Monday 3 November 2014

Lesson I

I am writing this as i stand under the solarium with Kika as she was a hot mess after our lesson so she had to have a hose down afterwards. So the awesomely nice mama that I am is splurging 2 euros for her to spend half an hour under the solarium before I toss her ass on the walker to dry out more so that she can go out for the afternoon. If i have my way she'll be getting clipped first tomorrow lolz - sorry N you'll have to wait till Wednesday evening.



Now for the lesson report, here's hoping I can remember the stuff we worked on. First off K was great for our first lesson in forever. I changed my mind and rode her for our lesson today as tomorrow's is scheduled for the afternoon & I figured Nancy might be a better choice if there is traffic in the arena at that time. K found enough things to distract her today when she was alone in the arena ;-)

Pre-work motivation & game face hah!
We worked on all three paces, with transitions, serpentines, circles and demi-volts - which was a new thing I learned today. I thought the were the tear drop shapes which can be used to change rein, nope. Turns out it's a fun S shape composed of two semi - circles. Once what we had to do was spelled out for me (cos I'm an idiot) K rocked them.

Takeaways from our inaugural lesson:

- watch my hands, keep my inside hand slightly higher and lighter than my outside rein. I really am terribly reliant on my inside rein so this will be a serious work in progress. Not mention that I ride with my hands super wide apart on Kika (no idea why, another one of my nasty habits)

- refocus her attention on me faster when she gets distracted and her head pops up.

- when riding downward transitions use my seat more and my hands less. Our trot to walk transitions were awesome once I started doing this. No more head tossing skywards - funny really when you consider i was no longer hanging off her face. Sorry mare - i know I'm a shambles.

- her canter will improve as we strengthen her back again, she finds it hard to maintain her frame. I also have to push her on a bit when we initially transition up to help her get her backside to work...or pretend to, she is renowned for avoiding using her hinney when she can.

Post-work hot mess posing

Sorry this is a little all over the place, I had hoped that typing this out straight away on my phone would help me with the memories...Sadly a lot has again been forgotten till I get back in the tack. However there was also a lot of the usual, shoulders back, longer leg (aka heel down) & hands. S (teacher) said there was plenty good there when I said there is a lot to work on, so baby steps and maybe some day I'll ride better ☺

Not to be left out
Nancy got a quick spin before my lesson, I arrived early and started tacking her up as i had planned to ride her for the lesson & Kika later. But I forgot I was early so we were ready early & the situation of potentially having more traffic for tomorrow afternoon's lesson so i opted to have a quick spin on N before quickly swapping horses. I am super glad they are in overnight again now as makes for easier access to them and quicker grooming lol!


10 comments:

  1. Yay for a good lesson! I'm so happy you have some eyes on the ground again. It makes all the difference for me. If I don't have someone reminding me what to do I get so distracted and forget to work on anything lol. That trail riding background sneaking up on me hehe. I have a feeling when I get to start taking lessons again that I'm going to hear a lot of "Let go with the inside rein!" because I'm still steering Chrome like a baby horse with an opening inside rein lol. :)

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    1. *blush* I totally still do that too .... me so bad!

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  2. sounds fun! i hate it when i forget half the lesson so quickly... it all comes back eventually tho. i'll be curious to hear if today's lesson helps you get even more out of tomorrows, just from carrying over new thoughts! good luck :)

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    1. Stay tuned, Nancy lesson has been scheduled for tomorrow afternoon...Fingers crossed!

      My head is like a sieve, I really need an reboot/upgrade. The memory/hard drive is woefully underpowered in my brain!

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  3. I'm super behind on reading blogs, but I'm so glad I caught this one! Sounds like you got a ton out of your lesson, hopefully Kika stays on task while you work on it!

    Hope you get those hairy creatures clipped soon! I did clipping yesterday, and it was soooo needed!

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    1. Aw I'm honoured that you are catching up on my blabbering nonsensical posts. Kika got clipped today & Nancy will hopefully be done tomorrow evening. Hope to do a post with photos then ☺

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  4. It sounds like you had a great lesson! I'm just getting caught up on blogs, so I had to read about lesson #1 before lesson #2 :) Just remember that while you're aiming to ride better, it doesn't mean that you're not already riding well now. I'm sure that the trainer was spot on when she told you that there is a lot of good there too :)

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    1. Aw shucks, you're too kind to me. I think i deff rode Kika better than Nancy, we shall wait and see where the next lessons take us tomorrow.

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  5. You're a machine with all of these lessons! Way to go! :-D

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    1. Trying to maximise my time off, is it weird that this has been one of my top breaks from work lolz

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