This week I have been able to get back into a riding lesson. Having tried multiple times to get hold of Tallend School and failed, I managed to get hold of a trainer from Overdale Equestrian instead. Overdale runs courses with Mary Wanless and the main trainer there is one of her head trainers. The reason I wanted to seek out this, is to really break down my position and look at some things I have found tricky to really be able to move on.
I really like breaking things down and making sure my foundations are correct. I have been lucky enough to have amazing instruction over the past years which has given me lots of confidence and foundation and felt like I wanted to perfect my position more. It makes sense to me to look at it from a biomechanics angle as I have some straightness issues which get more pronounced when I am tense or trying hard with anything. I also wanted to get an eye on how I am sitting and if there was any tweaks I could make to improve it.
Karin the trainer didn't change huge amounts of things, but just enough to make riding feel slightly alien at times. We began on the mechanical robot horse, using him to look at my position in neutral. Karin found that I was actually slightly behind the vertical, not by much but enough to make it difficult for me. She had me bring my collarbone in line with my ribcage and asked me to push my back slightly into my belt. The other thing we did was shortened my stirrups by a hole which got my leg underneath me more and stopped them from sliding out in front of me. We looked at breathing and core, we worked in canter on the Robot horse, blowing up a balloon without pinching it off. It sounds easy but you have to be able to control your breathing and core to now allow the air to zoom back out of the balloon into your mouth whilst you blow it up, it does help you to feel all the correct muscles working which was fascinating!
We moved onto one of their school horses and took the same learning onto her, I could feel myself wanting to fall behind the vertical and we looked at correcting that. Was fun as Mary was riding her horses at the same time so nice to be able to sneak peeks at her too.
It was a very helpful session, not the fanciest ride I have ever had but very helpful with some small tweaks that should help to make a big difference.
I also got to try a possible lease horse. He is an adorable little Andalusian Stallion that is as bombproof as anything I have ridden. He is classically trained and I found him very tricky to get going on our first ride but did trust him. I need to go back and try again and see if the second time clicks any more easily as he was a sweetheart but I am just not sure if he's for me. I also saw the most beautiful KWPN mare, she's a amazing opportunity but not in ridden work this point in time and I am in communications with her owner about her!
So, the last week or so I haven't been riding as have been away to Nice with my gorgeous husband! More about that in my next post.
xoxo
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