More Bend: Lesson Recap 4/25

No new media so you get some classic dressage photos

I had a GREAT lesson yesterday. It was really cool to hear Jane feels we're ready for more and that she was really putting more pressure on me to really get more, more trot, more bend, more straight etc. Just doing this stuff isn't enough anymore, now she wants us to do it better :)

The main themes were getting Katai more forward and more bent and round. We started at the walk and Jane wouldn't let us trot until we nailed the transition. Then we worked on serpentines and really focused on getting Katai more in front of my leg with bigger, more forward strides but needed to really nail the bend The. Whole. Time.

and I think keeping the bend with both legs is hard

It was so tough!

After we got that Jane had me do a spiral in and out on a 20 meter circle at the trot and really focus on maintaining the bend. Katai is so quick and wiggly that it's easy for me to lose the bend at multiple points around the circle and that's not really doing anything for either of us. She told me not to let Katai "evict" my inside leg and that it needed to find home (bend) and stay there even if the pressure of "there" varied.

We did a bit of lateral work and I got the alignment on the leg yields better but this time we were also really focusing on maintaining the roundness so that she needed to use her back appropriately.

Then we worked on the canter. Since this was Katai's third day in a row she was a little tired and sore so the canter didn't have as much oomf as it has. She was extremely willing though which was really nice. We did some shoulder in, across the diagonal and then picked up the canter. I only got the wrong lead once and that was completely my fault for not preparing her correctly. We also did some shallow serpentine counter canter work but since she was tired we only got a couple in each direction before she ran out of gas.

Finally after one last walk break we worked on some haunches in. It took a couple of times but we finally got a couple of really good ones in each direction with the proper bend, coming through her rib cage. After that we did a couple of lengthening across the diagonal and because of the looseness she'd gained through the shoulder it was pretty fancy. I was so proud of both of us!

We also talked a little about the show at the end of May and the plan right now is for me to do Intro C and a Training level test. I'm really excited to try this again and to be even thinking about doing Training at our first show of the year. I also can't wait to get a redo on intro C and hopefully score above 35% lol.