Follow-Up Lesson

I was really hoping to follow-up the success of bareback riding last night with a great lesson. I have to say I was not disappointed! It was super hot, even though we waited until 7pm, and Secret was feeling super lazy. But we started with (surprise, surprise) more circles!

First we were doing them in the corners... trotting the long side, walking, and circling in the corner. This was to work on trying to get her to do a nice, deep, 90o corner. After a few of these we started working on the bigger circles again trying to get her to bend around the inside leg. She is still having difficulty doing it perfectly, but I could feel that she was getting more responsive with less effort from me... my trainer commented on it as well! So we are definitely making good progress there.

We ended, as usual, with some canter work. This took awhile because it was so hot that Secret got tired pretty quickly. So, we cantered a few laps to the left. Then had to stop and rest before going to the right. I've known for awhile that I ride heavy on the left. To compensate for it, I tend to drop my right shoulder and lean my upper body slightly to the right. It's not so obvious when we're cantering to the left, but that is Secret's bad side (she doesn't like picking up that lead). So tonight, when we started going  to the right, my trainer stopped me and started giving me tips on how to be more even. Of all the things she told me I found that the most effective was to really try to turn not just my upper body but my hips as well when I was looking through the turn. A few of the other tips that she gave me were: stretch the right heel way down, lengthen from the waist to the top of the rib cage on the right. I found that when I was focusing on looking through my turns, turning my upper body AND hips, and bending my horse with my legs I had NO time to focus on being scared of panicked of actually cantering! What a difference that made! Here's another shocker: when I wasn't panicking, my horse didn't get fast!

It's also very comforting to know that if I sit really deep and say "whoa", my horse will immediately transition down. I find that knowing that relaxes me and encourages me to sit down in the saddle rather than get tense.

We didn't have any "perfect" canters tonight, but we did have several really good ones. We started to Secret's bad side (the left), then went to the right, then back to the left. On the last few passes to the left, Secret was getting really tired and was having a hard time picking up the correct lead. So I kept cueing in, breaking to the trot, and cueing in again until she got the correct lead and then let her stop and walked her out.

So, to summarize the progress we made this lesson:
(1) More responsive to leg and bending better.
(2) Responding nicely to seat for downward transitions. Not so much from walk to stop, but definitely from canter to trot and trot to walk.
(3) My seat at the canter is getting much better.