What happens when you don't ride between lessons.

So, along comes Sunday and my lesson and I STILL haven't ridden since the last one. My trainer calls and says she wants 6-8 ground poles in the arena to use during the lesson. Well, we had had an ice-storm the week before and the ground is still slick. So I have to move the ground poles from the outdoor arena to the covered arena. This sounds simple enough, but after I had moved four of them it proved to me alot more work than I had anticipated. There I am again, standing in the arena panting for breath trying to find the energy to groom and tack my horse. Not a good omen.

Fortunately for me, a little girl taking her lesson ahead of me arrived 30 minutes late and started her lesson 45 minutes late. So, when my trainer arrived and I wasn't ready, I blamed the 7yr old! :-) It also bought me 30 minutes to catch my breath!

When I first started taking lessons and was riding school horses I had done some ground pole work. BUT, my horse, my green horse, had never laid eyes on such before. Being the trail horse that she is, she wasn't afraid and was more than happy to walk over them. It wasn't until she had to trot over them that there turned out be a problem. Baby girl didn't know where to put her feet!

Then, with her starting and stopping and stumbling it became even harder for me to post. I also have a control problem, so my trainer was hoarse from yelling at me to look ahead and not down at the poles. As if all that weren't enough, then she wanted me to work on my two-point position. That was going OK, not great just OK, until she told me that my abdominal muscles should hold my body upright and not my spine. Ummmm... just FYI, a horse trainer should not argue muscle physiology with a muscle physiologist. God knows I love my trainer and she is a scary smart woman. She knows her horses and understands alot of the physics behind the movement. BUT, when it comes to muscle physiology I will always have a deeper understanding because I spent six years of my life getting a damn PhD! So, I get what she's trying to tell me, but in the heat of the moment I really need a better metaphor, otherwise the scientist in me rears its ugly head.

So, up-side of this lesson is that I know what two-point is supposed to fee like so I can practice it, my horse gets that she needs to figure out the poles on her own and is happily working on it, and my legs were better than last time. The down-side, I really NEED to PRACTICE two-point even though I feel silly doing it, I still need to work on my legs, and I need to make a committment to riding between lessons. Again, another successful lesson!