Riding the strides

Yesterday I had a lesson after being lazy during the weekend and not riding.

We did some leg yields in walk at trot to begin with, partly to loosen up Odin, but also to work on his response to me leg aids. Getting better. We did the sequence of leg yield (trot) along the long side, canter circle at A/C and then leg yield (trot) again. This worked nicely to loosen Odin.

We then did serpentine in trot with walk at the centre line and some canter figure eights with trot at the center line.

All these exercises really emphasized that I need to think about riding every stride, and not the movements. If I don't think about the quality of the canter, the quality of the transition becomes bad, the trot is bad, the change of bend is bad, etc... It is like a cascading failure (sounds like sci-fi, just add entropy).

The lesson was very educational on that point, and I also felt my position and my seat is a little bit better every time I ride, which is just an awesome feeling.