Hello all and sorry for disappearing for a while. A lot been happening with me: amongst other things I started studying for Graduate Diploma of Psychology through Monash University in Melbourne. It’s something that I have thought of doing for a while, as human psyche interests me almost as much as horse psyche. Almost coincidentally, I chose this course at the only university in Australia which is conducting research on human-animal relationships and the way it affects both species psychologically, as a part of its School of Psychology. (See http://www.animalwelfare.net.au/arg for details of the research group). It would be good if I could do my 4th year of Masters research project as part of this group… but that’s looking too far ahead. Right now, I am just enjoying settling back into the uni life of attending lectures, going to the library, and studying at home. I am only doing this course part-time as I still need to work full-time to pay the bills to keep myself and Becky in nice homes, but at least I am starting to do something that truly interest me, rather than just earns me money.
Anyway, back to my adventures with Becky.
It’s been about 3 weeks since I last posted on this blog, and, since then I had 2 lessons with Marina during which she once again destroyed my seat at the trot… and then helped me rebuild it back, only better! So it’s a good thing when she does it! Even though I grumble while it happens.
Let me explain: Marina “works” on me and Becky gradually, slowly helping us mold into a better-balanced and responsive pair. So she periodically introduces new concepts for me to think about as I ride, and new things for me to ask Becky to do. She doesn’t try to position me into the “perfect” position straight away, as my body would just be too unused to it, and the resulting stiffness would just make me unable to keep that position as Becky moves. So over the last two years, she has changed my seat slowly from the “yeee-haw cowgirl” feet-forward lean-back, to a more “classical” one: feet under my hips, under my shoulders. My stirrups length has increased, I sit on my seat-bones not “behind” them, move my hips with Becky and feel for the change of rhythm, and my legs gradually get moved more underneath me. Unfortunately, every time she introduces a change in my seat, it feels as if I forget how to ride. I stiffen-up, bounce, can't use my legs properly… at least for a little while, until my body gets used to the new position.
I wonder if most of you go through similar sort of thing as you improve your riding skills, whether by yourself or with an instructor?
I wonder if Becky feels the same way to an extent, when I ask her to do something new? Perhaps she feels that she needs to “relearn” how to carry me and re-adjust to my weight and my riding every time I ask her for a slightly new movement? Everything I ask of her is natural to her, in the sense that I never asked her for anything that she would not have done herself in the paddock at some point as she plays and runs with her mates. But with me on her back – the story is sure to be different.
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As well as making one more (and guaranteed not to be the last) adjustment to my seat, Marina taught me another way to “feel” Becky’s rhythm in the trot, and to assist her to keep the same pace. This encourages her to “stay” with me mentally and not get too distracted by things around her.
Until now, I tried to keep the rhythm by mentally counting 1-2 1-2 at the up-down movement of the trot, and by trying to keep a set rhythm of the count. What I didn’t realize is that Becky can change her movement slightly in the split-second while I stand up between “1” and “2”, or while I sit down. Which can result in me not rising to quite the same height if she speeds up her step just slightly. So I now try to be aware of the entire lengths of the movements of up and down, and to keep both the height I rise and rhythm of the up-down the same.
I now know that it’s also important to make the transition from up to down and back up smooth. So, instead of having a sharp obvious “up” and sharp obvious “down”, making the movement more like a wave with peaks and troughs. This allows me to feel the length of each wave much better. All of this is really something that is building upon and refining the concepts I have blogged about before in The Pelvic Pendulum.
At the same time, it is also very important to not “hang on” to the reins when asking Becky to slow down if I feel her speeding up, as that encourages her to shorten her steps and increase my rising rhythm even more. Hanging on to the reins has always been my bane – a hangover from my trail-riding days when the only hope I had of controlling my horse was to have a very short rein and an almost-constant pull on it to stop the horse from galloping off. Doing this with Becky (and with most horses, I’d imagine) encourages her to lift her head, shorten her steps, which, amongst other things, gets her adrenaline up and makes her annoyed, rather than relaxed as desired. Also, of course, it would eventually make her less sensitive to the rein and to its signals of “slow down” and “turn”. So, despite my subconscious fear, when I feel that Becky is speeding up, I need to ask with the reins and release immediately… and ask again if needed. If it turns into a yo-yo game of speed up, slow down, speed up again I find that going in a smaller circle is the best solution to establish a slower pace and rhythm.
In this way, keeping all these concepts in mind, Becky and I trotted all up and down the arena, “drawing” various figures in the sand, instead of working just on circles. It’s all about breaking patterns and giving me and Becky a larger task to do, rather than just concentrating on perfecting going round and round along the same route. I think that doing too much of the latter tends to make one concentrate on minute faults too much, to the point of boring drilling - to the point of neuroticism… and I’d much prefer to encounter neuroticism in an academic way as part of my psychology course, rather than “grow” it internally or in Becky.
