding that glorious trot and smiling! So awesome that you are putting these pieces together!
ReplyDeleteThis is not at all related to your post, but I want to squish his cute dapply belly!
ReplyDeleteThat sounds really amazing! :-) Very happy for you.
ReplyDeleteYou can do it!
ReplyDeleteI hate it when trainers leave in those moments of "crap, I'm just starting to turn round the next bend," but you'll be okay. You're a thinking rider.
Paddy and Connor must have both been channeling the awesome trot last night. Don't you just want to ride that for DAYS!??!
ReplyDeleteyay!!! consigning something to muscle memory is mayyyyybe the hardest thing ever - but at least being aware of the issue will help. you can do it!!
ReplyDeleteSo jealous of the dapples.
ReplyDelete