My Own Personal East German Judge

If you don't know this about me already, here are two important facts:

1. I'm a perfectionist
2. I'm extremely hard on myself

But I'm sure if you've spent any meaningful amount of time around me when I'm riding, (or, hell, just even scroll back in the archives and read some of the old posts), you knew that already. The East German judges may no longer be in the Olympics, but they're alive and well inside my head when I'm riding, and today was no different.

In the spirit of interjecting some positivity into the proceedings, I'll say this: I managed to ride both horses today rather than just Shadow, so that's good. There are a few more positive points, but this paragraph isn't really working the way I want it to, and revising my posts is an anathema to my cutting edge bite-me-Strunk-and-White stream-of-consciousness style. So what's a grammar revisionist to do?

New paragraph!

Anyway, the plan for today was to work on:

• Keeping my hands up
• Keeping my core engaged
• Not hollowing my back
• Keeping the horses stretching into the bridle.

As usual, Shadow was first up. Things started out pretty well, he was moving pretty nicely off of my seat and stretched down into the bridle fairly easily. I practiced spiraling in and out on a circle in the walk, which went pretty well, although I quickly fell into my habit of putting my hands down, and looking at his head instead of where I was going. When I moved to trot, I still didn't have much success keeping my hands up, and looking where I was going, although I didn't feel like I was hollowing my back or disengaging my core. After working in the trot for a while, (which by the way had lots of nice impulsion, and was fairly relaxed) I went back down to walk and let him stretch, which he happily did. Once the walk break was over, I got a little greedy, and decided to try the walk/canter transitions that I worked with L on over the clinic. I did a decent job of generating impulsion to prepare for the transition, but when I asked for canter, I wasn't anywhere near as clear as I needed to be with my aid, and I collapsed my core, which caused Shadow to take off in a hollow, un-balanced trot.

It was about this time that the East German judge took over the running commentary. Unfortunately, East German Judge is far more interested in delivering criticisms rather than suggestions for improvement. To try to stave off frustration, I backed off of the walk canter departs, and started concentrating on my position again in the trot. But here's the other thing about East German Judge: Once she shows up, she won't shut up.

In other news, yes, my inner East German judge is female. No, I don't understand why. Don't ask questions, just go with it. Ok?

After a while of some unproductive riding around aimlessly trying to focus on actually fixing the problems rather than on the scores I was getting (I mean, really, 3.7!? That's just rubbing it in.) I finally came to my senses, and decided to cut my losses, and walk Shadow out. Position-wise, by ride started out pretty good, but at this point, it had all pretty much fallen apart. However, as I was walking him out, , Shadow was relaxed, working through his back, and stretching into the bridle, so I at least accomplished one of my goals.

If you're playing along at home, you've probably figured out that Ziggy was up next. I decided this time, since I know that Ziggy's good about relaxing into the bridle and stretching, I would stay at a walk and work on all the position stuff. I wasn't having much success keeping my core engaged, or in not looking at my horses head (for Gods' sakes, it's not like the directions are posted there or anything.) That being said, I UPPED MY HANDS! It's all about the small victories.

For tomorrow's ride(s), I'm going to pare down the amount of things I work on, and really focus on mastering what I'm working on, rather than pushing for more. I also realized that for the longest time, riding at my house has been fairly unfocused, and I've allowed both horses to get away with falling in at the shoulder on turns, and I haven't been as expecting of energy as I should be. So, add those to the list of things that need to be fixed.

I know if I keep at it, I'll get to where I want to be, I just need to keep chipping away at problems one at a time, and try not to listen to the East German judge too much.