3 Things I (Re) Learn Every Time I Drop Stirrups

Happy No Stirrup November, everyone! I am not fully participating in the festivities for a variety of reasons that mostly boil down to, I can't always do the work I need to with Tristan without stirrups, at least not right now.

I am, however, trying to do 15-20 minutes of quality schooling work within each ride without stirrups. When I dropped them for the first time last week it had been quite a while since I'd purposefully schooled without stirrups. I ride without a saddle all the time, but am rarely working in trot or canter when I do that.

So I started thinking about all the things that change on me when I drop stirrups and try to be productive.

1. I ride some things better and some things worse.

With stirrups, I am far better at riding and improving the trot than the canter.

When I drop stirrups, my trot abilities go by the wayside, and I am magically much better at sitting deep and properly using my core to lift up in the canter.

My up transitions are better without stirrups; my down transitions are better with stirrups.

The walk is a toss up, since I ride that so often both ways.

I am better at encouraging and correcting for straightness in Tristan without stirrups and am just more sensitive to tipping or weighting one hind leg over the other.

On the other hand, I am much better at putting together a cohesive, planned ride with stirrups.

2. I am somehow always surprised by the journey I go through with my muscle groups.

It always starts out with me tensing my hip flexors as I try to go a little bit fetal.

Then, as I learn to let go of those - usually just as they're getting a little sore or tweaked - I re-re-re-realize how much more deeply I need to engage my core. So I go down that route.

Then I re-learn just exactly what engaging my core means, usually about the time I've given myself a nice little side cramp from holding my breath and/or letting my lower back muscles slack off.

Somewhere in there I also go through a slump/straighten cycle with my shoulders and neck, and a round under/straighten up cycle with my pelvis as I work to follow Tristan's movement without jarring him.

3. Tristan is not an easy horse to ride without stirrups, but he is a saint.

Tris needs a lot of leg. He needs to be sharpened off the aids early and often. His default is to slam his shoulders around and get thick and heavy and difficult to steer when he's not thrilled with what's going on. His gaits have never really been smooth (though in his defense they are not dramatically choppy, either). So that means that I have to make trade-offs in what I want to accomplish with him versus myself when I'm riding without stirrups.

On the other hand, if I am fair to him and warm him up properly, soften his back a bit, and then start to work without stirrups? He'll tolerate my flailing around all day long. If I get too badly off-balance, he pulls up automatically. He gets very worried about me when I'm clearly not coping well. He'll truck along and take the joke all day long, and often, once I've got my feel and my rhythm and my balance nailed, he gives me big lovely sweeping on the bit trots because he's just glad I finally connected my damn core through my seat.

Lesson Notes: Shoulder-In and Counterflexion in the Canter

The plan for the lesson was to warm Tris up thoroughly over his back before it started, and then drop the stirrups and do a 30 minute lesson in shoulder-in and work on the canter a bit.

It mostly succeeded. The catch was a bit that I didn't get him really through and supple enough in my warm up, so we spent the first bit of the lesson working on leg yield at the walk and then trot to get him connected and responding. Then we switched over to shoulder-in, starting at the walk.

Tris and I have both ridden shoulder-in before; it's not new to us, but it's been a long time and we haven't really ever had good eyes on the ground when we've schooled it. Plus, I'm finding that most things are a bit of a re-learning, both because we were out for so long with his injury and because the new barn is much more dressage-focused than the old barn.

So, shoulder-in went reasonably well; Tris had a tendency to be overbent through his neck and not get his haunches through. I had a tendency to hunch to the inside and let my outside leg flop around uselessly. Correcting the shoulders through the outside aids and tapping with the crop helped straighten him out, and discipline corrected some of my postural problems.

It really got cooking in the trot, though: Tris had enough forward energy to really load his hind end, and when I got him lined up, BAM, I could feel the sizzle in his hind end as if I had unstuck a cork. In fact it became a bit too much at times and he got fizzy and rushed and disorganized at the end of the long side, so we then incorporated half-halts every stride or two to collect the trot more. It felt like every pass we made was better than the last and with great substantive improvement. I was feeling his body much better and able to catch when it was going out of alignment, I was sitting more deeply and through and straight, and we had some very nice passes. Best of all, I was really connecting through my core in the shoulder-in - feel the burn!

Tris was huffy and puffy from working so hard through his hind end and over his back in that shoulder-in, so we walked for quite a while, and then picked up some canter work. The goal here was not necessarily to school, but rather more to demonstrate where we are in the canter. Right canter met with approval: I am more straight and deep in the saddle, more even in my hands and seatbones. He's more supple and more flexible and on the outside aids.

Left canter was better than it has been, but still not nearly the right canter. So we did end up schooling that direction for a bit, as he flung his shoulders around on the circle and was not nearly as sharp to the aids in the transition. Trainer had us school counterflexion and back for a bit to get control of his shoulders, and once I got the feel of it, applying it correctly really unlocked some nice things in his left canter. Basically, before each "point" in a 20m circle, counterflex for one stride; then correct flex for the "point"; then counterflex the stride afterwards. It was a way really emphasizing my outside aids, and not allowing his shoulders to rule the day.

