Circles + Cavaletti + Cocoa: Part I

The funny thing about horses and horseback riding is... it really is an endless pursuit, isn't it?

It won't come as any surprise to you that I spend a lot of time thinking about riding. Some might even call it obsessive haha. I study the sport, try hard to keep learning, and I show up almost every day ready to get to work.

preparing ourselves for some serious learning. pc Austen Gage

And yet.... Well haha. In the grand scheme of things I continue to ride at what's generally considered a fairly low level. Especially, uh, in dressage...

Which is fine, right? Bc the levels aren't about me, the levels don't define me. As I've written again and again (and again), it's really all about the journey, right?

charlie wishes he could just go around like this forever tho... pc Austen Gage

Plus if you believe Malcolm Gladwell's rule that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery.... Well. Those of us who are single-horse adult amateurs with full time jobs are likely facing decades of continuing education haha. So I may as well settle in and enjoy the ride, right?

So in that spirit, let's talk about the dressage clinic I went to this past weekend!

As mentioned already, it was an inspired clinic format split into two sessions - one conducted by my long time dressage trainer C, and the other by upper level event rider K. (You may remember K from my early weekday lessons last winter prior to Charlie's hoof puncture...).

handsome pony <3 pc Austen Gage

I'm breaking the recap into two parts because, to be perfectly honest, I have so many pictures lol. Austen came to hang out, take pictures, and finally see what all my fuss about C is really about. As always, I'm extremely grateful for her company and her gorgeous photographs - I hope you enjoy them too! Oooh and she nabbed video ;) So, uh, big shout out to Austen!

I didn't really have any major objectives or "To Dos" for my 30min with Trainer C. I let her know that we continue to work on 1st Level elements like smaller circles and lengthenings, but essentially allowed her to carry us in whichever direction she wanted.

oooh and handsome pony trots too! look how grown up he is! pc Austen Gage

Which, it turns out, meant a lesson that (finally) really dug into the nitty gritties of my own personal mechanics.

Once in trot we wasted no time with beginning to work on a spiraling type exercise. Except instead of just saying to spiral in or out, C specifically instructed that I do: First a 20m, then 15m, then 12m, then 10m circle. Conveniently in this arena, the lights are on the quarter lines exactly, and there's a beam down the roof over center line, so if you're looking up it's pretty easy to find visual markers for the geometry.

trainer C would love to see my lower legs drape more loosely. pc Austen Gage

As always, the focus for these circles was turning off the outside aids. Much to my delight, Charlie did quite nicely in these exercises off both reins. Probably bc.... ya know.... we've been locked inside a 20x40m box all winter.

Anyway, right off the bat Trainer C decided she wanted me to work on my sitting trot. It's something I've been sorta practicing a little bit in every ride recently. But. Ya know. It's still pretty atrocious tbh. Lucky for you, I have some on video now ;)

doin the little circles too! pc Austen Gage

Basically C wants me to really work on flattening my back and lifting my crotch instead of my seat bones in the moment of "bounce." Effectively: the front of the triangle of my seat vs the back. For me, it actually helped me to think more about pushing my gut forward vs trying to think about lift. Possibly a slightly different mechanic, but C liked the results.

One of my biggest positional issues, esp on the flat, is in gripping with my lower legs. Trainer C repeated again and again and again to loosen my lower legs, and point my toes forward. I need to take my leg *off* the horse, and just have a looser feel overall.

She also didn't really love how much my hands move, and that I allow so much slack in the reins. I should work harder to keep the reins filled, esp on the outside. Moments of softening and givie here and there are good and totally fine, but shouldn't be a complete release of the rein.

charlie tries so hard to do what i ask. pc Austen Gage

Anyway tho, I had a few fleeting moments in sitting trot where it really felt like the pieces clicked for a step or two. C advised that I only sit for as long as I can hold that feeling, then start posting again. Then sit, then post. Again and again and again.

The interesting thing about this approach was that it began to make clear to me the adjustments I had to make in my position when I'd be preparing to sit, vs when I was posting "normally." Mayhaps my "normal" post position is part of the problem, and so now I'm going to be thinking about always holding my position such that I could sit at any moment. Or at least, that's my current idea lol.

a lot of effort pictured here as i try to sort my sitting trot out.... 

