The Tyranny of the Left Rein

It's been a really good week of riding, but I think both Selten and myself are a bit tired. As a case in point--I got home from the barn a little after 16:00, and after doing a few small things around the house, laid down on the couch, and promptly zonked out for about 45 minutes. I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised, according to FitBit, I've burned an average of 3000 calories a day, and have almost certainly not consumed anywhere close to that many. Even with all the candy and cupcakes I've been eating. (They're all gone now, in case you were wondering. And for the record--they were delicious.) I woke up later than I intended, 07:00 instead of 05:30 (Oops. But... I'm on vacation?), and made it to the barn just before 09:00, and brought Selten up, and started tacking.

Happily, Christine asked me what I wanted to work on today, and as I noted in yesterday's entry, I asked that we work on turn on the forehand, turn on the haunches, and reinback.

Ok, also: is it rein back, or reinback?!?

Just checked the USDF 2-3 test. It's rein back.

Now that that's settled, onto the lesson. We started out working turn on the forehand on the left rein, and, put mildly... it did not go terribly well. At the moment, turn on the forehand is hands down my weakest movement, and while I always kind of suspected why, today it was made very, very plain. Which for sure was frustrating, but by breaking the movement down piece by piece, (and, candidly, still failing to successfully execute the movement), I've identified several issues to fix.

1. I am trying to make the movement happen with my hands, especially on the left rein, which is his harder side.
2. My left leg goes completely MIA, so I'm not helping him execute the movement at all.
3. I'm not making enough of a distinction between my leg being at the girth, ahead of the girth, and behind the girth
4. The left wrist is at it again. I noticed that whenever I get frustrated, or am trying to make something happen, my left wrist almost immediately starts curling in, and the rein comes across the neck, which of course only further impedes what I am trying to do. Then I get tense in my upper body, then the horse gets tense, etc.
5. I tend to try and make the whole turn happen, rather than being content to get a step or two.

To shake these issues out, Christine had me walk down the quarterline, and leg yield the shoulders in, and once I was in that position, bring his haunches towards the rail. Pretty much immediately, the issues highlighted above started making themselves apparent one-by-one. Job #1 is to stop curling my wrist, and keeping my inside rein hand low and open. Since the barn will be gone next week at championships, I intend to spend a lot of time working on the exercise of leg yielding the shoulders to the center, and bringing the haunches around while staying out of my hands.

There's not too much to report on the rein back today. I made a few incremental improvements in making sure to use leg rather than reins to make him back up, and got a little better about making the differences in my seat clearer between "back up" and "walk off". I do need to come into the halt more straight with more impulsion, but that's going to continue to be a work in progress.

So, all in all, a good lesson. A bit frustrating at points when my brain couldn't make my body do what I knew I needed to, but that's just going to come with more time and reps. It was just a year ago that I was having no end of trouble with walk/canter, and generally keeping my horse straight. Just keep grinding, don't beat myself up too much, and a year from now, I'll likely have a completely different set of nagging issues. Such is the way with Dressage, it seems. And on that note, over the past year, or so, I've noticed a very definite shift in my overall mindset in how I approach Dressage. It's all about the training and improvement, not the hardware and satin from the shows. What was good enough today, is not going to be good enough tomorrow. And, I'll be working on riding inside leg to outside rein my entire career, I'll just be doing slightly fancier stuff while I'm doing so.

Not gonna lie, though... I definitely enjoy seeing all my ribbons when I walk into the guest room, and drinking wine out of my first place HDS wine glasses. As for tomorrow, I think the plan is to do a training session where Christine rides for half of it, and I ride for the other.

