A Month's Worth of Riding
Apr. 19th, 2004 08:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
callistotoniWow, it's been almost a month since I posted an honest-to-goddess riding report. My excuses are the usual: I haven't had access to a computer at the same time I've had the time to write this stuff, and that my riding lessons have been pretty subtle.
My riding lesson-focus has been on a continum from last month. Leasing and riding Jokie has *forced* me to learn to be released and in rhythm. One realization was that when I'm posting correctly and in perfect rhythm with Jokie it feels as though I'm floating. Now if I get out of sync while trotting Deb yells "Are you floating?".
One goal that has come up is to better my sitting trot so as to begin to do my lateral work that way. You really can't do much more than leg yield accross the arena at the posting trot, because you only have 50 percent of the time to give seat cues. After the one really good session of sitting trot that I wrote about last time, I took a step back in progress in the following lesson(s)--the test being that when I sit Jokie slowed down, as opposed maintaining the same pace as the posting trot.
This led to more work on getting my legs--hip socket, knees, and ankles--released. What has really been helping has been regular intervals of me taking my feet out of the stirrups and just letting them hang, while cueing Jokie where to go with my seat and with my outside/high hip muscles. This exercise also makes it obvious of how I tend to tighten my quads when I move my hips. This exercise has also helped me find what it is supposed to feel like when you post with a relaxed leg and released hip sockets. (Saturday I rode Jokie and was making some kick-ass 20m circles riding with released hips and keeping Jokie from falling in the circle by cueing leg yields with the outside thigh muscles of my inside leg).
Also have been working on my arm position, yet again. Deb was getting frustrated with me and threatened to pin rubberbands to my shirt and elbows. Finally she told me to keep my elbows touching my sides No Matter What, even if it made my arms tight for now. My homework has also been to practice keeping my elbows touching my sides. I realized that this is not my natural way of carrying myself, even if I think I'm relaxed. Also realized that if I rotate my shoulders back (to where they *should* be) my elbows fall naturally to my sides. Key to this position is to keep my tailbone down, because the tendency for almost everybody is to hollow your back if you roll your shoulders back.(Hollow backs are *deadly* while riding, believe me.) Now if Deb sees any space at all between my elbows and my sides she yells "Daylight!". Lessons are filled with code words...
This last week I had a bit of a breakthrough with cantering. I now believe one big problem that I was having was that when I focused on thinking "inside hip forward" I tightened my quads to move my hips (see above), which made my legs to tight, which impeded Jokie's cantering. Someone at the barn suggested to me that I thought more about cueing with and keeping my outside leg back behind the girth. This approach, along with the occasional tap with the whip, has allowed me to get Jokie into the canter and keep him there much longer. I almost made it around the arena 2x last week! Yeah me! Still not great with steering, but some improvement there as well has occured. Also only trying on Jokie's good lead (the left). This Wednesday we have another Garrod's lesson, so I'll get to canter in both directions this week. :-) In addition, the elbows-at-side regime has really helped my cantering as well, since I'm not then inadvertedly yanking on poor Jokie's mouth.
So nothing terribly exciting about my lessons these last few weeks, just some hard-core focus on problem areas. I'll feel really proud of myself when I can successfully get back to lateral work at sitting trot.
Oh, we did do something challenging Friday. There was 10 min. left of my lesson, and Deb said I was kicking butt, so we needed to do something different to stretch my comfort zone. So we went on a mini trail ride out in a pasture to a water trough, accompanied by the nice Julie person on the pregnant paint Shasta, and Deb on foot. All was good until we had to go down a *steep* (think SF steep) hill). Deb told me not to look down, but to focus on something straight ahead. For good or ill, the only things straight ahead were very far away, accoss a valley. I don't like going down stairs, either, so I think hieghts are part of my trail-riding-issues. It was fine, though, really...
Also rode my first "run away" spook, and that went well. I was riding Jokie around the barn, and we were on a slight downhill slope. No one/nothing was around, but suddenly I felt Jokie's back go from being all relaxed to super tense and we took about 1-1.5 gallop steps before I brought him down to trot. There was nothing to spook at, so all I can think is that he got unbalanced and had to run forward to catch himself. But I felt really good about the experiance--hey, that wasn't so bad!
I'm still having fun and learning *bunches* working for Deb on Saturdays. I've got two other different learning experiances on the horizon: This Sunday I'm going to Part 2 of the Overcoming Fear, Becoming a Confident Rider clinic, which will take place in an arena. This should be the easiest session for me, since I'm used to arenas. (The trail part will be the most challenging). And on May 8 I'm going to a late 16th C Cavalry class just south of Sacramento, being put together by a guy active in several non-SCA historical/re-enactment groups. I've sent in my registration and I've lined up a rental with the wrangler, so I'm pretty good to go. Should be interesting, and definately a comfort-zone stretch. I have high hopes :-) .
