Warning: Whinging to follow
Mar. 19th, 2004 07:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
callistotoniThis was just one of those bad nights for me. To the outside observer, it was probably not as bad as it felt, to be honest. But one of the things about being single and (pretty much) living by yourself is that you have no one to go home and complain to, and to get those classic "its OK, everything will be fine" hugs. But I do have Livejournal, so hey, that's something. And cut tags allow people to read or not read as they will. ;-) .
I really hate getting in trouble and getting yelled at/jumped on/pooped at/whatever. I try my best to do the right thing to avoid it. But tonight I got in trouble for "almost running into someone" in the arena, when, in truth, I thought I had enough clearance. I didn't think it was a problem until both another trainer (whose student it was) and Debbie both got mad at me, in the nicest possible way of course. But when it happened I didn't think anything was a problem. But I knew that there obviously was, since two independant eyes on the ground thought there was a problem, so I just sat there and took the critizim.
This incident was a function of another "issue" I was having, namely, that I was having trouble making Jokie do a symetric circle from rail to rail. To make a long story short, he was sticking to the rail on one side, and I was using my body incorrectly to make him come off. Of course, at the time I thought I was doing the correct thing with my body--further evidence that one's body lies to you when you are learning physical skills. Adding to the irritation factor is that this is something that I'd been doing correctly, and Deb has been over and over this stuff with me. (In this instance, the deal is that on a circle or curve you lead with your inside hip, so that you are almost looking to the outside of the circle. I was looking to the inside.) So when the aforemention close-call run in happened, Deb called me into the center of the arena to lecture me that "in an emergency situation, you don't keep doing the wrong thing more--you do something different!" But the frustrating thing is that I didn't *think* that my body was doing the wrong thing, and I didn't *think* there was a problem. Very frustrating.
Then of course there's cantering. The same things keep going wrong. What happens in my mind is that I start the canter, and then I move mentally down my checklist: keep hands down, let Jokie carry me, relax leg. Unfortunately, I can't keep Jokie in the canter long enough to correct what I'm doing wrong. Added to that that each time he falls out of the canter, I've just trained him that he can get away with it, so it all just spirals downward. And this was all on his good lead--we tried and never did get him to canter on his right lead. One the plus side, I'm cantering more than I did before, but on the minus side, I can't seem to get it together to keep him cantering for even just one full circuit around the arena. Oh, and I unwittingly yanked on Jokie's mouth pretty bad, which Deb rightly pooped at me for big time. Somehow, Deb's comments of "Come on now, you've been cantering a lot now, this should be no big deal", while I know were meant to be helpful, just made me feel worse.
Oh, and now I find out that I'm too far to the right with my seat, so I need to make feeing farther to the left my new "home" position.
I confess I was so frustrated with myself after the lesson that I started crying on the drive home. Now, I'm pretty convinced that this sort of hyper-sensitivity can be blamed to a large extent on pre-menopausal hormones. But that doesn't make it any less irratating.
I know--and I keep telling myself--that I've made a tremendous amount of progress. And I know that right now I'm struggling with taking my riding to another level, which means finally putting all the stuff I've learned together in practice. And, like Deb has said many times, the frustrating thing is that your mind grasps this stuff long before your body does. It is just *supremely frustratinG* to not be able to make your body do what you know it should, OR to think your body is doing the right thing only to be told that it isn't really. It's times like this that I (like everyone else in this sort of situation) won't ever get this. Blah. But I also trust and know in my heart of hearts that that is not true. I will get this. It may not happen tomorrow, but it *will* happen. It will just happen when it happens, and I will do my best each and every ride to make sure it does. How's that for a pep talk :-) .
Yeah, I know, we all have these days. Persistance is the key to sucess!
I really hate getting in trouble and getting yelled at/jumped on/pooped at/whatever. I try my best to do the right thing to avoid it. But tonight I got in trouble for "almost running into someone" in the arena, when, in truth, I thought I had enough clearance. I didn't think it was a problem until both another trainer (whose student it was) and Debbie both got mad at me, in the nicest possible way of course. But when it happened I didn't think anything was a problem. But I knew that there obviously was, since two independant eyes on the ground thought there was a problem, so I just sat there and took the critizim.
This incident was a function of another "issue" I was having, namely, that I was having trouble making Jokie do a symetric circle from rail to rail. To make a long story short, he was sticking to the rail on one side, and I was using my body incorrectly to make him come off. Of course, at the time I thought I was doing the correct thing with my body--further evidence that one's body lies to you when you are learning physical skills. Adding to the irritation factor is that this is something that I'd been doing correctly, and Deb has been over and over this stuff with me. (In this instance, the deal is that on a circle or curve you lead with your inside hip, so that you are almost looking to the outside of the circle. I was looking to the inside.) So when the aforemention close-call run in happened, Deb called me into the center of the arena to lecture me that "in an emergency situation, you don't keep doing the wrong thing more--you do something different!" But the frustrating thing is that I didn't *think* that my body was doing the wrong thing, and I didn't *think* there was a problem. Very frustrating.
Then of course there's cantering. The same things keep going wrong. What happens in my mind is that I start the canter, and then I move mentally down my checklist: keep hands down, let Jokie carry me, relax leg. Unfortunately, I can't keep Jokie in the canter long enough to correct what I'm doing wrong. Added to that that each time he falls out of the canter, I've just trained him that he can get away with it, so it all just spirals downward. And this was all on his good lead--we tried and never did get him to canter on his right lead. One the plus side, I'm cantering more than I did before, but on the minus side, I can't seem to get it together to keep him cantering for even just one full circuit around the arena. Oh, and I unwittingly yanked on Jokie's mouth pretty bad, which Deb rightly pooped at me for big time. Somehow, Deb's comments of "Come on now, you've been cantering a lot now, this should be no big deal", while I know were meant to be helpful, just made me feel worse.
Oh, and now I find out that I'm too far to the right with my seat, so I need to make feeing farther to the left my new "home" position.
I confess I was so frustrated with myself after the lesson that I started crying on the drive home. Now, I'm pretty convinced that this sort of hyper-sensitivity can be blamed to a large extent on pre-menopausal hormones. But that doesn't make it any less irratating.
I know--and I keep telling myself--that I've made a tremendous amount of progress. And I know that right now I'm struggling with taking my riding to another level, which means finally putting all the stuff I've learned together in practice. And, like Deb has said many times, the frustrating thing is that your mind grasps this stuff long before your body does. It is just *supremely frustratinG* to not be able to make your body do what you know it should, OR to think your body is doing the right thing only to be told that it isn't really. It's times like this that I (like everyone else in this sort of situation) won't ever get this. Blah. But I also trust and know in my heart of hearts that that is not true. I will get this. It may not happen tomorrow, but it *will* happen. It will just happen when it happens, and I will do my best each and every ride to make sure it does. How's that for a pep talk :-) .
Yeah, I know, we all have these days. Persistance is the key to sucess!