G r a t i t u d e

Another good ride today. So far, I've ridden every day this week, and Lord willing and the creek don't rise, I'll ride tomorrow and Friday. Getting out to the barn this week has been super simple, since I decided to take a week's vacation off of work, with the express intent of spending every day at the barn. I'm tired, and maybe ever-so-slightly sore today, but I've been getting a ton out of my lessons. To recap the past two days, we worked on:

• Collected canter
• Shoulder in (at trot)
• Haunches in (at trot)
• Renvers (at trot)
• 10m Canter circles with haunches in
• Trot down quarterline, renvers, take that shape to the rail
• Canter down quarterline, shoulder in, take that shape to the rail

In an excellent example of why I need to recap my lessons on the day I have them, that's mostly what I remember from them. Well, that and a couple of general themes. First off, I'm starting to get the hang of how a proper, uphill collected canter is supposed to feel, and relaxing as I'm riding it. Earlier, I had the tendency to tense my adductors, and curl my shoulders (for reasons that are still lost to me), making things so much more difficult than they need to be. I also had the bad habit of trying to make the collected canter happen by tryng to use my hands to rate the gait rather than using my core and seat to set the length of the stride, and only using a half halt in the outside rein when needed, and staying he hell out of his mouth otherwise. By no means is it yet perfect, but it is starting to get more consistent. Plus, I've had several good circles of the collected canter, so I've memorized what it should feel like. And I know they were good because my trainer was yelling, "YES! EXACTLY LIKE THAT!". So what, exactly was that feeling? My legs were relaxed, but my inside leg was on when needed to keep the forward, my seat and core were keeping the horse compact, and my hands were quiet, inside rein open to invite the shoulder to come in towards centerline. The overall feeling was that he was sitting on his haunches, and if I had the desire, I could have put his shoulders anywhere I wanted them by just using my upper thigh. Since the collected canter was going so well, towards the end, my trainer had me canter 10 meter circles with haunches in. Which, I think is a preface to canter pirouettes.

Generally speaking, I'm also starting to get much better about using my core, and getting out of the nasty habit of trying to fix so much stuff with my hands, which Selten made readily apparent. That trait is one of the things I like the most about him--he is an excellent tattle-tale for my bad habits. And speaking of bad habits, when my reins are too long, or when I'm tired or tense, rather than having the rein aids come from my elbow, I will tense my forearms and curl my wrists, which, you guessed it--translates to tension in the horse. I wish I could tell you that's getting more consistent, but that is very much still a work in progress. Some days it's better, (like today), other days, decidedly not. It'll get there, just need more time and reps (and probably my trainer screaming at me about it a bit more won't hurt.)

The final thing worth noting from the last few days' rides was a realization I came to yesterday, towards the end of my ride: I have the tendency to over ride. And I know exactly how I got that. It's a coping mechanism I developed riding Shadow. Towards the end of my riding him, he had taken to breaking in half, so to try to avoid that, I would try to ride very precisely, and micromanage every single body part to try to A) prevent the Rodeo and B) get some sort of advance warning one was about to take place. I came to this realization as I was cooling out, and replaying the lesson in my head, and noticed the parts of it that were the best were the parts when I stopped micromanaging every. single. little. thing. and... just rode and did what Christine was asking me to do. I even told her as much, and she agreed that that assessment was right on. So, something to keep firmly in mind, moving forward.

And forward we go! Onto today's lesson. Today, we worked a little bit of collected canter, and then Christine asked me if there was anything in particular that I'd like to work on. I had to think for a second, but came up with two things:

1. Trot extensions
2. Rein back

On the trot extensions, Christine had me do a 20m circle, extend on the open side, and collect on the rail to start with, just to get him using his hind end, and then I went large around the school, going up the quarterline instead of the rail on the long side, collecting on the short side, and extending as soon as I got straight on the quarterline. As always, the corner is where you sit your horse down and tell them something's coming, and you ride inside leg to outside rein as you're extending the gait. To help with this, one of the exercises I moved to next was leg yielding out to the rail in the extension to both develop the feel of the inside leg riding to the outside rein, and to get Selten keeping his hind feet together and pushing up and forward, rather than letting them go wider than his front feet, allowing him to fall downhill. I did get one really nice quarterline of the extension, but I unfortunately couldn't memorize the feel, I was so busy trying to force myself to not tuck my knees up, keep my stirrups, and sit the trot, rather than flopping around like a narcoleptic fish. Oh, yeah, and keep breathing as well. That's important. The upshot is--I know I've got it in the tank, now to just chip away at each of those pieces, and in time, it will come.

