Thursday, October 24, 2019

one - cut a hole in a box

Two - put your **** in that box.

Three - give her your horse that box.

And that's the way you do it!

Obviously, I'm talking about my hands. Obviously. In a proverbial box. That references the space directly in front of the saddle. So your hands refrain from flying all over the place like frightened pigeons scattered by buckshot! 

throwback to our first ever BN in 2014!!! as evidence that i've kinda had shitty hands for a long long time lol. gosh i've been lucky to ride such saintly horses!
Lol... For real tho. Ever since last week's clinic I've been thinking about this one small but integral piece of feedback from Martin: My hands need to be forward and together going with the horse over the fence. Holding mane or a neck strap as needed.

His point was that this would give me my position of safety and balance. And reduce the overall sense of "fragility" he observed in my way of riding.

turns out, even when we're not doing anything, my hands are still off doing something. what even, tho? nobody knows...
Obviously like... That is NOT news. Not in general, nor as it relates particularly to instruction I've previously received.

Trainer P has always encouraged her students to ride with neck straps, saying if it's good enough for William Fox Pitt it's good enough for her.

Dan used to constantly remind me that my cross country position should feature my hands securely "half way up Isabel's neck."

bad hands not limited to missed distances at fences, either!!
Literally every coach ever has ruthlessly needled me to shorten my reins. And those lengthy reins, it should be noted, are a direct result of allowing my hands to wander thither and yon.

But like, why haven't I done something to fix it? For some reason, I've kinda gotten to this place where I sorta just shrug like, "Yea ok, so I have bad hands. Deal with it." While occasionally sorta patting myself on the back when the universe aligns and we get a decent picture.

proof it can be done <3 <3
But.... That's not really good enough, right?

Nor is it really "good enough" to act like, since my regular jump trainers haven't made a big deal out of it, then maybe I shouldn't either.

Bc actually, I'm starting to view my wayward hands as possibly the most visible symptom of what might be my whole sorta systemic 'Fraidy Cat-ness. The backwards riding, the lack of commitment to a forward distance, the panic when I don't see a spot.

taken without context, this is not a bad picture. charlie looks like $1 million dollars in cash, and i'm more or less going along for the ride.
the context tho? his gargantuan heroic effort over this fence in brutal weather conditions was made all the more difficult by my backward stance, such that when we arrived at the next fence in a similar manner, the horse gave up and i fell off. 

And ever since the clinic, I've been paying more attention. It turns out, my hands don't actually "go rogue." They are wild animals that can't be tamed virtually 95% of the time, and are only ever really in the right place that fraction of the time I'm paying attention to them.

When I'm warming up or hacking out, at any given time, my hands are basically anywhere BUT where they belong. So like, no wonder they don't stay put when things get a little hairy or when I feel uncertain -- it turns out I have exactly 0 muscle memory for that.

you can see the forward effort is happening in my body position here, tho the hands still detract and are counterproductive
A nervous, preoccupied or distracted rider is going to revert back to whatever position comes most naturally, right? And so that's why we practice: to commit the feeling of a correct position to muscle memory such that it doesn't really require any brain power or concentration to hold that position.

I'm coming to understand that while I've practiced all manner of positional elements (in the past year, most particularly, my leg and seat position), I've neglected my hands. And. Ya know, it shows haha. 

basically this forever
So I'm taking a page out of L Williams' book and dedicating the next foreseeable future to a microgoal of fixing my mother fucking hands omg.

I have a couple ideas for how to do this, but they basically all revolve around a concerted focus on keeping my hands in the right spot at all times, no matter what. If my reins are too long for me to do what I want with my hands in that position, I'll just have to shorten my reins. If my upper body feels like it's collapsing or reaching, I'll just have to strengthen my upper body position.

The key, I think, will be finding ways to help me subconsciously stick to the plan. Obvious tools include a neck strap and saddle pommel grab strap (it clips to my d-rings). I might add in some additional strappy goods to act as actual tethers, tho obvi must keep safety in mind before I go literally tying my hands to anything LOL.

Either way, I'll keep you posted. And, ya know, wish me luck haha. Bc we all know breaking bad habits in riding is hard to do.... But hey, isn't that what this time of year is for anyway? Anyone else gonna dig into any sort of positional boot camp this year??


32 comments:

  1. Bravo for honest self-introspection like that! It's hard. My hands are very much like yours over fences, but I haven't fixed it since I'm not jumping much anymore. I think the neck strap may be like the twine loops my CGP trainer put on my saddle to teach me how to move my hands with the horse's mouth. Anything that gives you immediate feedback like that and/or doesn't let you do the bad habit is going to be more effective than anything else.

