Pedro
18th Apr 2001, 01:42 PM
Wednesday, 11 April
When I arrived at the barn Francisco was, as usual, finishing the previous lesson on the covered arena. Two other students were working in the larger one by themselves. When he saw me Francisco told me to join them on Mefisto and work on my own. That was absolutely perfect has it allowed me to try to remove that pebble on my boot that cantering with Mefisto always proved to be! I went tack him up and took him to the arena. After all, the two students ridding there were the same ones from the Saturday lesson three chronicles ago - and we were all riding the very same horses :)!
The weather around here has been improving steadily, with clear skies and temperatures around mid to lower twenties. With the longer days this means that the larger arena is now perfectly usable for the seven o'clock lesson. It has dried just recently so it was still crumbly in the centre and not loose enough, which made circles more difficult. With that and the lack of support from the wider spaced limits, I found myself having a disturbing difficulty performing large circles...
I did some time in trot to warm us up, together with some circles and changes of hand. After a while at this we started with my personal objective for the lesson - canter!
I had decided to have the stirrups a little higher than I would normally have them, as I thought that I might be acting a little greedy with the leg position. The straighter leg position might work fine in walk and trot, but while posting and cantering I just can't easily keep it and then tend to tip-toe, slip the feet into the stirrups, tense up and things just go down hill from there! The fact was that it was a lot easier to post (and later on canter) with the stirrups that bit higher, even if I felt a little "coiled up" at walk or slower trot.
The canter started very bumpy. I made a point of not leaning back or rowing, keeping myself straight and trying to absorb the movement with the lower back. What worked well enough with Lord and Astérix didn't seem to be doing much good now. Over a while, I don't know how, things just seem to ease into place. It became progressively easier to keep seated and soon I couldn't believe I've had this much difficulty cantering!
Mefisto would require absolutely no leg to keep the canter, he just kept going of his own accord. Even when I tried a few circles and had to use the inside leg, my position was not upset by that. After being comfortable with the canter in both hands I tried changing the gait, extending and then containing the canter. Extending was easy (I mean extending in a very loose sense, it was pretty much just moving faster...) but reducing the gait to a shorter slower version meant a lot more play with the hands and more work with the legs to avoid Mefisto going back to trot. At first I was not very successful as Mefisto would either drop to trot or we would alternate between going slower and going faster, as I tried to react to the changes instead of influencing them.
After a while of this I decided to reward the two of us with some stirrupless canter. Now that was heaven! It would have felt absolutely perfect if I hadn't been powerless to remove that stupid grin off my face :D!
Meanwhile the two other students dismounted and left the arena. Francisco, who had been watching in the company of one of the student's father and making some corrections, took Pipas to work a little with her. As I had started work after the others I kept at it. Although he tried to go to the centre a few times when the others left, when he understood that we were to stay Mefisto showed a willingness to canter that surprised me!
I had just taken us to walk to rest a little, but as soon as I dropped the (light) contact he would speed into trot and then transit into canter, without racing into it. I checked him gently twice, and twice again he did the same whenever I slacken the reins. Faced with that I just thought "OK! You want to canter? Then let's canter. I wouldn't mind a rest, but I'm up for it!" and got a lot more exercise :).
We kept at it for a long while more, in both hands. All it took to take him into canter, after a short break in trot, was advancing the inside leg - and up we went smooth, no racing. When he no longer offered the canter from his own will I left us at trot (in a fast gait set by Mefisto himself) and used the opportunity to do a little bit of leg yielding - just to say that we had done something a little more technical :-). Mefisto started to show resentment towards my hand, shaking his head when I made the motion of gathering the reins I had loosened (while still keeping a lively trot). It was about then that he slowed into a walk and turned tentatively inside, aiming for the gate (he was still on loose reins). Knowing very well what he was asking of me, and after the great ride he had offered, even if we still had ten minutes left of the lesson there was nothing left for me to do but comply. I let him walk closer to the gate, stopped him and dismounted. After he was done scratching his face all over me I took him to his box.
It's amazing that I have been fighting this for so long and then all of the sudden it works right! Not only do I have no clue to what I did right today, I have no idea of what I was doing wrong that was causing all the difficulties. Maybe it was just a matter of tensing up and blocking. Maybe some slight problems like the high action, the saddle or loosing the stirrups, together with the (small but inevitable) pressure to perform during lessons, were being overblown. All it took then was doing things by myself, for myself - just having fun - for it all to come together!
