Invisible Progress, Elbows, and Working the Collection: A Lesson Recap

It was over 70 degrees and sunny in March. You better believe I busted out my favorite blue pants. 

Spring has finally arrived, I've gone and entered our first show of the season, and it was time for a lesson!

I'd been feeling a little frazzled in my dressage rides lately, and needed some help slowing my mind down and finding just one or two things to focus on, as well as help preparing to ride our first dressage test since last June. Plus, my trainer hadn't seen us since December, so we were well overdue for a tune-up. 

I told my trainer that I needed some help getting the lengthenings to be a little snappier, as well as just finding a few mental focus points to help keep my brain from racing off into the sunset, especially as show season is about to start. 

I hadn't had a chance to warm up before the lesson started, which actually worked out well as my trainer was able to give me some new techniques to use that helped Dino start thinking about being forward and connected. In the photos (thanks to my barn buddy who was so enamored with my blue britches that she couldn't help but snap a few pictures!) we're working on me using soft, bouncy, stretchy elbows to keep the walk forward and loose while riding loopy changes of direction. Whenever I felt Dino get stuck - usually either in his neck or by disconnecting his hind end during a turn - the cause tended to be a locking in my elbows. A little more give and movement in my elbows allowed Dino to keep coming through with his hind legs, and to stretch out his neck into the bridle. 

We stuck with that concept into the trot work, shooting for soft and forward and relaxed, before adding in turn on the haunches to the warm up. The goal with the turns on the haunches wasn't a perfectly correct show-worthy movement, but rather to give Dino a chance to warm up his body even more and get him connected from back to front while maintaining a soft contact and not necessarily asking him to go on the bit. 

The exercise helped A LOT. We did several turns on the haunches in both directions, moving forward into the walk or trot after each, and without me even really asking for it Dino started shifting his balance back, coming round, and connecting his back end to his front end. It helped loosen his shoulders as well as improve his balance, and it's definitely something I'm going to start incorporating  more deliberately in my schooling. 

We also tried a new tactic to start the canter work in this lesson, which is always a hot-button issue for His Royal Highness. My trainer suggested I ask for the canter like I would if we were out hacking - just swinging my outside hip back to grab his hind leg and bringing it forward into canter. I tried that aid a few times, and it got me a nasty expression, ears back, and a tail swish. My trainer corrected me - no, do it like you would out hacking. 

So I took a big breath, held the reins on the buckle in one hand, got up off Dino's back, and set out around the arena in a nice, big trot, imagining we were cruising through an open field. Dino immediately dropped his head, relaxed his back, and stretched out in the trot. I was able to get a nice relaxed canter right away, and we cruised around for a few laps in each direction before coming back down to the walk, doing a turn on the haunches, and picking up the canter again. The canter departs weren't super clean and prompt coming up out of the turn on the haunches, but again, we achieved our goal of having Dino sit more on his hind end and shift his balance back in the canter, which had the added result of encouraging him to stretch his neck out into the bridle. Win-win. 

The really good, meaty bit of this lesson, however, came next when we dug into the lengthenings. Instead of just demanding a prompter, more explosive response to my leg like I'd been schooling, my trainer had us start by trotting on a big circle and going from a small trot to a bigger trot. We called it "collected" and "extended" for the sake of labeling, even though obviously they weren't 'real' collected and extended gaits. 

I love that the work I've been doing to lengthen my thighs down from my hip joints is showing!

Both trots started out feeling under-powered for my liking, but I rolled with it since that's why I pay my trainer the big bucks to tell me how to ride better. She wanted me to focus on keeping Dino relaxed and powering forward in both trots, keeping my elbows in active communication and using them to regulate the direction of the energy. In the extended trot, I thought about allowing my elbows to stretch out away from my body while the Centered Riding Spinning, Sparkling Ball of Energy shot outwards in an arc from my core, sending our collective energy forward and lengthening Dino's frame. Coming back into the collected trot, if I thought about "slowing" or "coming down" or "making a downward transition" I lost a lot of energy and throughness, and risked Dino breaking gait. A different mental image fixed this though - keeping the ball in my core spinning more quickly, but bouncing straight up and down instead of out into an arc, keeping the energy level just as high, but compressing it and sending it up. My elbows also had to keep a soft, active bounce to maintain the energy in the collected trot to help Dino stay soft and engaged in the connection. Occasionally I had to break the tension in Dino's poll by lifting my inside hand in a half halt for a moment, but he was really exceptionally rideable and responded so, so well to the subtle aids I was practicing. 

Working this exercise brought me SO many great lightbulb moments of understanding, and SO many great kinesthetic learning moments of feeling things happening correctly! While keeping my torso and seat upright and stabilized and without doing too much with my leg, I was able to effectively ask for compression and lengthening within the trot using just the bounce in my elbows and the engagement of my core muscles. And it turned out that it isn't so much the lengthened gaits that need work, but that Dino needs to develop more strength to be able to hold our version of the "collected" trot - likely where our regular working trot should be in terms of balance and bottled energy - so that he can burst out into a lengthened gait and frame with balance and relaxation. I can make him scoot forward by kicking him into a "lengthening", but it won't be soft, relaxed, and balanced without coming from a more quality "collected" trot. When we got it right in this exercise, we REALLY GOT IT RIGHT and I was able to move between "collection" and "extension" using very light aids, with a pony powerfully in balance. It was awesome and it's moments like that that make dressage so much fun!

My trainer also commented that my position and strength therein has come leaps and bounds over the last several months. Since the Magic Suction Cups lesson we had in the early fall last year, I've been riding the wave of internalizing a more effective, stronger dressage posture. Though in the day-to-day of riding at home it feels like I haven't made much progress, hearing from my trainer that bad positional habits that she's had to spend literal years helping me fight against are gone really drove home that the hard work I'm putting in and the learning I'm doing ARE making a difference, and even though it feels like I'm "not doing much" right now, I AM improving. Dino, somehow, KEEPS GETTING BETTER and coming out stronger and more schooled every single spring. He's 21. I do not see retirement in sight yet. I am accepting this miracle and running with it! 

The last thing I wanted to do in the lesson was work the same concepts in the canter, but I wasn't sure how much pony I had left. It was warm, Dino was hairy, and we had just sat around talking. I figured I may as well try and see what happened. 

It turned out that Dino had plenty left to do some work on the canter, and after really getting the idea down in the trot, it almost came easier in the canter, which surprised me! Again, I worked on using the bounce and stretch in my elbows to ask for different lengths of frame, and focused on bouncing my sparkly inner ball out to ask for lengthening, and up and down for collection. We got several REALLY REALLY NICE transitions between the two canters going each way, with Dino maintaining a ton of power, balance, and relaxation throughout the whole thing, which was thrilling as I usually lose one or more of those elements when working in canter. We couldn't have ended the lesson on a better note, and I'm getting super excited to keep working on these new "collected" gaits and helping my Wonder Pony get stronger this season. 

We're comin' for ya, First Level!