Monday, August 29, 2022

Lesson Recap: Let Go of the Left Rein

Had another good lesson the weekend before last, although unfortunately no media to share! DH is still recovering from surgery and couldn't spend 3 hours in the truck, so I took along a friend :) TrainerB has two horses she is marketing for clients and I am hoping this friend may end up with one of them ;) both are lovely Spanish geldings, and if I had unlimited funds and time to ride a large collection of horses I wish they could come home with me, but alas, I can barely keep the ones I have in work lol. Anyway, the lesson.

Ruby always knows when its lesson day. She was gross and then grumpy about her early morning bath. 

TrainerB and I talked about the show a little bit - what went right, what could have gone better. I told her I some of the decisions I made were not the best and we talked through that -- but at least the fact that I was MAKING decisions instead of just being a lump was an improvement. Our biggest struggles at the show were in the leg yields and the canter... what else is new? So we worked on that quite a bit in the lesson. TrainerB had me doing a TON of 10m circles and then starting the leg yield coming out of that, and whenever things started to fall apart, do another 10m circle, regroup, and then try again. 

Unrelated media picture, but HOW AMAZING is this? So amazing. I cannot even. 

At the show, we struggled more with the leg yield to the right, so that's the one we started with in the lesson, and surprise surprise... 90% of the issues could be traced back to my narcissistic left hand. SIGH. TrainerB dryly pointed out that trying to pull her into a right leg yield with my left hand was not ever going to have the results I wanted, haha. After making a point to reach forward and pat Ruby on the neck every four or so strides with my left hand, I was finally able to keep it mostly where it was supposed to stay and the leg yields got better. Magic? No, just good instruction making my riding better. 

I'm actually a little sad I don't have any media, this was a BALLER outfit lol. 

The canter work was really good, the biggest problem right now is neither of us can sustain it for very long. But we had some really good moments, we both just need to be fitter and work on stringing together the good moments. Maybe by next year we'll be ready for the canter marathon that is first-three lol. On the way home my friend was telling me how impressed she was with our progress - I had forgotten the last lesson she came to watch was one of the handful of times I rode in the Custom that Ruby hated and she was a leaping dolphin about every single canter transition, so the change between then and now was night and day!

4 comments:

  1. Hooray for good canter work! It is such a workout though.

    I was wondering the other day how long I was going to have to keep focusing at least 50% of my attention on NOT pulling on my right rein. Do you think reprimanding our "bad" hand will ever become subconscious and not have to be a focal point? All those data on habits seem to not be true anyways, so I have no idea.

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    1. I imagine I'll be fighting it until I die 🤣🤣🤣

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  2. Rogue hands are so irritating! I think both of mine are the problem...

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