Right Round

So, let's start off with the bad news, and the I can get on to the good stuff.  Today is Monday, and normally I have a riding lesson on Monday nights. Well, as has been the case for the past several Mondays, my corporate overlords mandated that I attend a conference call with my Korean counterparts right smack in the middle of my lesson time. To say that I am furious about this, is something approaching understatement. Yes, I am looking for another job.

Anyhow, that said, after I fulfilled my grim obligation, I got home at about 19:30, and was in serious need of some Hippotherapy. So, I tacked up Zigs, and mounted up. Before I get any further, I'm going to detail the exercise program I'll be using to get Zigs in shape for the horse trial:

• Day 1: Hack around the neighborhood


• Day 2: Dressage, focus on one or two specific items


• Day 3: Trot poles and Two-point


• Day 4: Interval training


• Day 5 Dressage, focus on different item from Day 2

Since I hacked around the neighborhood yesterday, that means today was Dressage. I decided that today, we were going to work on trot circles, as they have always been a big challenge to me, and I've noticed that Ziggy has started majorly cheating on them, and since I would really prefer not to see, "For the love of God, the Dressage test said CIRCLE at A. Not a SQUARE!" written on my Dressage test comments, I think it would probably be a good idea to start working on those again. They went decently well, but I was having a really hard time getting Zigs to bend for the entire circle. I'd get about a quarter to a half of it, and then he'd try to totally straighten out and do this weird counter-flexing thing. I did a bit of spiraling in and out on both reins, but I will freely admit that they were not the roundest circles Dressage has ever seen. I really need to get some cones, and set them up in a 20 meter circle so that I can learn to visualize how big one actually is. Ordinarily, I'm pretty good at judging distances, but for some reason, I suck at eyeballing a 10 meter radius. Part of the problem is that right now, I don't have an arena to ride in, so I don't have the convenient sides to help me see the width. But, I need to be able to see that without an arena for when Psycho Pony shows up in the Cross Country phase, and I need to circle to defuse him.

I've put those on the shopping list, along with a wristwatch with a stopwatch. Right now, I have to take one hand off of the reins and take out my pager to get a look at the time. That works OK when I'm trotting, but once I start doing serious interval training, I really don't like the idea of taking one of my hands off of the reins to check the watch while I'm galloping. What can I say? I'm a bit of a control freak.

Speaking of galloping, once the trot circles were going reasonably well, I did a little bit of canter circles. Those went considerably better. It seems like cantering is easier for him than trotting is, because I had very little trouble getting him to bend on both reins, and my circle was a lot rounder. Of course, that could just be from the practice I did at the trot. ;) Zigs had worked pretty hard by this point, so we took a long walk break. While we were doing that, I practiced shortening and lengthening his stride. It wasn't 100%, but I could definitely feel the difference when I asked him to shorten, and when I asked him to move out. When I could, I closed my eyes as I was giving my cues to help me evaluate my position, and focus on feeling the difference in stride. It worked pretty well, but I think that's something best done on the end of a longe line, where you don't have to worry about your horse suddenly deciding that the right rein is boring, and that it really needs to go to the left. To cap things off, I worked on the cruising canter versus the collecting canter positions. It wasn't 100% successful, but there were very brief moments of brilliance as far as the collecting part goes. The cruising part, he's all about. ;) Which reminds me, a friend of mine linked me to an awesome T-Shirt that I must have.

Tomorrow is trot pole work, and it's really late, so I need to wrap this up and get to bed.

From Little Acorns Do Mighty Oaks Grow

Two posts for the price of one! I love that Blogger allows you to post via email. Shortly after I posted the previous post, I headed home from work, and got home a little after 18:00. Since it was still bloody hot outside, I decided I'd decompress inside for a bit before going out to put my Alfalfa addict to work. After checking email and other various and sundry things on the tubes, I changed into my breeches, and went outside at about 19:30, and the weather was perfect. Ziggy must have been ready to work, because he walked right up to the trailer and waited for me to tack him up.