Pedro Fortunato
Lisbon, Portugal
When I arrived at the barn Francisco was, as usual, finishing the previous lesson on the covered arena. Two other students were working in the larger one by themselves. When he saw me Francisco told me to join them on Mefisto and work on my own. That was absolutely perfect has it allowed me to try to remove that pebble on my boot that cantering with Mefisto always proved to be! I went tack him up and took him to the arena. After all, the two students ridding there were the same ones from the Saturday lesson three chronicles ago - and we were all riding the very same horses :)!
The weather around here has been improving steadily, with clear skies and temperatures around mid to lower twenties. With the longer days this means that the larger arena is now perfectly usable for the seven o'clock lesson. It has dried just recently so it was still crumbly in the centre and not loose enough, which made circles more difficult. With that and the lack of support from the wider spaced limits, I found myself having a disturbing difficulty performing large circles...
I did some time in trot to warm us up, together with some circles and changes of hand. After a while at this we started with my personal objective for the lesson - canter!
I had decided to have the stirrups a little higher than I would normally have them, as I thought that I might be acting a little greedy with the leg position. The straighter leg position might work fine in walk and trot, but while posting and cantering I just can't easily keep it and then tend to tip-toe, slip the feet into the stirrups, tense up and things just go down hill from there! The fact was that it was a lot easier to post (and later on canter) with the stirrups that bit higher, even if I felt a little "coiled up" at walk or slower trot.
The canter started very bumpy. I made a point of not leaning back or rowing, keeping myself straight and trying to absorb the movement with the lower back. What worked well enough with Lord and Astérix didn't seem to be doing much good now. Over a while, I don't know how, things just seem to ease into place. It became progressively easier to keep seated and soon I couldn't believe I've had this much difficulty cantering!
Mefisto would require absolutely no leg to keep the canter, he just kept going of his own accord. Even when I tried a few circles and had to use the inside leg, my position was not upset by that. After being comfortable with the canter in both hands I tried changing the gait, extending and then containing the canter. Extending was easy (I mean extending in a very loose sense, it was pretty much just moving faster...) but reducing the gait to a shorter slower version meant a lot more play with the hands and more work with the legs to avoid Mefisto going back to trot. At first I was not very successful as Mefisto would either drop to trot or we would alternate between going slower and going faster, as I tried to react to the changes instead of influencing them.
After a while of this I decided to reward the two of us with some stirrupless canter. Now that was heaven! It would have felt absolutely perfect if I hadn't been powerless to remove that stupid grin off my face :D!
Meanwhile the two other students dismounted and left the arena. Francisco, who had been watching in the company of one of the student's father and making some corrections, took Pipas to work a little with her. As I had started work after the others I kept at it. Although he tried to go to the centre a few times when the others left, when he understood that we were to stay Mefisto showed a willingness to canter that surprised me!
I had just taken us to walk to rest a little, but as soon as I dropped the (light) contact he would speed into trot and then transit into canter, without racing into it. I checked him gently twice, and twice again he did the same whenever I slacken the reins. Faced with that I just thought "OK! You want to canter? Then let's canter. I wouldn't mind a rest, but I'm up for it!" and got a lot more exercise :).
We kept at it for a long while more, in both hands. All it took to take him into canter, after a short break in trot, was advancing the inside leg - and up we went smooth, no racing. When he no longer offered the canter from his own will I left us at trot (in a fast gait set by Mefisto himself) and used the opportunity to do a little bit of leg yielding - just to say that we had done something a little more technical :-). Mefisto started to show resentment towards my hand, shaking his head when I made the motion of gathering the reins I had loosened (while still keeping a lively trot). It was about then that he slowed into a walk and turned tentatively inside, aiming for the gate (he was still on loose reins). Knowing very well what he was asking of me, and after the great ride he had offered, even if we still had ten minutes left of the lesson there was nothing left for me to do but comply. I let him walk closer to the gate, stopped him and dismounted. After he was done scratching his face all over me I took him to his box.
It's amazing that I have been fighting this for so long and then all of the sudden it works right! Not only do I have no clue to what I did right today, I have no idea of what I was doing wrong that was causing all the difficulties. Maybe it was just a matter of tensing up and blocking. Maybe some slight problems like the high action, the saddle or loosing the stirrups, together with the (small but inevitable) pressure to perform during lessons, were being overblown. All it took then was doing things by myself, for myself - just having fun - for it all to come together!
Pedro Fortunato
Lisbon, Portugal