I am starting up my horse blogging again, though with a bit of a different focus and format. Since a few weeks before Christmas, I am renting Barka from the riding school twice a week as part of a trial at the stables where they want to offer students a chance to do more than just take lessons. For this spring, the plan is that the riding school will be fielding a team for a regional dressage competition and the core of the team will be three of us “guinea pigs” in the horse rental program. Given this, I have an actual goal to work towards with Barka. Plus, I will be riding on my own, which I am very unused to doing after 30 years of just taking lessons. Taken together, this calls for some planning and what I will be doing with for each session on my own is write down what my goals had been and what I managed to accomplish, as well as make particular note of any issues that I need to work on. Since Barka managed to get kicked right before Christmas, today was the first proper session in a while, though I did help with starting her up again over the holidays. But this will serve as the starting point for project get ready to compete.
With today’s session, I wanted to focus on transitions as well as a bit of lengthening and shortening, working primarily at walk and trot since Barka is still lacking a bit of stamina after her involuntary rest period.
I managed to more or less stick to what I had in mind, though I can feel that the whole planning and executing my own lesson is still very new to me. For example, I probably switch between exercises a little too often. I did feel a marked improvement in Barka’s movement from start to finish, however, and her trot in particular felt balanced and relaxed at the end. The best transitions were from walk to trot, where I felt a nice impulse from the back and she maintained her frame. Trot to walk needs a bit of work, though I think it mostly comes down to my position not being steady enough. Canter work needs a lot of improvement, I will get to that in the next segment. I also had some issues with smaller circles, but that may come down to her only having started doing those again last week.
With this session in mind, I was able to come up with a list of key issues to work on during the spring. Number one is my own fitness, or lack thereof. I have been having a lot of issues with finding a good position in the saddle without various parts of my body hurting, so I will clearly need to limber up my legs and my hips as well as strengthen my back and stomach. I’ve had back issues in the past, but I’ve never felt quite this stiff before. I have clearly hit the age where something needs to be done. As for Barka, I do need to work on balancing her sides so she’s not so uneven, but I find it isn’t that huge of a deal with her all considered. If I improve my position I think that part will improve a lot too. Her canter, however, will need some work. She needs to become a good deal stronger and less likely to get the wrong leading leg in the canter. The latter problem is particularly difficult for me to work on as I am absolutely terrible at telling when a horse is on the wrong leading leg, which means I can’t correct for it quickly enough to be efficient. So that is a bit of a dilemma when riding on my own.