I decided that tonight, I was going to focus on my transitions. Specifically, Canter and stopping, with a heavy focus on stopping. I'm serious about going to the horse trial in October, and right now the thing I view as my number 1 must fix is being able to slow down my horse. If September rolls around and I can't bring Zigs from a canter to a walk in 4 strides, I'm not going to the trial. I do not want the technical delegate walking over to my trainer and asking her, "Why can't your student stop his horse?". I might be being a little too hard on myself as far as this goes, but I have good reason. When I first started riding, I was riding a friend's horse around the arena at the barn, and was having trouble getting him to trot. As we came around the long side of the arena, he decided to teleport sideways over the railroad tie outside of the arena, almost running over one of my other friends, and a girl who was grooming her horse. That's when it really hit home that horses can be dangerous not just to me, but to other people on the ground, and that if I ever lost control, people could get seriously hurt or worse, and it would be my fault. As I'm fond of saying, every horse will teach you something, and that particular horse taught me the importance of remaining in control of your horse at all times. This would be why I'm working so hard on it now so that September comes around, my biggest worry is where I'm going to buy my tall boots, and what color eventing vest I'm going to buy. And as for the canter, there's no deeper reason behind it beyond not wanting to get eliminated in Dressage because I couldn't make my Thoroughbred canter on command. It's a point of pride, or something.

I started out with walk/halt and I'd basically just pick a point and say "hell or high water, his feet will not move past that point." That went pretty well, although I think I'm having to use too much rein for walk/halt. Be that as it may, 95% of the time, Zigs was at a standstill when I reached the point that I'd picked for the halt. The other 5% of the time, he was maybe 2 or 3 strides past it. For now, that's within acceptable tolerances, but by September, I want to have all 4 feet stopped precisely at the point I pick 99.999% of the time. The don't have to be square, just not moving. I'll get stop first, and work on square later. I spent probably 20 minutes working on just walk/halt and after I got three good ones in a row, I put Zigs on the buckle and let him stretch and move out. When I picked him back up again, I did a little bit of on turn on the forehand to give him something for him to think about. I was trying to do the exercise where you walk the short side, turn on the forehand, walk down the short side the opposite direction and turn on the forehand again to go back the way you came, but I can't walk into the turn on the forehand yet. I have to stop, then turn and walk again. If I try to walk into it, Zigs tends to pop his shoulder to the outside and start doing laterals.

Once I was reasonably satisfied with the walking work, I picked up a trot. This time the agenda was trot/walk. I started out by saying, "Ok, I'm going to trot 4 strides, and then walk.". That didn't work so well, as I spent so much time counting my trot strides, I kind of forgot to do things like ride, which made a down transition nigh impossible. So, I went back to picking an arbitrary point in the pasture, and hell or high water, walking once I reached that point. That went considerably better. After several good trot/walk transitions, I upped the ante, and used the same strategy of picking a random point in the pasture, and coming to a complete halt exactly at that point. I'm not gonna lie, the first several were kind of embarrassing. I'd get a halt.... 20' away from where I wanted it, and I had problems with him sneaking forward. Since thinking "halt here" wasn't working so well, I started visualizing imaginary grounding spikes shooting down from my stirrups at the point where I needed to stop, and slowly, things began to improve. After a while, I was trotting him at a pretty good clip the entire length of the pasture, and fairly reliably getting a halt where I wanted it, or at the very least, close. Of the times when my halt did not go as well, I wound up 4-6 strides off of where I wanted. Again, not optimal, but definitely a marked improvement. By this point, I really wanted to work on canter, but I didn't want to move on until I nailed at least one trot/ halt from all the way across the pasture, heading towards the barn. The third attempt was the charm, and I again gave Zigs his head back, and let him walk and stretch.

After a stretch break, I did a bit of shoulder in to get him back into a working frame of mind, and once I felt that he was being responsive enough to leg, I put him back on the bit, and started thinking of my plan of attack for the canter. The most important thing for me as far as today's canter went. was that I got the canter immediately. I started the way we usually do, pick up a trot, and ask for the canter on the circle. I got it, for sufficient values of "immediate". And by "sufficient values", I mean half the circle. I'd ask for canter and get a crazy fast trot. After the third attempt, I got pretty frustrated. I went back to a walk to think for a bit and figure how how to make this exercise easier for Zigs and I both to succeed at. I remembered that while the Oracle was here, she suggested that I do walk/canter transitions, as that would make it easier to make sure my body was in the right position. As I remembered, Ziggy did that transition pretty well when I rode with her, so it was well worth a shot. I'm really glad I decided to do that because on the first time I asked for a canter, I immediately felt what the problem was/is. When I shift my outside leg back for the canter transition, I try to put it way too far back, which throws me out of sync with Zigs, leaving him to say, "Ok, seriously, dude. What the hell?" I then halted for a minute, and practiced feeling the moment when my outside seat bone leaves the saddle, it turns out that it's way earlier than I was thinking. Armed with this new-found knowledge, I immediately tried a canter transition, and got it a couple of strides after I asked. Then it was back down to walk, and another few tries. When the fifth canter transition rolled around, something justt "clicked", and I got it right after I asked for it. Wanting to prove to myself this wasn't just a fluke as well, I switched rein and got the same result on the right side! Of course, tomorrow, I expect to have the same troubles at canter again, because that's just the way these things work.