Now, before I move on to the rein back, a brief aside. About a week ago, my beloved Mountain Horse field boots that I've had since 2012 blew a zipper. Which, according to Austin Shoe Hospital would cost $150 to fix, and take 4-6 weeks to get done. So rather than wait that long, I decided to go ahead and buy a new pair of boots. As I write this, I have a pair of Airat field boots on order, and I've been riding in my winter riding boots, and let me just say... there is a reason I stick to my regular riding boots, even when it's freezing out. What I really want is a pair of these:

Don't tell my sweetie, but a pair of those may wind up being my Christmas gift to myself. :D

Anyway, onward to the rein back. The main takeaways on that for me today are:

• It is an excellent way to develop your horse's hindquarters in a low-impcat way,
• A square halt is paramount to the quality of your reinback.
• You can, in fact supple a horse while they are backing.
• Add. Leg. to. rein. back. The backwards movement does NOT come from your hands!!!
• Rather, the reinback comes from your seat rocking forward ever-so-slightly, adding leg, and when it's time to step off foward again, tuck your seat back under, and, you guessed it--add leg.
• The reinback to the forward walk should be a fluid movement. 4-5 steps backward, to an immediate forward step. No pause in between.

To finish the lesson off, we ended with working a little on turn on the haunches at the walk. The sticky wicket for me in this movement currently is keeping the haunches in and walk active, as well as ensuring I'm putting my outside shoulder back. When I was working on the left rein, I for some reason decided that my left shoulder needed to be back, and was very confused as to why it wasn't working. I also need to do a better job of staying on my inside seat bone to pin him down to the spot and not let his haunches out of the movement. If I'm given my druthers tomorrow, I think I'll ask to work turn on the haunches and turn on the forehand again, and see what that brings. Looking forward to it.

In closing, I'd like to take the opportunity to 1) make the title of this entry make sense(unlike me, I know...) 2) give a brief snapshot of what's going on in non-riding life. As much as this blog is intended to be a chronicle of my riding efforts, I can't pretend that my riding occurs in a complete vaccum.

So, why gratitude? Put mildly, world and domestic events have been kind of a shitshow in 2020. We are still in the midst of a serious world-wide pandemic of COVID-19, which to date has killed 200,000 Americans. I forget how many globally, but America far and away has the most people who have died from the illness currently. Protests against police brutality and racism have been met with asymmetric uses of force by city, state, and federal government, and we are in the final 40 days of a seriously contentious and divided Presidential election. Not only that, but the economy is seriously hurting right now. There's a lot more, but I think that's enough to set the tone. Also, it's currently 23:40, and I want to wrap this up and go to bed so I can ride tomorrow.

So--again, why gratitude? Every day I go to the barn, having made sure I have a face mask to wear, I remind myself how INCREDIBLY AND UTTERLY fortunate that I am that I am in a position to own and ride such a wonderful horse, that I am currently still employed, and finally, that thus far Zhi and I remain relatively healthy. The rest of 2020, (and, if we're being 100% honest here, probably all of 2021 as well...) is going to be a crazy ride, so I'm going to do my best to be grateful for the things I have, and not devote much energy to worrying about things beyond my control. And that, I think, is kind of at the heart of why riding horses is so important to me. I can't be worrying about the results of a presidential election when I'm trying to collect a canter. I can't scroll through social media, or the news when I'm mucking out stalls, filling water buckets, sweeping, feeding, tacking, untacking, or cleaning tack. There's only the moment, and task at hand. Even the bad days, when I can't do a goddamn thing right in the saddle. From here on out, I intend to be grateful for every stride, be it a 10, or a 4.

New Horse, Who Dis?