Charlie, for his part, was a very very good boy. He goes hollow when I work on sitting trot bc I basically just stop literally everything else to do it. Like, sitting the trot literally saps all my resources away, absorbs every ounce of brain power I have. Practice, practice, I guess.

You can also totally tell when I'm focusing so hard (so hard tho) on my position and seat, bc my arms kinda go rigid and straight and I let go of the reins lol.... Seriously. This rider right here apparently can not walk and chew gum at the same time. It's.... a challenge haha.

bit by bit, i'm getting a feel for it.

Anyway. It's honestly the same mechanical issues at canter too. The same issues in my position that make sitting effectively so challenging are what prevents me from riding Charlie's canter as effectively as I want.

Like, being real here, Charlie and I have a fairly codependent shared vocabulary for how we achieve certain shapes or movements or exercises or whatever. But.... it isn't exactly "correct" methodology, if you know what I mean. Like, we have a way that "works," but it's imperfect, not ideal, and probably a whole helluva lot harder than it needs to be. And also likely to create issues down the road when we want to build new skills on top of this foundation.

now to recreate in every show ring ever 

So I guess we should probably keep trying to fix that haha. So right now our canter still kinda sucks. But maybe if I can keep working on fixing my own mechanics the canter will magically fix itself? Lol...

Anyway, the video clip I'm including here is only about 3min, but it's a great representation of the lesson as a whole. We go from sitting trot practice to canter work to trot lengthenings, all of which made up the meat of the lesson.

Per usual, Charlie's trot immediately after the canter was at its absolute best. Seriously. There's like 3-4 steps of downright dreamy trot right around 1:40 in the video. What a good boy <3

i won't be able to truly get what i want from charlie's canter until i fix my own self... pc Austen Gage

To finish out the ride, Trainer C had us touch on the trot lengthenings a little bit. After asking for a little lengthening down one short diagonal to change directions, C observed that Charlie might actually benefit from avoiding long diagonals for lengthening practice for now.

Actually, she wanted us doing them on a circle for the most part. It's funny bc you mostly can't even tell we're doing it in the video lol. We just go from a kinda blah trot to what should probably be our proper working trot, then fade back to blah again.

The fade, for the record, was specific. That was her word - to let him just "fade" back to normal working trot. Which was interesting to me bc in my practice I've been focusing moreso on the transitions between different trots, trying to show a crisp difference. Perhaps that's a little premature for now tho? Anyway, food for thought.

the chat breaks are charlie's favorite tho. pc Austen Gage

We're still really just starting with the lengthenings anyway. And even tho we don't really have an actual medium yet, Charlie definitely has the idea down that I'm asking for *more* trot, not a canter transition. So that's kinda reassuring. Charlie and I so far have a very rudimentary feel for what needs to happen, it'll simply take time.

So all in all, a very productive 30min with trainer C. We touched on all the important schooling aspects right now, with a heavy (and much needed) focus on my own mechanics. While it could be easy to look at some of these photos and be frustrated by just how far off I am from that classic beautiful dressage seat.... Honestly, I'm not too worried about it.

video clip from the lesson here

There were moments in the ride where I really felt like things were clicking, albeit briefly. And watching the video makes me think those feelings were accurate. We're on the right track.

And through it all, possibly the thing I love most about this ride? Charlie was such a good boy. He doesn't exactly have the easiest job -- he's a green horse who has to be subjected to the wild gyrations of his bumbling rider trying to sit the trot. But like, that's his job, ya know? And he's totally cool with it.

aw but he knows he's a good boy. pc Austen Gage

He's totally cool with being the horse that I can learn on. I'm going to fuck up, do weird stuff, be imbalanced and crooked and generally confusing. And yet, he #persists. He just does the thing. Tries to understand, and tries to be a good boy. Is basically the ultimate adult ammy horse.

And for that, I'm so so so grateful. Plus, omg, look how far he's come!! This off track brontosaurus is really truly starting to look the part these days <3

"Yes I am. I am the Best Boy." - Charlie, probably

Honestly if that 30min session was all we did for the day, I would have still been feeling really good about where things are with Charlie. And you better believe I'm already anxiously plotting my next full lesson with C haha.

But!! That wasn't all for the day - we still had our cavaletti session up next with trainer K. Where we got to see if I could hang on to the feelings of all these mechanical adjustments while actually trying to like, do other things too. Lol stay tuned for more on that soon ;)