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Dec. 8th, 2008 08:25 amReally good lesson on Saturday. Trudi occupied herself with spooking at a small patch of snow that had blown through one of the doors and so was less concerned with spooking at her usual places, so that was a nice change of pace. Warming up at the walk, I was pretty convinced she didn't want to work, but when we started trotting she went right into a nice rhythm with her back up, and was not very resistant to bending. Canter was really good, started out and kept it slow the whole time. Trainer kept it low-key by having us canter in the nuetral areas, and just concentrating on getting the quality of the gait. We did lots and lots of transitions, and although I let her get a bit strung out on the right, she stayed pretty calm and didn't go rushing around or hollow. To the left we did some stretching where I was able to let my reins way out, and she stretched without falling, speeding up, dropping her back, or getting worried. Lots of praise and fussing over her for that one.
Then we worked some more on me. Trainer exposed the right side weakness I discovered for myself last week when I experimented with dropping the inside rein. When I give up the inside rein to the right, my right side twists and contorts and then goes fetal as soon as anything seems amiss (change of balance, speed, bend, frame, etc). I immediately start snatching for the rein and writhe horribly if denied it. It was bad. We worked on making me give it up for a little while at a time- hand up the neck to give the rein, make my body do the work, then take it back, give the left hand up, sit for a bit, take it back, alternate again... change directions, same thing. What totally floored me was that my right side weakness was also pretty obvious going to the left- I would have thought that the wall would have compensated for it more, but it was still quite apparant.
After the alternating work things got great with my seat (when I finally stretched out my right side, my right buttock went "TWANG!" and I felt the stretch all the way through my leg, hip, and back) and Trudi was a happy camper. She was all "uberstreitchen is my middle name, thank you may I have another?". So yay for a nice day. Boo to the fact that my life seems ever shorter on free time because I wanna ride...
I did manage to go christmas shopping and spend some quality time with the family this weekend, but I did not manage to put up the tree...drat. :(
Then we worked some more on me. Trainer exposed the right side weakness I discovered for myself last week when I experimented with dropping the inside rein. When I give up the inside rein to the right, my right side twists and contorts and then goes fetal as soon as anything seems amiss (change of balance, speed, bend, frame, etc). I immediately start snatching for the rein and writhe horribly if denied it. It was bad. We worked on making me give it up for a little while at a time- hand up the neck to give the rein, make my body do the work, then take it back, give the left hand up, sit for a bit, take it back, alternate again... change directions, same thing. What totally floored me was that my right side weakness was also pretty obvious going to the left- I would have thought that the wall would have compensated for it more, but it was still quite apparant.
After the alternating work things got great with my seat (when I finally stretched out my right side, my right buttock went "TWANG!" and I felt the stretch all the way through my leg, hip, and back) and Trudi was a happy camper. She was all "uberstreitchen is my middle name, thank you may I have another?". So yay for a nice day. Boo to the fact that my life seems ever shorter on free time because I wanna ride...
I did manage to go christmas shopping and spend some quality time with the family this weekend, but I did not manage to put up the tree...drat. :(
