Freezing

I'm not talking about the weather.  In fact, it was already 75º F while I was in the saddle for my lesson on Thursday.  

I'm talking about my body.  Specifically my tendency to stop following the horse with my body at the canter.  Instead, I pump my arms like I'm pretending to be a train to entertain a toddler.  This, I suspect, is a holdover from my unforgiving palomino mare, Fin.  I suppose this requires a bit of a backstory.

Once upon a time, I got bucked off a lot doing upwards transitions into the canter.  Fin was, (is? She's still alive, just for all intents and purposes, retired.) talented, fussy, sensitive, touchy, cranky, and a diva.  Simply, Fin is a mare.  She required a particular type of ride, and for the most part, we made a decent go of it.  Except for canter transitions.  Due to old defensive riding habits, I tended to lean forward into my transitions.  Fin hated me leaning forward into transitions.  To make it perfectly clear to me how much she hated this particular habit of mine, she would buck.  Sometimes, these were the warning, "I don't like what you're doing, try again," bucks.  Other times they were the, "I'm not dealing with any of your bullshit at all right now," bucks.  Very often, those latter types of bucks would leave me in the dirt.

I imagine that when you have already created defensive riding habits on one horse, and have to learn new defensive riding habits on another horse, weird things happen to your riding.  Well, weird things happened to my riding.

I'm happy to say that my balance and physical position on top of the horse is still pretty decent.  But at the canter, my body will just stop moving with the horse, and I just sorta perch in the saddle.  Unfortunately, perching is hard to do when you're cantering and trying to hold an out of shape horse together.  So you kinda perch and pump.  It's about as unattractive and ineffective as it sounds.

Thursday, C had me work on using my body more effectively.  The right lead is hard for both me and Chip.  He was pretty strung out and I was super stiff.  But on the left lead, I could start to put the pieces of my body in motion to support him, enabling him to round and use his back and butt properly.  

Using the corners of the arena, I asked for a walk to canter transition on a large-ish circle to get a nice bend and to encourage him to step underneath himself.  Once we were moving in a slightly collected canter, I straightened him out to lengthen down the long side.  Once we hit the next corner, another circle to regroup.

We were both tired from Tuesday's trot set, so this exercise was short-lived, but it really gave me some things to think about.  

Take aways:

I need to remember to keep my weight in my outside seat bone and push him into the contact with my outside rein with a supporting inside leg.

Keeping weight in my outside seat bone does not mean that I need to stomp on the outside stirrup, the weight in my feet and seat need to be independent.

I need to stretch more before and after I ride.

Jumping is fun, but dressage work is really freaking important and makes ponies really tired.