Lesson Notes: Outside Aids, Use 'Em

Because I was traveling on business, I didn't ride at all between last week's jump lesson and this week's flat lesson. C. took him out a few times, which I knew meant I would get a much softer, looser horse than I usually do, but I didn't know how our absence from each other would go.

Answer: not too bad! He came out soft, and loose, and giving, and more or less willing to step up when I asked. I was cruising around, head up in the clouds, sighing happily and comparing the horse I was sitting on to the tight little rubber band of resistance I used to have...and then T. let me know that my horse was tuning me out and trit-trotting around and could I make him do stuff already?

Oh. Right. That. Fortunately, throwing stuff into the mix worked immediately, and I could tell that it worked immediately. Leg-yields, spirals in and out, baby shoulder-in, teardrops off the wall, 10m circles off the long side, in the middle of the ring, etc. Yeah: there's his hind end.

We did the most work on the canter, because I was trotting around and thinking with amazement, I am not entirely sure what to fix next. There wasn't, in that moment, a whole lot to fix - things to improve, always, but at that moment in time? Nothing really broken.

So I tried some canters, and broke stuff, and then got my kick in the pants. New and emerging problem: my bad habit of collapsing my right hip and shoulder in the canter transition is interfering, badly, with our right transitions. It's offloading him onto his right front, and hitching up my outside aids, and it means that we are getting a whole lot of mixed signals about that right lead. So I have homework: deeper in my outside leg, straighter on my inside, stop screwing my horse up. (Though the very back of my brain is a teensy bit worried - hocks? I will put it out of my mind and work on balance, first.)

Left lead strikeoffs were just fine. In the canter itself, and really throughout my riding, is my bigger homework assignment: outside aids. Nail them down. Keep them deep and supporting and get him into them. Sit down on my outside rein in the canter, really commit to it, don't just wiggle it now and then and then clamp the aids on in a panic when he zooms to the wall.

Small secondary problem addressed as well: cantering down the long side, Tris drifts in. After one or two huge struggles to keep him straight down the line, I asked T. to watch and analyze. His answer as that Tris is offloading onto that inside shoulder to avoid striking off properly with the outside hind. Answer, as always: more inside leg to outside rein. Like, a LOT more. Way more than any other time. So I did one or two long side canters focusing hard on the balance between those aids, and presto. It was not clean and straight, but I kept him in line.

Next ride: Thursday, some ring schooling and maybe if it's not raining and/or semi-light, a short hack.