Spiraling

In my Tuesday lesson Mia had me working on a new spiraling exercise at the trot. The geometry of it was slightly confusing to me at first, but it was basically ride a circle and work on getting true bend and the moment I felt Radar releasing and relaxing I immediately rode him out of the circle on a straight line as a reward. This exercise really made his trot so much more animated than usual. During our canter work Mia had me visualizing my downward canter transitions as creating two levels of trot: one trot that brings him down into the trot from the canter, the other trot that organizes it and gets him moving nicely again. That really helped, and we had some good canters by the end.