Post by pboy on Mar 16, 2015 18:34:11 GMT
I had a lesson with the yard owner at our new yard on Sunday, and I managed to bribe hubby into coming with me with the promise of lunch 
It was a very different lesson to the others I've had recently but I really liked Ali's approach. She's very classical with a strong focus on getting the horse to take the contact forwards and down, and take responsibility for their own self-carriage. We did the lesson working over poles to encourage Indio to lift his shoulders and build activity at the same time as learning to stretch evenly into the contact (and hopefully straighten out his wonky head!). You can hear some of the stuff from Ali on the video but the highlights were:
- Keep the trot slow, almost 'bumbling along' for this exercise
- Use the inside leg over the pole so he associates it with more lift and activity
- We did big circles then down to small circles and leg-yield out again. In canter we did the same, taking the circle down to the point where Indio found it hard then pushing out again
Ali's philosophy is to stretch the horse and 'straighten out the kinks' before asking for the collected work. Indio had really wanted to stretch on the right rein last time I rode him so it seemed like a logical step to work on this. He even started to seek the left rein contact in the right canter by the end though, as you can see if you can be bothered watching the whole video (!) he did find it hard to stretch and maintain the canter particularly as he was a bit tired by then.
There's a nice spook in the middle to keep it interesting and an unintentional flying change!!
I think his ancestors must have provided good inspiration for Don Quixote's nag:
It was a very different lesson to the others I've had recently but I really liked Ali's approach. She's very classical with a strong focus on getting the horse to take the contact forwards and down, and take responsibility for their own self-carriage. We did the lesson working over poles to encourage Indio to lift his shoulders and build activity at the same time as learning to stretch evenly into the contact (and hopefully straighten out his wonky head!). You can hear some of the stuff from Ali on the video but the highlights were:
- Keep the trot slow, almost 'bumbling along' for this exercise
- Use the inside leg over the pole so he associates it with more lift and activity
- We did big circles then down to small circles and leg-yield out again. In canter we did the same, taking the circle down to the point where Indio found it hard then pushing out again
Ali's philosophy is to stretch the horse and 'straighten out the kinks' before asking for the collected work. Indio had really wanted to stretch on the right rein last time I rode him so it seemed like a logical step to work on this. He even started to seek the left rein contact in the right canter by the end though, as you can see if you can be bothered watching the whole video (!) he did find it hard to stretch and maintain the canter particularly as he was a bit tired by then.
There's a nice spook in the middle to keep it interesting and an unintentional flying change!!
I think his ancestors must have provided good inspiration for Don Quixote's nag:
. I think he just found right canter hard work and thought a spook would be easier!
for so much hard work we thank ye!!