Chessington Equestrian Centre, Chessington
As we walked to the school, Sarah asked me how the lessons had been going. I replied that it was a case of a couple of good lessons, then a bad one. That seemed to set the tone for another bad lesson.
That's actually a very unfair thing to say, with hindsight, but at the time I really felt like I was struggling, and was getting frustrated at my inability to properly communicate with the horse.
I was on Sam, a working livery that I hadn’t ridden before. I was warned that he may be a bit spooky, but he didn’t look at anything the whole time I was on him.
We started trotting at what seemed to be a fair pace, but I was immediately urged by Sarah to push him on, and get more energy and impulsion. By the time we had got to a satisfactory speed, I felt like we were careering round the school at a super-fast (uncomfortably so) trot. But it was more to do with Sam having such a short stride and being a bit reluctant to stretch out.
I had so much trouble with my stirrups today. The slipping through, and losing the stirrups has always been an issue, but has lessened as I’ve progressed. Today I rode in safety stirrups for the first time, with the big bulge on the side, and I absolutely hated them. They felt so uncomfortable and wrong, my feet kept slipping through, and my leg never felt in the right place, despite trying 3 different holes on the leathers. Maybe I was just having one of those days, but having admired the safety stirrups from afar in the past, I was most disappointed to find that I basically can’t ride in them.
Sam was actually quite nice to ride, despite the stirrup issues and the ’fast’ trot. As Sarah urged me to use my leg on him, I really felt him respond and do as I asked, although if I stopped ‘riding’ him, he soon got lazy.
He did have a lovely comfy canter, and I managed to canter quite a few laps of the arena and do some circles without breaking to trot. We did a lot of work on transitions, and there was improvement over the duration of the lessen, although there was a bad patch at one point where I was faffing with my stirrups, not sure whether I wanted to be trotting or cantering, and poor Sam didn’t have a clue what to do. We carried on round, but very messily.
Sarah commented at the end that I’d definitely improved since her last lesson (3 lessons ago) and I felt that was probably true. No matter how untidy I’d felt during the lesson, I was doing things that I wouldn’t have managed a couple of weeks ago. For example, starting to get flexion in the neck, and get him working between my hand and leg - something I’ve heard of, but never been taught before.
Interestingly, during most of my lessons there is a group lesson going on in the adjacent school, and I spend quite a lot of time during my lesson observing what they’re doing and comparing to myself. Today, I must have been focusing so hard on my own riding, as I couldn’t tell you a thing about the other lesson, not even how many were in it, I just know that by the time I finished, the other school was empty...
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