My riding lesson-focus has been on a continum from last month. Leasing and riding Jokie has *forced* me to learn to be released and in rhythm. One realization was that when I'm posting correctly and in perfect rhythm with Jokie it feels as though I'm floating. Now if I get out of sync while trotting Deb yells "Are you floating?".
One goal that has come up is to better my sitting trot so as to begin to do my lateral work that way. You really can't do much more than leg yield accross the arena at the posting trot, because you only have 50 percent of the time to give seat cues. After the one really good session of sitting trot that I wrote about last time, I took a step back in progress in the following lesson(s)--the test being that when I sit Jokie slowed down, as opposed maintaining the same pace as the posting trot.
This led to more work on getting my legs--hip socket, knees, and ankles--released. What has really been helping has been regular intervals of me taking my feet out of the stirrups and just letting them hang, while cueing Jokie where to go with my seat and with my outside/high hip muscles. This exercise also makes it obvious of how I tend to tighten my quads when I move my hips. This exercise has also helped me find what it is supposed to feel like when you post with a relaxed leg and released hip sockets. (Saturday I rode Jokie and was making some kick-ass 20m circles riding with released hips and keeping Jokie from falling in the circle by cueing leg yields with the outside thigh muscles of my inside leg).
Also have been working on my arm position, yet again. Deb was getting frustrated with me and threatened to pin rubberbands to my shirt and elbows. Finally she told me to keep my elbows touching my sides No Matter What, even if it made my arms tight for now. My homework has also been to practice keeping my elbows touching my sides. I realized that this is not my natural way of carrying myself, even if I think I'm relaxed. Also realized that if I rotate my shoulders back (to where they *should* be) my elbows fall naturally to my sides. Key to this position is to keep my tailbone down, because the tendency for almost everybody is to hollow your back if you roll your shoulders back.(Hollow backs are *deadly* while riding, believe me.) Now if Deb sees any space at all between my elbows and my sides she yells "Daylight!". Lessons are filled with code words...
This last week I had a bit of a breakthrough with cantering. I now believe one big problem that I was having was that when I focused on thinking "inside hip forward" I tightened my quads to move my hips (see above), which made my legs to tight, which impeded Jokie's cantering. Someone at the barn suggested to me that I thought more about cueing with and keeping my outside leg back behind the girth. This approach, along with the occasional tap with the whip, has allowed me to get Jokie into the canter and keep him there much longer. I almost made it around the arena 2x last week! Yeah me! Still not great with steering, but some improvement there as well has occured. Also only trying on Jokie's good lead (the left). This Wednesday we have another Garrod's lesson, so I'll get to canter in both directions this week. :-) In addition, the elbows-at-side regime has really helped my cantering as well, since I'm not then inadvertedly yanking on poor Jokie's mouth.
So nothing terribly exciting about my lessons these last few weeks, just some hard-core focus on problem areas. I'll feel really proud of myself when I can successfully get back to lateral work at sitting trot.
Oh, we did do something challenging Friday. There was 10 min. left of my lesson, and Deb said I was kicking butt, so we needed to do something different to stretch my comfort zone. So we went on a mini trail ride out in a pasture to a water trough, accompanied by the nice Julie person on the pregnant paint Shasta, and Deb on foot. All was good until we had to go down a *steep* (think SF steep) hill). Deb told me not to look down, but to focus on something straight ahead. For good or ill, the only things straight ahead were very far away, accoss a valley. I don't like going down stairs, either, so I think hieghts are part of my trail-riding-issues. It was fine, though, really...
Also rode my first "run away" spook, and that went well. I was riding Jokie around the barn, and we were on a slight downhill slope. No one/nothing was around, but suddenly I felt Jokie's back go from being all relaxed to super tense and we took about 1-1.5 gallop steps before I brought him down to trot. There was nothing to spook at, so all I can think is that he got unbalanced and had to run forward to catch himself. But I felt really good about the experiance--hey, that wasn't so bad!
I'm still having fun and learning *bunches* working for Deb on Saturdays. I've got two other different learning experiances on the horizon: This Sunday I'm going to Part 2 of the Overcoming Fear, Becoming a Confident Rider clinic, which will take place in an arena. This should be the easiest session for me, since I'm used to arenas. (The trail part will be the most challenging). And on May 8 I'm going to a late 16th C Cavalry class just south of Sacramento, being put together by a guy active in several non-SCA historical/re-enactment groups. I've sent in my registration and I've lined up a rental with the wrangler, so I'm pretty good to go. Should be interesting, and definately a comfort-zone stretch. I have high hopes :-) .
