February 13, 2011

Group lesson! Yay!

I can't thank you enough for participating in this lesson. I felt it went really well, and I am excited for more in the future. I was nervous about how to make it all work, but I felt everyone did a great job. I'd have liked to do about 10-15 more minutes, but because of the warmth, Dillon was already pretty sweaty!

Because you shared this lesson, I just wanted to work on the basics. Gait development can do nothing but help, and I thought you achieved some great work in the trot and canter transitions today. I thought it was good that you had a little warmup to begin with and then we started the lesson. This will be wonderful for when we begin introducing lateral work (and expecting it to be stronger). The faster we can warm him up and condition him to that level, the easier the rest will come. We didn't get to much lateral work because of the time constraint, but I felt that you did a great job of showing how he's sticky to the right (and then we fixed it, yay!)

Your position was strong today. A little bit of added pressure with a photographer and being videod probably helped. Let your ideas be as strong as your position. Don't be afraid to ask, tell, demand. He makes you keep asking every time... he's training you to let him be lazy, but that's not going to fly for much longer if you'd like to accomplish 2nd level. You're almost there with these concepts, and I saw them start to bleed out today (good thing, bad analogy). Quicker, stronger corrections are okay once you KNOW you've established something. Maybe I'll just have to start growling at you ;)

Now, for using technology to our advantage, a few remarks on some of the photos Leah took. I'm hoping that seeing the photos and actually analyzing them will help. Not a lot of riders use photos to see what their horse is telling them, so don't take offense and don't let my feedback detract from your good ride; but as always, we went to make it better and I'm here to help :)

This photo is pretty good; it was from the warm up stage and you can see that by a little bit more EQUAL loading of the diagonal front/hind. Ideally we want to see the hind end loading first or more than the forehand; this tells us he's traveling in an uphill balance. With your position, I'd push your hands forward and close the elbows - but this doesn't mean clamp. A loose elbow and an effective leg will allow you to be more upright like this one below:

See the difference? Now, I'd love for your lower leg to be a little more forward but here it's your outside leg, so I'm not going to harp all that much. Your hands are more even and he's traveling nicely. Finding your spine in the saddle will help you engage from a stronger half halt. I'd also love you just a little further back in the post, more upright, but again, here's where you have to argue that it's a still frame and not a video.

In this photo, I see where you're making those concessions with your position to help him. This is where he's training you - it's a lot more work to carry you instead of let you help him with more weight to the forehand. It's not a hard thing for him to put his head down, it's hard to carry all of that on his hind legs. So, letting your position become more upright and your leg be long will help to train this more effectively.


Hope this helps. More later, promise!

LD