Another week of galloping on Gamir, and my legs are feeling it. Actually, they’ve been feeling a little less useful than usual these last few lessons. I am not sure if I have strained something or been lazier than usual with exercise between my lessons. Neither quite seems to fit, but my legs start feeling heavy and worn out a bit too quickly of late. But, enough complaining. ;)
Or, well, not quite enough, because this was a so-so lesson for much of it. I didn’t quite feel comfortable, and even though Gamir was already warmed up from a lesson before ours I couldn’t quite connect with him. Or maybe it was because of that? I actually think I tend to do a little worse when someone else had just ridden the horse. Could be my imagination, though.
Most of the warm-up was mediocre, something was clearly lacking in my riding. Once we got to the cantering, however, I did manage to step it up a little. On several occasions, I was told to ride less. The idea for this lesson was to work on asking the horse to do something, and then to refrain from constantly asking for the same again. Once you have asked for canter, it is the horses job to keep cantering. You should only act if the horse shows any sign of falling out of the canter, to make sure you aren’t constantly there reminding the horse of its job, and likely getting it to ignore you entirely eventually.
This is definitely something I need to work on (a side-effect of all the slow and steady—read: lazy—horses I have ridden), but Gamir is good for that. I also got some reminders about my seat (have to remember to get my stomach forward in the canter, and lean back a little against an imaginary hand at the small of my back to get back but not too far back) and about my leg position (don’t think heel down, think toe up, and bend the leg to get the lower leg in contact with the horse while still letting the knee drop down). The latter was the real discovery of this lesson. It felt like way too much of a bend, and as if my lower leg was too far back and too far up, but as soon as I had the legs in that position (without actually using them much) I suddenly got 100% more canter from Gamir. It was a rather remarkable difference, and I was able to use it to get a very collected canter-to-walk transition at the end. Wow, hindlegs.
Next week and the week thereafter we’re jumping. I asked for Murphy for one of these, since the last jumping lesson on him wasn’t so stellar.
And speaking of my Irish favourites, one of them will unfortunately be leaving the riding school soon. Sammy, Plain Sam, will be retiring at the age of 21 and after 14 years at the riding school. He’s still quite sound, but finds life in a largeish herd a little too competitive and they also don’t want to ask him to do too much work. He will be missed, but hopefully he will get some good years in retirement. It does mean, of course, that I am down to three horses that I can ride, so I really hope they get another one in the 150-155 cm range. Lately, its either been ponies or tall horses.