"needs more activity"

Earlier this week Charlie and I headed back to the legendary Hilltop Farm for a second lesson with grand prix dressage rider Jess. This second lesson didn't have quite the "WOW" factor -- the game-changing impact -- of the first, but I actually see that as a good thing.

This time we really kinda just buckled down to the work that is training a horse and rider for dressage. And, ya know, dressage is freakin hard.

regal charlie <3

Possibly the hardest thing about dressage is that.... it's not always totally obvious. Not necessarily self evident when things are "Good" or "Bad."

With jumping, there's a lot more immediate feedback on how things are going. Was that jump comfortable? Did the poles stay in the cups? Did You Die?!?

hilltop's famous roof line

You know what I mean. There's a certain intuitiveness to jumping that allows both the horse and rider to understand quickly and clearly when things are going well, or when shit's straight up catastrophic haha. I don't have to explain to Charlie that bashing his cannons kinda sucks. He can figure that out all for himself, thanksverymuch.

Dressage is a different creature tho. Like, sure there are some aspects that ARE clear and obvious. That breathtaking moment when you feel for the first time the loft of true suspension and extension in a trot. Or when you finally feel the horse begin to really shift his weight back, push from behind, and come through over his back. Those are feelings that stick with you, ya know?

For me, learning how to ride dressage has been a long slow slog of trying to catalog all those feelings, memorize them inside and out so that I can recreate them again and again.

we were early so we got to take a little walksie around

It's a complex equation, tho. There are so many moving pieces (literally). And I don't always understand the component processes that lead up to those good feelings and good moments. Which, obviously, makes recreating them that much harder. And naturally, the feel for those component processes tends to be even more subtle and less clear.

Like, activity in the hind leg. In words it seems clear enough, right? Like, a crisply active hind end is a critical component of a horse's engagement, his ability to carry himself in an uphill manner with a lightness up front that allows him to spring into action at any moment.

But.... What does it actually mean? What does it feel like? How does one accomplish such a thing?? Especially when one is riding a Charlesaurus???

these arena walls are so pretty! and tall haha

Idk. It's kinda an enigma haha.

So this lesson was kinda all about that. All about dialing in on those subtle changes in feel, those component pieces.

You may remember from my last lesson that Jess identified tempo as a biggie in the Land of Chuck. She noted that he has a tendency to kinda get running a little too fast up front, such that his hind end can't really keep up, and we end up flattening into a sorta downhill avalanche. And so, a slower tempo was needed.

"derssage is dumb, can we not tho?" - charlie, probably

As with all things Charlie + Emma, tho, the pendulum can and will swing too far in the other direction. The whole reason we went all-in on the "Go Forth, Son" train in the first place was bc, when left to his own devices Charlie will settle into a slow shuffle of a trot with itsy bitsy little steps. The tempo seems fine enough, but the activity is desperately lacking.

So in this ride, Jess was clear that even tho she adamantly wanted the slower tempo with no running (and a post that stays the same no matter what, Emma!), I still had to focus on lengthening Charlie's stride and ensuring that he was carrying energy forward. It's..... a tough balancing act, lemme tell ya.

We didn't spend too too much time in trot, however, with Jess deciding that in this ride we'd work on walk-canter and canter-walk transitions. Charlie and I have been practicing walk-canter for well over a year now, and frequently deploy them in our jumping sessions. Tho that doesn't mean they're necessarily polished up for the dressage ring LOL. Canter-walk, on the other hand, is.... basically non-existent...

charlie wants to know who that handsome bay devil is in the mirror lol

To be honest, this exercise felt a little above my pay grade, bc the steps we used to achieve the transitions were themselves fairly challenging to us. So the whole thing at times felt like a giant muddle.

But basically, we worked on a roughly 10m circle, first at walk. Jess wanted me jazzing up that inside hind leg -- getting Charlie to be quicker and snappier with it. Looking for a feel that came close to turn on the forehand around this circle, almost even approaching having Charlie trotting sideways with his hind end.

When we got the feeling, energy, and balance right, Charlie would basically launch into this GIANT uphill canter. Often, uh, kinda leaving me in the dust lol. When we got it wrong tho.... Well, again. It was a bit of a muddle lol.

gotta admit it feels pretty luxurious to get this place all to ourselves for a ride!

It took me a little while to understand the exact parts of this exercise, and when to give my aids etc. Which naturally made it harder for Charlie to understand too, since I wasn't always clear on when to ask and when to release. God bless this horse, tho, he really stayed with me. He's come a LONG WAY in being able to handle that kind of pressure!

As a way to help make things more clear for the horse, Jess often deploys patterns in the exercise. Let's say you're doing rapid fire "walk - trot - canter - trot - walk - trot - canter" transitions. She had us going such that each transition happened in roughly the same spot on the circle. But quickly quickly -- looking for crisp clean quick transitions up and down.

Each transition always in the same spot, so that the horse begins to anticipate, understand and even volunteer the desired movement. In this way, the horse and rider can use the pattern to help clarify the communication of aids etc. Which theoretically means, when those same aids are applied later on down the road, they'll already make more sense and be better tuned.

good boy charlie. it's hard but we keep trying!

After marinating on the lesson for a bit, I feel like I understand things better now than I did in the actual moment. Which hopefully will mean it'll be easier to practice it all in our solo schooling sessions.

Because.... In the moment, it was tough. Not exactly empowering to expose all the little weaknesses that rapid-fire transitions bring to light lol. But again, that's kinda just how dressage is for me at the moment lol. A downright slog.

But maybe one day my brontosaurus will metamorphose into a beautiful dressage butterfly?? Maybe?? Pretty please?!?