After last week’s luxury of being all alone, it was back to a regular lesson and back to someone other than Murphy. In this case, Gamir. The worst part about him is how surly he is to get ready, but last time I managed pretty well with plenty of bribes, and it worked fine this time too. He basically needs to be distracted a lot to keep him from getting testy. He was probably also fairly comfortable as far as his back goes, because he didn’t feel particularly stiff (like he sometimes can be) once we got started.
This week, we repeated an exercise from a while back, where we focused on trying to control which front leg the horse would start with when going from a halt to a walk. The idea being that it would be the leg from whichever side was made to be the inner side, the one with more ‘give’. A very useful exercise for me right now that I am trying to focus a lot on getting a better feel for what’s happening beneath me.
At a walk, I think it worked fairly well. When taking it slowly, I am able to get a sense for each step of the process, and after some initial problems I started to be able to control which leg Gamir started with reasonably well. However, once we added some trotting, it got hairier. Partly, my trotting really sucked. I couldn’t find a good leg position and Gamir felt very thin and unengaged.
After a while, I stopped to have a chat with my instructor, and I had her position my legs just to show me where they should be because I get really uncertain about it all the time. She repeated what she’s told me once before that I need to think ‘bend the knee’ instead of ‘press the heel down’. Now, I used to have a problem with the heel coming up too, but since that’s better, she said we need to correct the leg position now. If the heel comes up a bit again, she feels that will be easier to fix once more once I have the leg in a better position overall.
So, I went back to trotting, focusing very hard on ‘bend the knee’. It did get a little tense (I always tense up when I focus), but I could feel that the position was much better and much more effective. If I can manage that naturally, without cramping a bit, it should make quite a difference. Of course, once I had improved that part, I was promptly told to ask more of Gamir. I keep thinking I have gotten better at asking for enough work, but I am really easily fooled into thinking the horse is working pretty well. And sure enough, once she’d told me to step it up I suddenly got a very different trot. His hindlegs came in under him, his back came up and his neck came forward and down. Very nice.
Of course, Murphy did that all on his own last week (she told me she’d heard he’d done very well, so apparently the other instructor had been quite impressed with his performance), but I guess its better to have accomplished it yourself. Just not quite as amazing. ;)