Well then. It has been a hot minute since I've last posted on this thing. Nigh on EIGHT. GODDAMN. YEARS. if you're counting, which I am. As you might imagine, quite a few things have happened between then, and now. I reserve the right to do a longer retrospective post at some point in the future(hm... maybe for New Year's?), but for now, Imma just lightning round it.

• I got serious about improving my Dressage, and set myself a goal of earning my USDF Bronze medal.
• I've started competing in recognized Dressage shows, and qualified for SWDC regional championships at first level in 2019
• Scored > 70% in a recognized show
• I wound up Jousting both Zigs, and Shadow.
• I changed jobs twice since.
• I traveled to India, Germany, Iceland, and Belize.
• Shadow bucked me off, and I suffered, and recovered from an unstable burst fracture of my L2.
• Both Zigs, and Shadow had to be put down the same summer, within a month of each other. That was rough.
• The last time I jousted was 2015.
• I rode Icelandic ponies in Iceland. It was amazing. Also, Iceland in general is just epic.
• We did a trail ride through the Jungle in Belize
• Since Shadow and Zigs passed, I leased both an Irish sport horse, and a Morgan, both mares.
• Coincidentally, I discovered that I AM in fact, a mare person.
• So, of course, I bought a Gelding.

A 10 year old, 17.1 GOV, as a matter of fact. As I write this, I've had him for almost 5 weeks, and I'm extremely happy with him. That's honestly part of why I decided to get back on the blogging horse. In addition to that, I've decided that I'm going to try rather than setting New Year's Resolutions, I'm going to try setting yearly goals on my birthday, using this blog to track my progress toward (most) of them (some will stay off the internet, because, privacy), and I think also now that I've gotten very serious about training and showing, it'll be cool to have this as a time capsule to look back on, to see where I've come from. But, without any further gilding of the lilly, let's get to the good stuff. (dem goalz...)

Goals

• Figure out how to consistently ride at least 3 times a week, ideally 5.
• Qualify for GAIG championships in 1st and 2nd level
• Get my bronze scores at 2nd level
• Trot down centerline at least once at a recognized show at 3rd level
• Stretch Goal: Get my bronze scores at 3rd level, and earn my Bronze by my birthday 2021.

That's the plan. Now to put in the work.

They Call Him El Matador...

First, some silliness! Cash's mom and I were talking at work today, and she told me that she thinks that every horse has a mafia name, and asked me what Shadow and Zigs' names would be. I thought about it for a while and Ziggy is Fast Eddie, and Shadow is El Matador. It just seemed to fit. Now that that's sorted, back to the business at hand. On Saturday, I took a lesson from the Oracle, and, as usual, got a ton out of it. The lesson got off to a bit of a rocky start, however. I'm not sure what it is about clinics over at The Baron's arena, but every time I mount up on Shadow and start to warm up, I get fireworks. Discretion being the better part of valour, I got off and longed his ass. While I longed him, I learned a useful technique for getting him to stretch on the longe line. Point the whip at his ribs while vibrating the longe line to get him to bend on the inside. It took a while to get his attention back, but after he ran the boogers out, it worked pretty well on the left rein, and only sort of on the right rein, but since the objective was to get him to a point where I didn't have to re-enact 8 Seconds every 5 minutes, we didn't sweat it too much. With Pony Brain re-engaged, The Oracle asked me what I wanted to work on. I told her that I've been working on getting him to stretch into the bridle and I could use some help with it. My reasoning was that if he won't stretch into the bridle willingly, he's not going to collect properly, because he won't be working properly through his back. The first epiphany of the lesson was discovering that I'd been going about getting him to stretch into the bit wrong. I'm not quite sure how to describe what I was doing, so it's simpler to just relate the technique I learned:

