An Adjustability Lesson with Mary

On Saturday, Mary came down without Annie for once, so we spent a long, relaxing afternoon playing with multiple ponies. Up first was me on Connor. Mary asked what I was working on in Dressage, and I said "straightness and collection." 

She got to work building a line of two jumps that we ended up leaving as piles of poles the entire time, because it was just as productive that way. Once I was warmed up, she told me to come at them in a medium canter, and to count out loud, and I got it in an easy 5.

My Pivo is currently on a private beta firmware they shared with me and only me since they're finally taking me up on my offer to help them troubleshoot the S21 Ultra problem. It did good for the most part! I think I should've set it up a little further from the jumps and moved it down to "fast" from "frenzy", but I cannot complain about having Pivo media for the first time since January.

Pretty quickly, she started asking me to do it in 6.

Which was hard, but not impossible. Mary didn't like the way he was tipping his wither coming into the turn and bulging through my right leg though, which are his two cardinal sins in both jumping and Dressage, so she set up cones at both ends and told me I had to make the turn square.

 This was hard.

Vroom, I'm a motorcycle

As I've learned in my lessons with CGP, everything is harder when he's the type of "straight" that I formerly thought of as straight, and now know is banana shaped. If you aren't able to see the tipping and bulging in the GIFs, look at where we end up over the poles - we're not over the middle (white) part on the second set, we're over the green.

Very hard to ride correct related distances if your horse is not traveling straight.

As if the 6 wasn't hard enough, after we got it reasonably well, she told me to ride it in 7.

We're such a good team, when we're wrong about a distance, at least we're always on the same page about being wrong about that distance, lol

I laughed out loud. Was that for real, 7 strides in a line that ride as a 5 stride in a working canter? Yes, she was for real and thought we could actually do that. I was skeptical.

Tipping round the corner we go...

At first, I tried to make the 7 happen with my hands, because that's my default answer for everything. But this is why I love canter poles: I can kinda fake Second Level collected canter with too much hand on the flat, but I absolutely cannot do that over canter poles or jumps. I have to use my seat, my torso position, my thighs and my calves, because I just don't have enough control if I'm riding from my hands. And as CGP said to me in my lesson this week, "You can't just let him take you, you have to be in control of your own body in the collected work."

His wither is finally tipping less on this attempt, but you can clearly see I'm still trying to make it happen from my hand too much.

Finally, I put a lot of effort into controlling my body and stopped pulling, and we NAILED IT:

I am working so hard in this GIF it's not even funny

I mean, helloooooo, look at this boy go:

Can has this canter all the time please?

You can see in the last GIF that he almost looks taller, that he's not diving down with his chest, and that my hands really are following. It was an absolutely fantastic lesson that translated directly into what I'm working on in Dressage right now, and I am so lucky to have a BFF and wingman that can coach me through this!

Good pony