down the rabbit hole

So! Anybody who was foolish enough to check in on my incessantly prolific musings over the weekend will already know: I made a thing, and am kiiiinda excited about the concept.

Like, literally can’t shut up about it. I’m going off about these little recordings to anybody polite enough to pay me any attention, even my farrier had to hear about it LOL. Sorry dude. 

pics today are from volunteering at Plantation Field’s big international event!!

But! Early feedback is positive, and a couple barn mates have either already done trial rides (and provided feedback) or have indicated they plan to soon. 

A couple aspects of that first recording kinda obviously needed tweaking. I already wrote about my early impressions (ex: the warm up is too long), but the other big take away was that, overall, I hadn’t accounted accurately enough for the time spent talking. 

That first recording was designed to walk you through gaits and exercises, with frequent coaching prompts (like “chest up!”) tossed in at least every 5 to 10 seconds, with pauses in between. My measurement on the timing of the various exercises and time-in-gait etc was based off the length of those pauses plus a guesstimate on time spent talking.

i signed up too late for my normal favorite roles like stewarding warm up rings, where i get to interact with riders. instead, i ended up as timer in the show jumping judge’s booth, where i got to interact with legends like Peter Gray, Marilyn Payne, and Hellen Brettell instead. it was actually pretty cool!

Except, in the end product, the pauses felt a little awkward, and meanwhile the time spent talking actually exceeded the time of silent pauses.

So I ditched the pauses entirely (aside from walk breaks), reconfiguring the script to be constant talk. It turns out, especially with a text-to-voice AI app, the average words/minute is extremely consistent. So you can reliably time a script cadence on word count alone. 

If you want to spend 2.5 minutes in a trot segment? Put 312 words into that script block. Boom!

All that to say, I made another set of recordings that I’m sharing with you:

- Schooling Plan - Short Session (about 17min)

- Schooling Plan - Long Session (about 24min)

These two plans are identical, except the ‘Long Session’ has an added block of work inserted into the middle. After riding the short session, it felt… a little too short, like a few pieces of work needed a little more time and attention. YMMV.

not gonna lie, this bell + timer device was a bit more intimidating than i expected — i’ve only ever timed at national events with just like, a stop watch… but the course designer gave me a very clear orientation and fortunately none of the riders tested me with any unplanned stoppages etc.

So let’s talk through those ride guides and their components!

Both start with free walk into working walk, including gathering contact and organizing walk onto a 20m circle in both directions. In the second circle, the rider is prompted to find moments of true bend and counter bend in the walk circle. 

Trot work starts on a circle after about 2.5min. Again the rider is prompted to find feelings of true bend and counter bend before progressing into a trot spiral exercise. 

I’ll be first to admit — these feelings are a bit *aspirational* for us, we’re mostly just trying to survive on a steady rhythm and circular circle. But the proactive coaching reminds me to activate all of my rider aids, even if we aren’t technically executing a “spiral” etc. 

Anyway, the spiral then transitions into trot leg yields down the long side, which feels like a progressive use of aids. After this, the rider changes direction in trot, with a trot-walk-trot transition across the diagonal. Then the whole trot pattern repeats in the new direction. It’s about 2.5min of trot each way.

The guide picks up the canter from the leg yield exercise in the second direction, then instructs the rider to spiral the canter in and out. Again, this is a little aspirational for us, but helped to get my aids on. From the canter circle, we go into canter leg yields from rail to quarterline — so again, activating the outside aids. Then another canter circle that includes canter-trot-canter transitions before a walk break. All in all about ~2min of canter.

didn’t get much video bc my fingers were on the buttons all day,
but here’s Boyd in the 3* with Mo Chroi!

The ‘Long Session’ deviates from the ‘Short’ at this point, as I inserted another block of work after feeling like we needed more. I really liked the ‘Short’ tho — even tho it felt like we probably could have / should have done more work… Well, the mare was finishing the ride very well and on the aids, and…. isn’t that the whole fucking point?? As it is, I have not personally ridden to this next block myself, take that for what you will. 

