A change of pace

I've been riding Lacy for one and a half weeks now, and it's really interesting having to change my ride to properly ride a different horse. Lacy is so much more responsive than Radar and the other horses I have been riding -- you really have to be exact with her to achieve the response you want. She's really responsive to seat aids, which has been really fun for me. I've been working on turning her precisely from my seat, and it's really easy for me to tell when I'm giving the correct aids or not by how she responds. With Radar you can kind of muddle through, be a tad too heavy and still somehow have it turn out like you want. With Lacy, you have to be exact and precise with your aids. She has a trot that is so easy to sit (I actually haven't posted on her yet!) and it's once again all about learning exactness and applying the correct aids. It's fun to ride a "new-to-me" horse again!

When "bad" rides turn "good"

It's interesting what we categorize as a "good" ride versus a "bad" ride sometimes... Yesterday I got on Radar and was not happy. At all. He was so, so stiff and completely unable to bend to the left. I was really not looking forward to the way I the ride was going to go. But, believe it or not, we really went back to the basics (I WILL NOT hold up your head for you! GO forward!) and we had a really good ride, doing trot to canter transitions, basically no tight circles or turns or anything like that, and it was really fun. I think Radar felt better, too, getting ridden in a way that will help him recover from whatever happened after the trail ride.

Equitation!

I don't think I've done cone-weaving in, oh, about 10 years! But yesterday we worked on position and turning via a simple cone-weaving exercise. Basically I worked on the concept that legs/hip/upper body are in fact separate entities and can be used separately for the most responsiveness. Ultimately, the most effective way to do these slight turns was to focus on both moving my hips and legs while keeping my upper body straight. Weirdly enough, Radar is super-responsive to these small changes in my seat. The fact that Radar, of all horses, responds to this kind of ride is really interesting for me and makes me excited about the direction my riding is going now. Radar can be so dull and stiff that his responsiveness to the seat is kind of amazing.

Walk work & shoulder-ins

Today we tried to keep it simple (both the pony and I were tired!), focusing on walk work with the new leg position I've been working on (more contact through my thighs without gripping, my heels a tad bit "higher" to enable this contact). Radar was very responsive to this and we got some rather forward walk. Then we did some shoulder-ins, and once again he was really, really responsive to my leg. I tried not to think at all about his head or neck, and think about it all coming from the hind end. This worked really, really well and I avoided bracing or overflexing him while still getting a good shoulder-in. Did a bit of sitting trot; it went really well, too. Didn't get to do any canter work like on Tuesday, but it was a good lesson nevertheless.

Changing the posting trot & a bit of canter

Worked a lot on more posting than sitting, focusing on posting from my thighs (without pinching!) so that I avoid gripping too much with my lower leg and popping myself out of the saddle at the canter. This definitely helped the canter & I got a few really good (but short!) canters.

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.