doing nothing....

[coverblown]

Not sure how I feel about today's lesson, even tho it worked....

My fave private instructor is off sick (horrid injury) and I got one of the most experienced instructors at the yard, who these days rarely teaches....

So back to basics for me...

I am kicking P on in the warm-up apparently; he is over tracking (I thought he was under tracking....) and god am i busy with my body..... just calm down all the limbs, stabilise from my core, practise being a (melting) ice cream from head to toe, and just try to be one with him.

Widen my hands to open out my chest and allow my shoulders to open... .(golly why hasn't someone told me all this before...) Bring shoulders back and just let him get on with it, relax relax relax.....

All of which I managed to do.... and no stirrups of course...

I wonder if I could just do the whole lot without stirrups, canter included, it was just so so comfortable ??

[Julz]

In other words you are working harder than the horse?

I was once told...."Take everything in your stride..there's no rush....and Breathe"

Hope your instructor is better soon!

[coverblown]

Yep, working harder than the horse. Which I guess I always knew, apart from workming out whether he was under or over tracking, or tracking up, as I worked him in. I know he's forward going, so I suppose I should have expected him to overtrack, it just seemed so slow!

The best thing was, she helped me HOW to do all the relaxy things, rather than the usual

"RELAX!!"

A. x
ps Instructor - S - thinks she has a compression in her back. If that means a compression fracture (and I am not sure that it does) - then that is what I had, and I had 14 weeks off work!!! I hope she really does take it seriously....

[Whatanejit]

Tis good to have another instructor sometimes to look at you from another view point.

Getting you to relax but not be floppy is possibly one of her priorities in a rider. Your other RI maybe didn't mention the things you listed because she knew more than the other RI how amazing it is for you to be just up there in the first place and so was giving you time.

I had the 'too much upper body movement' issue too - now that you know you can work on it.

Stirrups can get in the way, can't they.

80% of my lessons are without stirrups and when I take them back I really feel like they are just something else we need to think about and so they irritate me.

I do like them on a hack, though!

You sound a bit 'flat' re the lesson, Anne?

Often we do leave riding lessons with a whole bunch of criticisms that the instructor has listed instead of the positives.

See them as a challenge - you have to move on from being afraid of falling off and hurting yourself.

Work on these 'to be improved next time' comments one by one in bite size chunks and EnJOY!

[coverblown]

I supose I might still be a wee bit afraid of falling off - but not nearly so much

Cos I've gone and done it, the whole falling off and breaking your back thing. I guess things can get worse but it was pretty bad, as you all know - I bored you all for months about it!

But the upside - the gain if you like, is that I have ended up much much more chilled with the horses, I don't really care any more. I don't sit there sweating scared over whats going to happen next, just get on with it, and stay as much in the moment as I can. Everybody has noticed - and I can't believe it!

So its good to be in a position to take in the new stuff from this instructor - but honestly, I don't know if I need it - I know we keep learning but its got to be fun, too!