Anyway. It picks the rider up from free walk into working walk before preparing to trot. This block is all about downward transitions and building the half halt. It starts on a trot circle, then a change of direction with a trot-walk-trot transition, then back to trot circle. 

From there, you pick up the canter, ride a circle, then execute the canter-trot transition down the long side just like in the Starter test. Ride another trot circle, then, **pay attention,** bc on the open side of the circle, you change bend and canter off on the other lead. My intent with this is to 1) square the horse up in that change of bend, and 2) not put all the canter transitions in true bend on a circle bc we already have enough of a problem with accidental transitions. 

Anyway. In this new canter circle, you repeat the pattern: ride a circle, then trot transition down the long side, ride a trot circle, then change bend/direction on open side of circle and strike off on new lead. Rinse repeat a couple times. 

Like I said, I haven’t personally ridden this pattern yet, but you can hopefully pretty easily see why I set it up this way for me and Doozy at this point in our life. It’s essentially a variation of the ‘snowman’ exercise, for those familiar.

it was super cool to be a fly on the wall for all the banter in the judge’s booth, esp bc these same folks had judged the riders in dressage too and had (obviously) higher level perspectives on all the rounds, horses and riders.

After all that is another 90sec walk break, before switching back to the ‘Short Session’ plan to finish the ride. 

The rider is guided from free walk into working walk (ymmv but Doozy and I need this help!) into trotting a circle. It again instructs the rider to find feelings of true and counter bend on a circle, then change directions using a trot-walk-trot transition, then another circle with alternating bend. Next into a spiral feeling to activate outside aids, then push off the inside into a canter transition. 

The canter exercise mirrors the first block exactly, with both spiral and bend/counter bend feelings on a circle, followed by a canter leg yield from rail to quarterline (off outside aids), then back to a circle with canter-trot-canter transitions. 

Finally, you transition to trot to ride serpentines / figures of 8 / changes of bend with trot-walk-trot transitions, again reinforcing the “full halt— to—half halt” development. After a few moments of this, you trot long and low to finish.

i didn’t stick around for xc, sadly, but here’s a quick shot of Ema Klugman in the 3*

Obviously this is a very new (and shiny) toy in my riding toolkit, so my utilization experiences are… limited. But the two rides I’ve logged to date have been overwhelmingly positive, to the point where I’m clearly bought in enough to keep refining and making more recordings. 

It’s not that we’re accurately (or even effectively) executing all these exercises. Instead, I think it’s a lot simpler than that: A constant voice in my ear guiding me to ride Doozy *proactively* means I’m NOT getting baited into riding *reactively.* 

In other words, instead of getting mired down in an argument telling Doozy not to go so fast, or whatever, instead I’m focusing on a specific pattern that, surprise surprise, just so happens to be easier to execute from a slower more self contained balance. 

And so far, Doozy is responding very well to this change in style. Again, it may be too early to tell, and I PROMISE to let y’all know if we start going the opposite direction or frazzling the mare… But for now, I’m all aboard, and even created a hyper-personalized guide for us to use when practicing the Starter dressage test.

anyway. thanks for humoring me while i go a little micro down this ‘guided ride’ recording rabbit hole. as a reward, here’s a little goblin who looks ready to catch any bunnies that come out of it!

Ultimately, if this concept continues to consistently produce good rides, my idea is to develop a ‘library’ of sorts. 

One barn mate suggested that instead of full start-to-finish ride guides, I could create ‘modules’ that can be interspersed for a more mix-and-match experience. For example, there might be a ‘warm up’ module, and then individual recordings for various gaits and degrees of difficulty. 

I’m also imagining modules that are just pure coaching prompts (like, “chest up!” or “long legs, level shoulders!”) with no specific movements, gaits or patterns included — something like that could be useful during a jump school, for instance. 

So perhaps there’s more to come. In the meantime, I’m definitely interested in hearing from you all if you have a chance to try riding along to one of these recordings!