I was running out of daylight, but things had been going so well as far as the downward transitions, I wanted to at least try canter to halt. This was a big challenge, as once Zigs starts cantering, he really doesn't see a reason to stop unless forced to. He also tends to have a nice rhythm for the first few strides, and then he tries to rush. I had to resort to yanking teeth amore than a few times, and I was starting to worry that I'd just ruined my ride. With daylight fading, I set a very simple goal. I was going to get a canter, canter a quarter of a circle, and halt before I made half the circle. On the second try, I got exactly that, and immediately decided to quit there. I still have quite a ways to go as far as improving my brakes, but I feel like I made several good strides in that direction, and I hope to continue my work this weekend. I probably won't ride tomorrow, but I'll definitely ride Saturday and Sunday. More then!

Must be something in the air...

(Trying out Blogger's post by email function, so if the formatting on this post is weird, that's what's going on.)

Well, it's Tuesday, and since Ziggy got two days off after XC schooling at Pine Hill, I figured it was time to pull him out of his stall and put him through his paces.  Tonight, I decided the ride would be about two-point, up transitions, and practicing the "cruising gallop" versus the collected gallop positions.  I am happy to report that the up transitions went very well.  I had to work a little bit to get the right lead canter, but that's not too much of a surprise, as that's his weaker side.  I was able to pick up the left lead like clockwork, so maybe my problems with the canter transition are behind me??  I can but hope.

The two-point went decently.  I'm still not 100% convinced I have the right form at two-point, and I feel like I'm having to put way too much weight on my hands on the horse's neck.  I'm also having a difficult time reconciling that with the critique I got when we were schooling this past weekend that I hold my hands up too high.  I suppose I could do something radical and ask my trainer: When is it OK to rest your hands on the horse, and when do they need to be off the horse?  Of course, if any of you reading this would like to chime in, feel free.  One of the other things I'd like to do is take a longe line lesson.  I'll probably try to set one of those up next month, as there's several things I'd like to work on without reins or stirrups.  Not that I'm expecting to fix everything in one lesson, but I'm hoping to at least be told what I'm doing right, what I'm doing wrong, and what I can do to fix my inconsistencies.  

The cruising galloping position vs. the collected galloping position really didn't work at all.  There were moments this weekend when I could feel it, but today, it just wasn't happening.  Of course, this is something that's apparently three levels above me, so I'm not expecting great strides of progress in it just yet.  I'll keep working at it, and hopefully as I approach that level, I'll get closer and closer to being able to make the switch successfully and consistently between those two positions.  

So, why all of the sudden intense focus on my jumping position?  Thought you'd never ask.  My goal for the summer is to improve my riding to the point to where I would be able to ride GAG at a horse trial, and not embarrass myself, or my trainer.  I looked up the GAG Dressage test, and I think I can do it.  It won't be a sub-30 penalty test or anything like that, but I feel like I can get through it cleanly, and not have people watching saying to each other, "What in the hell is he doing here?".  As far as XC goes, I can make it over all of the GAG fences on the Pine Hill course with one leg on each side, and myself in the middle.  Well, I can make it over the fences one at a time.  I have yet to actually string them together and jump one after the other.  I feel like I need a *lot* of work on both myself and my horse to make sure I can jump XC safely and cleanly.  As far as stadium goes, I've not seen a GAG stadium course, so I'm not sure whether I'd be up to that one as well.  But, at any rate, I will spend the summer practicing as hard as I can, and we'll see where I am come September.  Hopefully, I'll be able to twist Saga's mom's arm into hauling Zigs and I out for another XC schooling sometime soon.I'm falling asleep as I write this, so I think I'm going to go to bed.  Tomorrow I'm heading over to Duchess' house to go ride Sonata.  I was supposed to ride today, but Duchess' mom and I decided that tomorrow would work better for the two of us, so tomorrow it is.  Until then!