Saturday, October 17, 2009

Independent hands and the canter

Tuesday's Ride:
I actually had a great ride on Tuesday, despite the ridiculous rain and arena flooding... we actually used the flooded areas to provide good places to leg-yield. I've kind of found the "sweet spot" as far as figuring out when I'm sitting straight in the sitting trot--finally I'm not over-correcting myself and over rotating. It's much more comfortable, too.

Friday's Ride:
On Friday I actually had a funny experience when my sitting trot was easier than the posting trot! It's so much easier to feel my own straightness when I'm sitting. I worked on my elbows and hands and trying both to allow my arms to "bounce" ever-so-slightly, and re-thinking the half-halt as stopping that "bounce" a bit. Radar is great for exercises like this since he doesn't really get offended by over-exaggeration and trying to figure something out. The idea of allowing my hands to do two rather different things at once really helped me with the left-lead canter departs, too, in that I figured out the concept of counter-bending without completely abandoning the true bend. Some good short canter spurts, especially once I got the concept of making him actively go down to the trot instead of just falling into it. A really good lesson!

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