Bonus Learning

On Saturday, one of the upper level trainers MB rides with came out to the barn to teach a few lessons. MB has ridden Opie with her twice off property, but this was my first time riding him in front of her. The two GP trainers that she trains with are polar opposites in the very best of ways. They're the perfect balance to each other. 

The one - who winters south - is super optimistic, she is here to pump you up, she tells you that you can go FEI and that's why you're gasping for air as she puts you through your paces and rocks your world with exercises you didn't even know you or your horse were capable of, and hot damn by the time she's done teaching you're like, "FEI?! I'm going to the Olympics!"

The other one - who we rode with over the weekend - is pragmatic to a fault. She is a perfectionist, and she will not settle for anything less from you. You're sitting an inch crooked? She sees it. Fix it. You've tightened your forearm without even noticing? Don't worry, she has! When you get done, you're like, "Can I even ride a horse?" But you also know that every single thing she's pointed out has made you that much better, and most importantly the horse is going to go that much better for you because of what she's said.

I'm not gonna lie, I was kind of scared to ride in front of her lol. But it ended up being a great lesson and I couldn't wait to get back on the next day.

butt cape weather needs to go so we can embrace our outfits

So here's how it went:

• Because I'm so tall (5'10) and Opie is short (16hh, although he was only 15.2hh when I bought him and he's always been built like a brick shit house), I need to be extra aware of what all my height I have sitting above him is doing. A millimeter is going to throw him off balance - especially him because he is the most sensitive creature alive. This immediately showed up when I tried to steer him left by falling off his left side. And by "falling" I mean leaning in perhaps one degree. It was enough to dump him on his shoulder.
• My left seat bone sits too heavy, think about lifting it up and forward to give him somewhere to go. Put my left seat bone over my left foot. 
• He throws me off his right side because he doesn't want me to sit there, and he is incredibly successful at tricking me into getting me off it. This has been a first ride off the track issue, it's gotten better, MB has given me a fighting chance x1000 since I started working with her, but it was a solid year before I could reliably activate my right leg/seat on my own.
• Sit like a capital H not a K. 
• Make my right ribs smaller (aka stretch the left ribs up). 
• My right shoulder pulls forward, and I'm too heavy with my right bicep. That weakens my back which is part of my trunk/core/stability. 
• I've been working with a chiro/PT for almost exactly a year now. I went in because I couldn't turn my neck right (like, at all), and turns out it was actually tied in to my left shoulder blade area. We've done sooo much work getting my shoulders and upper back strong and loose and even, but they are what they are. I do my exercises and stretches, Dr Z cracks me back into alignment when needed and loads me up with homework, and we just constantly try to improve that. It is what it is. 
• I can actually post upright now tho. That sounds stupid, but I legit thought it was something I was simply not physically capable of doing.
• MB tells me to "drop the neck" when Opie starts getting tight in his underneck because I am an adult ammy to the core and I'd prefer to just pull on him as my first line of defense. Instead, of course, I need to soften the neck and push it down and forward thus lifting his back. This trainer told me to imagine dropping the bit for a couple strides and think of it clinking him in the teeth.
• She asked how he had been doing before I got on, and I told her that just like she and MB had worked on last month with him, I was having trouble lifting the right side in the canter, but that I thought that was always going to be a thing for him. Yeah, nah. Turns out if you're hyper critical of what every inch of your body is doing every single second your horse also goes like a capital H not a K. 
• I'd like to show 4-1 this year (it's a big ole test, but really the only thing giving me the stink eye right now is the line of changes with consist of two of his bad direction), and she kept reminding me to "ride him up."

• The changes:
• I asked if she would put eyes on the R-L change to see if she could give us some insight/exercises on how to fix it. We showed her a couple, and she was like, "Hmm. That's it?" Because he is very quiet about the whole ordeal now. They're just whacky AF. So I was like, "Yes, wtf is he doing??" "He looks like he's tripping," she deadpanned. Poor Opie. 
• Then she asked to see the L-R which I do consider confirmed now. They get better the further you go into the ride as he gets more rocked back and collected. He waits for the ask, back to front, easy peasy. I hadn't really packaged him up yet because we were very bam bam bam from one thing to the next, so he did change cleanly, but he did his little jump before to psych himself up. If you're not paying attention it gives the impression he's changing up front first, but he's not actually changing. He's just jumping. And then changing. You can hear in the video she thought it was late, but I fortunately haven't run into a judge yet that thought so and it usually scores a 6 to 6.5

• Her exercise she wanted us to try for the R-L was:
• From the right lead, leg yield off the third track to the wall and ask for the change into the counter canter.
• Turns out he has zero response to my left aids when presented like that. Whoops. 
• But that ties in to, am I blocking with the left seat bone? Which ties in to my last lesson with MB when she had to keep telling me to think of standing in my right stirrup - which goes hand in hand with getting off his left side, and keeping my right side aids on. 
• Opie....am I the problem, it's me? But she did say he was not getting the LH out of the way quickly enough, and he flings that RF out in a patented karate chop so I think we're both crooked. 

• This ALL ties in to the theme she kept repeating: I'm very tall and he is short. I have a beautiful, draping leg (thankyouuu it took me literal years to drop my stirrups three holes to where I'm at now) - however, it doesn't do anything.
• This is straight facts.
• She kept telling me to "feel your boots." My boots/feet are the foundation that the rest of my body is working off. Use them.
• This ties in to what BM constantly has to tell me - stretch my inside thigh. That activates my leg. It makes me do things with it. It's so hard.

just me and my long legs, along for
the ride, no active participation to be found.
horse slightly behind the vertical and barely
engaged because we were trotting at 0.02mph
while i tried to figure out what a calf muscle is

• She did have some good things to say that didn't involve fixing!
• I sit up tall with my chest (just not my shoulders lol).
• I sit with a broad, even pelvis (when not getting knocked askew by my crooked horse).
• After the lesson, she said the work we're doing on our own and with MB is 100% on the right track. She's seen huge leaps in improvement from MB's two lessons riding him to where he was at under me.
• She also said he's not remotely built for this job or anything I've asked him to do, but I've done such a good job getting him strong and correct that he can do it. And that's the very best compliment of them all!