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    1. yea "twine loops" is something i'm sorta thinking, and have tried something similar before where i took a length of ribbon and ran it through my D rings to make one loop that i held with the reins. it was useful, but didn't get quite as forward as i'm imagining now. maybe using a similar loop method, but wrapping it through a neck strap instead of the saddle would do the trick?? bc yea, that immediate feedback that doesn't require a lot of concentration is going to be key i think.

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  2. Yay we're hand fixing buddies now! We can keep each other accountable lol

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    1. yas plz!!! i'm dedicated to the cause, no matter how many dick jokes it takes!!!!

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  3. I feel the struggle on this one! I got a nasty habit of "piano hands", where my hands are always flat instead of turned up. Took me like 6mo+ to fix it and it still creeps up on me sometimes. My current issue (and has been for a while now) is that I stop moving in my elbows and therefore my hands stop moving. That is probably my current little bootcamp project haha

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    1. oooh yea, the piano hands are a familiar foe to me too.... as are "broken wrists" and stiff elbows.... i think part of what makes "good hands" so hard is that there are literally so many different moving (or otherwise) pieces. like the quality of my contact with charlie actually starts down in the space between my shoulder blades... then there are the shoulders themselves, but also my collar bones (open!), then the joints all the way through the finger tips, but also the degree of tone in each of the muscle groups!! gah, so much shit to keep track of....

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  4. I struggle with this too...then I go too far the other way and have my hands 'locked' in place where eventually my coach is yelling at me that my arms and shoulders are tight and that it's OK to be 'floppy' and outside the 'box' sometimes. Arrgh :)

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    1. omg yes i also like to swing like a pendulum between extremes. like other bloggers have said: "the solution to today's problem is often tomorrow's problem..." sigh.

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  5. Always. Always the hands. Sigh.
    What type of reins do you use? I like the ones with the tabs the best - I know which tab I should have between my fingers and it makes me more conscious of my rein length.
    Now, if anyone has a solution to my left hand going flat all the time, I'm all ears!

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    1. oh man i ride with literally every style of reins. each of my currently 4 bridles in regular rotation have a different style encompassing everything from straight rubber, to webbed with stops, to actual racing reins, plus i've spent a not insignificant amount of my riding life using laced reins... at this point i'm confident that shopping for new reins is not the solution to this particular problem LOL

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  6. Can you help me keep my pinkies closed? Never not had a trainer mention that one... Oops.

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    1. oooh yep, i get that all the time too... it's frustrating omg. what am i, the queen sipping a spot of tea while trying to jump that triple combination?!?

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  7. My riding life is positional boot camp! I tend to go really wide with my hands. Which, as Shannea kindly points out, allows Carmen to get up to all kinds of weird shit. When I keep them together and in the box she's much steadier and when she's not steadier it's easier to hold her together.

    Of course as soon as I focus on that I am sure I will start leaning forward again. Sigh.

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    1. yesssss i've felt the same thing repeatedly with finding a more consistent and steady connection when my hands are together... tho maybe the reverse was true when charlie was more green. gah if the horses just always stayed the same maybe it'd be easier to ride?!? sigh...

      also yes, i find that the position of my hands is directly linked to my upper body position right now, and not in a good way. when i want to be nice and tall and long across my front line, my hands end up traveling low and wide. when i want my hands forward and together, i'm tipping forward in my pelvis and slouching. grr....

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  8. I have wandering hands too but kind of the opposite - the left one likes to cross over the neck, and the right one drifts out wide, but they both tend to go too far forward. Lately I've not been putting the velcro billet straps on the saddle pad through the billets and hold it with my outside hand to anchor it steady and low and back!

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    1. oooh yes, my hands are likewise somewhat differently behaved, with one hand going one way and another the other. a trainer has previously tied baling twine to a d ring to give me that anchor too, and it helped too.

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  9. let me know what you do for jumping. I get terrible with my hands at jumping and don't move them enough of a release. When I was a kid riding lesson ponies I put a hair tie in the mane and I'd grab the hair tie. Then I guess I gave up on that...

    I've been working a lot of having more movement in my elbows and I've noticed a huge difference in his happiness in the bridle, so that's been good feedback!

