Progress in small steps

Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning I had lessons that went OK. Well, the Tuesday lesson was good, until I towards the end of the lesson was cantering at the longside, and got into my head that Odin was rushing, and I didn't know what to do about it. I had a brain meltdown, which of course means tense, tense body, which means no riding, just hanging on. Sigh. All gone now though!

Otherwise, both Tuesday and Wednesday we worked on haunches out. The hard part was to figure out how to keep Odin shoulders on the track, and the haunches only turned. It was a very nice exercise for learning how to control parts of his body. I could use this to help me be more effective in the canter, keeping him straight and not letting him fall in or out.

It is a very nice experience when you can use one exercise to help you understand something basic about riding and to make you understand what you do wrong in another scenario. And I didn't even understand it fully until today; when I was using the same thing to make a nice 10m volte!

Today I had a great lesson. It is getting pretty cold, and my lesson was late, so it was below 40, brrrr. But we worked on forward and not slowing down when bending and collecting, so a little cold weather was great for Odin, less laziness.
L. had me working on my position (shoulders back, hips forward) and it is slowly getting better. Slowly.

And then we did the 10m volte thing, where I kept him forward in a nice moving trot, and kept that while making the smaller circle. I did two things that made this really work. L. told me to be aware of not pulling his head around when turning, so that I slow him down, and all my shoulder-on-the-line work for the 2 previous days came in handy, as I could neatly turn his shoulders. I also counted the trot 1,2,1,2,1,2... something that L. does when she riders (she thinks she is silly for doing it out loud, but otherwise I would never had thought of it!), and it really helped me focus on keeping the rhythm the same.

I really feel I am slowly making progress, my aids are getting more independent, my seat and position better. I can really feel now that when I get a thing right, Odin does what he does better. He just responds to me, perfect.