So it actually ended up being more like 45 minutes, all without stirrups. Hoorah and huzzah! I felt great, and especially loved schooling the canter without stirrups. It's not an all the time solution - in particular, I can't warm him up effectively without getting off his back and I can't do that for long enough without stirrups - but I loved pulling them for the second half and getting a workout at the same time we did more technical work.

Transitions

After our lesson last week, I cleaned my dressage saddle. It was a long time coming. I thought briefly about posting a picture of how filthy the water was after I'd rinsed the sponge a few times, but then I tipped over into "too embarrassing." So you'll have to take my word for it: blech.

I decided to leave my stirrups off the saddle for my next ride. We started off with some nice marching walk work, forward into the bridle, with bending on the turns to the cavaletti incorporated into each turn around the arena.

Then we moved on to trot, and this is where my plan for the ride started to unravel. My sitting trot is decent - not great - and it wasn't quite clicking. It wasn't awful jackhammering, but it was just bouncy enough to make me think that if I was really trying to get him to relax and work through his back, this wasn't helping. Our two passes over the caveletti definitely confirmed that: on the plus side, I don't think I'll need chiro for my back! I probably could have worked through it but by I would've done more harm than good.

So I held onto it for long enough to warm up, about 10 minutes in big passes around the ring, and focused instead on transitions. We started with walk-trot and back on a circle, shortening time in each gait and sharpening the transition, and then moved to trot-canter, back and forth. Eventually transitions got sharp enough that I was able to do halt-trot transitions, then walk-canter and back, then a couple of actual honest halt-canter transitions. They weren't very pretty, but they were prompt and they existed, so victory!

Lesson Notes: The Thin Line Between Bravery and Stupidity

T. has been down in Florida living the high life and enjoying the gorgeous weather and training, and L. has been teaching lessons. They teach very different lessons, but both very good. I had been without stirrups for about two weeks before leaving them off for an entire lesson with L., and it worked out okay.

Tonight, I brought my stirrups into the ring and put them in a chair on the corner and told T. that I'd been going without them, and to please order me to put them back on if he thought I needed it - if I wasn't being effective. He shrugged and said to go ahead without them.

I warmed up at the walk, and then worked a bit at the trot, and then T. called me down. I realized that my lesson-mate was not going to be coming and that I was going to have a private lesson, and as I realized that, T. said, "Okay, rising trot at this end of the ring until you can get your horse more forward. Rising without pinching with your knees OR your thighs."

I spent the next ten minutes thinking I had done a very, very stupid thing in showing up to this lesson without stirrups, but I was damned if I was going to cave, so rising trot it was. I'm not sure if starting me off like that was a test or just a way to make sure that I wasn't depending on pinching, but he actually seemed pleased with the work, and Tris did start to move out more forward.

In fact, T. seemed pretty darn pleased with my riding the entire lesson, which was really terrific feedback and validation of the no-stirrup work I've been doing. He was happy with my position in the canter, even!

This is not to say I don't have notes. I also have a homework assignment: watch video of Mark Todd doing dressage on Charisma. I explained that I've been focusing lately on not scrunching my leg up to cue aids; when I truly let my leg hang long, my ankles are off his barrel, and I'd gotten into the bad habit of raising my leg an inch or two to cue a leg aid, which was not correct at all. Mark Todd was also too tall for Charisma, so I am to watch and study and ponder.

T. talked me a lot through a truly effective, plugged-in sitting trot as well. Think draping my legs around, think dropping my knees down and lengthening my thigh. We focused most on my core, and he manipulated my body a bit to show me where the power would flow when I really connected the half-halt in through my seat: through my lower back, through my hips, right through to the rein, with no need to lock up my elbow en route. Similarly I am to engage lift through my abdomen and when I really do it right, feel it bump up right against the bottom of my rib cage. For this to be really effective and free, I am to focus on lifting my sternum (my most effective mental picture) and make my shoulders heavy.

I took those ideas out for a spin, and there were whole stretches where I felt more plugged in to my seat than ever before, and as if Tris and I were truly moving together more than I've ever felt. I'm thrilled.

Best of all: I'm not actually all that sore. I've been trying to go to the gym on non-barn days, and have been targeting my riding muscles specifically as well as a general cardio improvement, and it's really starting to pay off.

I also gave T. my proposed spring/summer/fall event schedule, and left a check for the saddle fitter. Tris will get a massage on Thursday, his first in quite a while, and then both saddles will get partially adjusted. Then spring shots next Monday. Our first schooling show of the season is a month from Thursday!

Lesson Notes: Sitting Slow

I've had the past few days off, ostensibly to use up some leftover flex days and work on my master's thesis. I have actually gotten a fair bit of writing done - above and beyond my goal - but I also took advantage of the time to schedule a lesson during the day instead of the evening.