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    1. awesome that you're seeing a positive change in the horse!! it was incredible the difference i felt while jumping when i had my hands where they belonged. it's like.... we didn't miss at a single jump. some spots were better than others, but when i'm forward like that nothing is every truly a "miss", ya know?

      i had a trainer in hunterlandia back in the day who would always say to get my hands out in front of the martingale strap, but i think i might actually need something physical to hold onto for a little while. i'm gonna test some stuff out and will report back ;)

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  10. Ugh I had a VERY similar habit when I first got May. She was so different from my old horse that I wanted to ride with my hands in my lap. I literally tied a length of bailing twine around her neck and held it with my reins for a month... For me, this worked better than a neck strap, which are usually too thick for me to hold onto constantly. Come to think of it, I should do that again.

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  11. Self awareness is really hard and you hit the nail on the head when you said that when nervous etc... people revert back to old habits. For me its hunching my back. When I concentrate hard I can control it, but when not there I go hunching again. .

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  12. Nilla and then Levi throwing victory parties after jumps taught me to keep me hands UP in preparation for antics. I am trying, but having a really hard time re-teaching myself to put my hands down. I don't lengthen my reins, but I highly recommend those multi-colored reins for that purpose. Good luck.

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  13. So I started going to yoga on the regular a couple of years ago, and one of the instructors there is also an athletic trainer who is very into biomechanics. Taking a weekly class from her has been my positional bootcamp, because holy shit do I love to collapse into my right hip and let my ribs flare up and all sorts of other weird stuff. She knows I ride and offers exercises and advice specifically tailored to that, which is helpful, but the biggest thing for me has just been increasing my body awareness.

    My new thing is having my hands too high. Like, I saw a photo of myself doing a dressage test with my hands in my lap and decided that I needed to think about being Charlotte Dujardin or something. Except I went too far and now I ride with my hands directly under my boobs, I guess. Because that's a good thing to do.

    Sometimes I feel like I don't even know how to ride anymore!

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  14. Riding! Y U so hard? The "riding up the levels" meme made me spit out my coffee, so well done there! ;-) Sounds like you are on top of sorting out the hand issue - looking forward to reading about your progress with this...hopefully the strap or a change with the reins helps out! I haven't been on a horse in months now, so my hands would be the least of my worries! lol

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  15. I kept out loud yelling at myself today during my ride as my rogue left hand constantly banged against my pommel. Like, wtf are you even doing back there, hand?! AGAIN!!! Go back to where you belong!

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  16. Ugh positional bootcamp! I know the feels, though. This year was Please For The Love Of Everything Holy Stop Grinding With The Heels. It was hard. It still takes me work every time I ride, to cue properly and to not grind with heels. But... my lower leg is getting (omg) compliments from instructor. I feel more stable. In pix and video I no longer have the impossible-to-remove forward tilt (turns out that if I don't lift my heel to grind, my shoulders can stay back). The work is kinda paying off in a visible way. :) I am not far enough along to have hands fixed yet. They need work, which I am hoping will be better once I get a more stable foundation. Lots of two-point, galloping (Hahaha, more like sedate canter) position, etc in my future to stabilize myself. It's a process. :)

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  17. Meeeeee, my elbows are apparently stiff Mother F-ers. So that's my goal. Not have stiff elbows, and by extension, bad hands.

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  18. I have terrible hand habits also, particularly over fences. When you're so focused on kicking the horse up to and over every fence, while simultaneously praying he'll take off, and making sure you're in a safe position should the horse pull his famous stop-on-a-dime...hand position goes out the window 9as does straightness!). So that's aaalllll I'm working on now (along with everything else), because damnit, I will NOT have bad hands.

    Good luck to you, hand-fixin' buddy!

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  19. Oh those wild animals! I hope you can tame them.

    I'm simply hoping to get back in solid riding shape and ride at least 4x a week. It's been a long time since I've managed that. Everything else will come if I can simply do that thing.

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  20. My hands will actually behave somewhat well on the rare occasion that my reins are the correct length... The rest of the time they're pretty much touching my thighs. Stupid hands.
    Anyway, I have some trainer friends that are huge fans of teaching with the equicube. Maybe something to try if you can find one to borrow?
    https://www.equicube.net/

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  21. God, this, so much this. Except mine are my fucking elbows which immediately forget they are a joint as soon as I get on a horse.
    A neck strap has really, really helped me with my jumping and an Equicube helped me with the flatting. Additionally, riding with a driving rein seems to help out too because my hands don't seem to meander all about with it.

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  22. I feel you so much on this. I've worked in holding that whip when they start to flop around like a drunk girl in heels on grass but to what helps the most is someine yelling "hands!" Constantly .Because I will swear I was doing hands right then I watch playback and Sam like seriously tho what was I even doing .The old muscle memory tricks you into thinking you're doing the right thing when you're not and it's a struggle.

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  23. Good luck with the hands boot camp! I need this too... but also my legs... and so much else...

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