sitting trot, and lots of visualizations...

Did almost all my lesson in the sitting trot today, working on activating my core muscles, bearing down into my seat to regulate speed when necessary and sitting on my seat bones. Another concept that really helped was to think about activating my thigh muscles to hold, not pinch. It's a fine line between the two, though! Got some really good trot work from these little position changes. Also got good trot-canter transitions, although it's hard for me to hold that position in the canter right now.

A pleasurable hack...

I got on yesterday and really didn't feel like doing anything intense, so we worked on getting Radar into hack mode- moving forward, not on the forehand but a more open frame than we had been working in. A lot of it focused on pace and rhythm, kind of zoning into a comfortable rhythm and trying to maintain it with the least amount of fiddling around with my contact.

are we showing? who knows!

Spring weather is making me anxious! Still don't know if the show on Saturday is on or not so I can't decide whether or not to be nervous about it! Had a really good lesson yesterday after a bad one on Friday. One of the many visualizations Mia has given me recently is the concept that I'm aiming for my contact to be a 2 out of 5, strong enough to be there but light enough to not impede Radar's momentum. Regulating our rhythm is also a big idea, since I am able to get Radar moving forward pretty decently sometimes but definitely can't keep the pace steady for the whole test. I have to think about foregoing some of the power to get an even pace. So I'm totally prepared for the judge to be not at all enamored with the idea of attempting dressage on a Fjord, lol. As Mia said, with a learner judge you have no idea what you're going to get. Oh well, it's really for fun anyway. My goal is over 60%, seriously. Anything in that range or above is perfectly decent... I mean, I'm an ammy riding a 13 hh Fjord! Should know tomorrow whether this is happening or not so I can properly freak out or not...