Improvement - With a Video

First of all I wanted to post my previous improvement video

Secondly I have this video from my ride (early this year or late last year?) in the dressage clinic that I participated in as well as footage from one of my recent rides.

A few things to note:

- while I feel like my upper body has gotten way better, as has my posting (oh boy), my leg has gotten worse haha. It's extremely difficult for me to round my back and still keep my leg back. I'm doing hip flexor stretches but honestly I'm not sure if that's the issue since I need to do contortions to actually feel a stretch and tend to be a fairly flexible person.

- The most recent footage was taken after I finished cantering, gave Katai a walk break, and went back to trot. She's being very good but there's definitely more tension than normal and she's not nearly as through as she gets in my rides with Jane.

- because Katai is so tense I'm riding a bit defensively so I don't think my leg is normally quite that bad and I'm posting ahead more than I have been recently

- I'm not quite sure what happened to my posting diagonals. It's a huge pet peeve of mine and I'm normally correct about 95% of the time. However, we've been using this as a tool for the leg yields so that it's easier for me to effect the correct hind leg and as soon as we started doing that I started messing them up.

- OMG we look so much better. Katai is so much more consistent in the contact, her rhythm has slowed down enough that I can actually ask her for things and I don't feel like she's just running away all the time. I'm improving too but I'm disappointed to see how badly my chair seat is back. It's also tough to see some of the improvements in my posture since I chose to wear the puffiest vest I own during this ride and didn't think to take it off for the video

- Also, this isn't cutting out bad moments. What you are seeing here was the worst part of the ride since before we cantered Katai was much more relaxed and through. The cuts are just to keep this a decent length and to cut out the time we spent off camera.

Finally, I'm so proud of us! We've been making good changes since that clinic ride in the video but the majority of this improvement has happened over the past month or two. I can't wait to see where we are this next spring!

Riding At The New Barn

Katai loves looking at herself
I have to admit that I like to admire her as well

Today was my third day (I think) riding at the new barn and my second ride in my new saddle. I LOVE the new saddle. It's just making me more and more happy every time I ride in it. It just puts me in a much better place than my old saddle and I can tell that Katai likes it. Plus, today I cantered in it and with the small shims I'm using it didn't shift forward at all!

My main goal for this ride was to work on my posting. I found this amazing video that was really helpful for my understanding of how to post correctly. It's almost exactly what L has told me to do but explained in a different way that somehow made more sense to me.

 

At any rate I basically just focused on doing this during my ride today. It always has been VERY hard for me to post at a consistent temp and not just go with the horse. Jane is a huge classical music fan so when I told her that I just follow along with the tempo because of being in an orchestra and needing to follow a tempo for so many years as a cellist she told me that I needed to be the conductor. True haha but easier said than done.

Focusing on really doing an Up-Down-Up-Down-Up-Down rather than U.Down-U.Down-U.Down was good but very, very tough. I did make some progress but I need many more rides like this to get anywhere near being competent at it. I was really happy with myself though and pleased with my progress because it was easily the closest I've gotten to doing what I'm supposed to. Funny how that also makes Katai's job easier.

At first she was very resistant and didn't want anything to do with me controlling her tempo at the trot. It didn't help that she'd had an e/o day schedule this past week and it was really cool this morning. She's also still kind of feeling off and I think she's just a little tight and sore through her muscles. Who knows what kind of running around she's been doing as she meets her new neighbors.

My pony would win all of the gold at the mugging olympics

However, after just focusing on myself and making sure that I really was posting correctly she sneeze/snorted a few times and seemed to let go of some of the tension. Later, once we were cantering in the second direction she really sneeze/snorted several times in a row and then felt much better. I'm also going to schedule her a massage, as mentioned, for this month so I think that will be great for her as well.

Despite her being resistant and just tight today I'm really happy at how far I've come as a rider and how I'm able to get her to a good place every ride even if it takes some time. That wasn't always the case and I feel like my effectiveness as a rider is so much better after all of my work with L.