1. Inside leg
2. Vibrate inside rein
3. Extend bit forward

And wouldn't you know it? It worked! Funny that. Another thing I learned doing this exercise is that I have a nasty tendency to just throw away my outside rein when he stretches out, which I'm thinking explains in part why I see him take a few steps, stretch into the bit, and then pull his head back up. He's looking for contact, not evading. The reason I did that was because I was under the misunderstanding that you just let the rein out and expect them to fill the space. What you are actually supposed to do, I learned, is "let the wheelbarrow go down the hill". Once I started concentrating on doing that, and not just throwing away my rein, lo and behold, I was getting much more consistent stretches, and I didn't have as much a problem with him hollowing again. It worked a bit better on the left rein than it did the right. On the right, I had to use the trick of widening my hands to change the way the bit was working in his mouth. After working on that exercise for a while at the walk, we switched to trot, where I discovered another problem I've been having that I haven't been paying attention to: my horse has a noodle neck, and I have a tendency to over-flex him, which allows him to pop out his shoulder and go wherever the hell he wants, as was evidenced by him teleporting out of the circle I had him on several times. After counter-flexing him around the circle a few times and a few well-timed swats with the whip, we mostly worked through that, and finished off the lesson by doing some work on laterals, which didn't go terribly well. The Oracle thinks I'll need to use spurs for the time being to get the laterals going, and plus, I need to have better control over his neck. As a quick aside, I also mentioned to the Oracle that I've been having a problem with being too willowy through my core, and keeping my hands too low, and at the end of the lesson, she told me that I didn't look willowy through my core at all, which was nice to hear. Definitely need to keep being mindful of it, though. All in all, it was a really good lesson, and while we didn't get a ton accomplished, I got a lot of new tricks for my toolbox, which I was eager to test out yesterday. And would you look at that? I'm no expert, but that seems like a perfect segue for talking about yesterday's ride, so let's strike while the iron's hot, shall we? Marvelous. Inspired by the success I had over the weekend, I dedicated last night's ride to working on the stretching exercises I learned at the clinic. Happily, results were largely positive. I was a lot more conscious about not throwing away my outside rein (it still happened from time to time, but I at least noticed and tried to fix it, though I didn't always succeed), and Shadow stretched fairly readily on both reins at the walk. Trot was rather a hot mess. I think because I was concentrating so much on whether or not he was stretching, I let my position fall apart, which made it difficult to give him clear signals. Rather than try to figure out what was going on at the trot, I went back to walk and kept working at the stretching, which was pretty successful. I capped off the ride with a little canter work, which didn't go well since I was really tired and I could feel myself arching my back and letting my core go completely loose. Wanting to end on a good note, I went back to working on getting Shadow to stretch at the walk, which he happily did.

Vote 4 Ponies

Quick update today. I only rode Shadow yesterday for a short time. There's lots of things going on right now that are stressing me out, so I decided that I really wasn't in a good state to work on anything, so I decided to try to make sure he kept stretching into the bridle, and not really fuss about anything else. It went pretty well. He still picks his head up at the trot, but I think he's starting to do it less. I have a lesson with the Oracle this weekend, so I'll be sure to ask her about it. That's really all there is to report, hopefully I'll feel more chatty after riding Ziggy this evening.

On the Importance of Having a Plan

Well, I guess they can't always be good rides, can they? After work, I had to run to the feed store and get feed for all my critters, and by the time I got home, it was pretty clear that I only really had time to ride one horse. Since Ziggy's just now getting back in to regular work, I figured a day off wouldn't hurt.

I was pretty tired, so I never really developed a solid plan for my ride with Shadow. I got as far as, "keep him stretching", and that's really about it.. The good news is that I'm to the point where I can feel when my position is wrong, the bad news is that I wasn't really able to do much about it. That being said, I had a fair bit of success keeping him stretching in the walk, although when I moved to trot, he kept hollowing and pulling his head out of the stretch. I had a moderate amount of success in getting him to stretch back into it. It has to be a strength thing.

I also tried a bit of canter, but due to my position not being all that great, the up transitions were rough. I did get him to stretch in the canter, but I could tell that my left seat bone wasn't solid in the saddle, so that made it a bit difficult to keep him from cheating on the turns. After cantering for a while, I realized that I was tired, my mind wasn't focused, and I was nearly out of light. When I untacked, despite the short ride (a little over 20 minutes), I was glad to see that Shadow had sweated a pretty good amount in all the right places, so at the very least, he got a good workout. Tomorrow, I'll try again, and hopefully A) have a better plan, and B) have enough time to ride both horses.