Today's lesson was almost a jump lesson, but the fence in the outdoor needed a new board, so we headed in for dressage.

I waffled a bit about putting the stirrups back on the saddle, at least to warm up, but decided not to. I've been trying to hit up the gym more often and work on the elliptical; the little diagram on the machine says that it works all the right riding muscles. That, combined with a few weeks now of no stirrup work on the flat, meant that I felt more confident about getting through a full lesson without stirrups.

Today was about finding the right balance between forward and too quick. Tristan is naturally a very heavy, behind-the-leg kind of horse. Combine that with the fact that everything we do is a kind of negotiation and it means that I've fallen into the habit of nagging him with my leg instead of being truly effective.

So, L. had me really focus hard on what aids I was giving with my legs, when, and whether they were listened to. He got one chance to respond to an aid, and then I made him listen to it. The internet would have you believe that this solves all problems after a few minutes. Not so for Tristan; we'll have the same problem tomorrow, I'm sure. But concentrating on it at the beginning of each ride will sharpen him up.

He didn't ever listen perfectly; he's still not interested in stepping out smartly only on my say-so. But he did pick up his feet quite a bit more - too fast. Because he's generally so behind the leg, my skill set for riding a quick-moving horse is rusty, to say the least. So ultimately today's lesson became about sitting slow, using my core to get power and length into his stride rather than simple foot speed, and organizing that with all my aids.

For most of the ride we careened between almost breaking and zipping around, with occasional moments of balance in between. By the end of it, though, we'd gotten closer to where we want to be, and I could feel what I needed to be getting at.

Riding at Dusk

Our lesson was canceled last night. I'd had a wringer of a day at work, and wasn't too upset, as it meant I would get home nearly two hours earlier than usual.

I tacked him up (still no stirrups) and we rode in the outdoor ring for perhaps 25 minutes. Nothing terribly complicated, just focusing on softening and stretching and engaging. We had some trouble picking up the right lead again, but got it eventually.

The most productive bit of the ride was at the end, when I asked him for a stretchy trot. Usually he compensates for that by loading up his front end and trotting more quickly. By sitting the trot without stirrups, I was able to really focus on gathering and slowing him through my seat, keeping my leg on, channeling forward but not fast, while keeping him soft through the bridle. It wasn't perfect, but we had several strides at a time that were just lovely.

We rode through sunset and into dusk a bit, which made it tricky once or twice to avoid Hannah & Tucker and the jumps, but in general gave everything a quiet, isolated feel that's really wonderful. I'll happily ride in the dark in the outdoor if the opportunity presents itself.

Ride Notes: Stupid Rain

The plan was to go for a long hack. The plan did not take the weather into account, and it was cold and drizzly when we got to the barn. I'll ride through all sorts of weather, but since getting my new dressage saddle I've become paranoid about my tack.

Into the indoor we went, to share with four other horses. Despite that, it went better than it usually does; all four other riders were pretty darn self-aware, something that can't be said for everyone who shares winter ring-space.

Stirrups are still off the saddle, and we worked on cantering more and more. Nothing really remarkable about the ride. We're trying to find a good balance and straightness in the canter now that I can manipulate it more. Right lead transitions have been getting better, though I lost them for a bit at the end. He was a bit less consistent in the bridle than he has been, which is no doubt due to my insecurities without stirrups.

Ultimately though we finished with some nice walk-trot transitions, focusing on coming up through his shoulders and the base of his neck instead of just flailing into a different gait. ~40 minutes of riding, and then some hanging out during which we discovered that Tris likes cranberry orange muffins a LOT. He'll try anything food-related once, that horse.

Lesson Notes: Goodbye, stirrups

I tried an experiment on Sunday. I was feeling a bit slothful and grody from eating nothing but junk food on the previous day, so I pulled the stirrups off the saddle. I didn't ride for long - maybe about 25 minutes - but it was good. Really good.

So I mentioned it to L. in my lesson on Tuesday, and pulled them for the last 20 minutes of my lesson, and she agreed. Forcing myself to ride without stirrups dramatically improved my balance and seat in the canter, and consequently made him straighten up and pay attention to my aids better. From now on, non-lesson rides will be sans stirrups, and I'll drop my stirrups for the end of the lesson until I can drop them for the entire lesson. It'll be good.

My other takeaway from last night was, once again, that I should resort to leg instead of rein when he gets hard in the bridle. We had a long, intense, frustrating conversation about left bend last night, and the only time I made headway was when I stopped thinking of it as a hard against the rein problem and thought of it as a resistance to leg problem.

In a similar vein, I need to work on my application of leg aids. I have a bad habit of inching my legs up even slightly to cue an aid, and I need to think more long and wrapped around instead of bringing them up to put them on. Granted, when my legs stretch all the way long my heels are below his barrel, but still. If I have to bring them up - even slightly - to put a spur on, they need to go back immediately.

Riding Thursday, he'll get jumped by a lesson kid on Sunday, and then maybe, perhaps, hauling somewhere on Monday? Fingers crossed the weather holds up.