In Which a Strategem is Discovered

The third blog post in a row! (Well, fourth, if you count the video I posted today). This whole blogging thing may well be verging on becoming a habit. In the spirit of learning from yesterday's lessons, I changed up my approach to my rides today. Since I had to run to the grocery store, and was rather tired today, I was sorely tempted just to ride one horse or the other.

At least, until I remembered something L taught me at the clinic this weekend: A riding session doesn't have to be an hour long. You can go as little as 20 minutes as long as you go in with a plan, and are focused. That's exactly what I did, and it worked really well.

As is my usual preference, I rode Shadow first. The plan was to work on my hands, and keep Shadow stretching in the walk and trot. That's it. forcing myself to only concentrate on two things seems to have been the magic bullet. While I was more conscious of Shadow stretching and me keeping my hands up, it seemed that the other elements of my positioning that I need to fix just sort of fell into place. Moreover, I noticed that when things would fall out of place I could feel when it became "wrong". I would then quickly divert my attention to fixing the issue, and then go back to stretching Shadow and watching my hands. I did spiral in/spiral out on the circle, leg yield, voltes with lengthening and shortening strides and a little bit of shoulder in. They weren't all perfect by any means, but Shadow was very willing, and did a good job of stretching when asked. There are two questions about stretching that I want to ask a trainer the next time I'm in front of one.

1. When Shadow will stretch, after a couple of steps, he'll pick up his head and take away contact. Is that a strength thing, or an evasion?
2. At what point do I start putting more emphasis on getting him to come round on contact?

For my ride with Ziggy, I decided I would devote my focus to my ever-present core problem, since Ziggy will stretch and come round without any problems, and I was kind of bored with concentrating on my hands. Happily, my hands mostly behaved themselves. Keeping my core engaged went pretty well at the walk, but at the trot it was pretty hit and miss, and more miss than hit. Ziggy has a much bouncier trot than Shadow, which is one of the reasons why I decided to work the core thing on Ziggy. I figure, if I'm doing it right, when Ziggy's trot gets particularly bouncy, I'll be able to actually *sit* it, and not flop all over the saddle. The good news is, I did have a few flashes of brilliance, and although I wasn't always able to do anything about it, it was readily apparent to me when I was doing things wrong.

Once, when I had a pretty good trot going, I tried a canter transition on the right lead, and just got a unbalanced, strung-out trot. I then remembered that:

• Ziggy is 24.
• Ziggy is a Thoroughbred
• Ziggy has arthritic changes in his right hock.

It was about then that 2 and 2 added up to 4 and I recognized that our best chance for success was to start the canter on the left lead. After putting the trot back together and changing rein, I gathered him up and asked for canter again. It sort of worked. I did get a pretty good uphill canter, but he snuck in a few steps of trot, which I think was me not being clear enough with the lift of my inside seat bone. The actual canter was really nice. My core stayed engaged, and I played a bit with extending and shortening strides, and even got a bit of leg yield in.

A few times when I shortened the strides, I forgot to use my legs to keep impulsion going, and predictably, Ziggy dropped into a trot. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise as I learned or, more accurately, internalized something that I've known has been a problem for pretty much as long as I've been riding. On my downward transitions, my shoulders hunch and I curl forward, which makes my lower back arch, and me a hot damn mess in the saddle. I've been hearing it in lessons and from Cash's mom for years, but tonight was the first time I was able to consciously feel, analyze and internalize the transition from everything going well, to falling apart. In an attempt to capitalize on the new information, I picked up the canter again, and re-attempted the downward transition. This time, I felt things falling apart, and was able to at least put my shoulders back into position before becoming a hot damn mess. I wanted to try it again, but by this point, I was pretty much out of light, and it'd been a quite successful ride, so I called it a night, and will focus more on my downward canter transition when I ride Zigs tomorrow.