Part of the rehab process for Max has been getting myself back into condition. Granted, I did ride other horses for the roughly two-month period that Max was off, but the muscle memory needs to be tuned up. In fact, it's just as important to get me back into condition as it is for Max. However, while things will go relatively easy for Max, there will be more work for me. :-)
We did our usual lesson this morning, preceeded by about an hour-long warm-up session. The warm-up primarily consisted of a lot of walking in the beginning, gradually moving up to trotting alternated with walking and finally, cantering alternating with trotting and walking. As part of this, I've also been doing a lot of transitions in order to get Max more attuned to my aids.
For myself, I did a number of sretching exercises (but as the lesson later proved, not enough!) to inlcude moving my hips from side-to-side, posting without stirrups (ouch!) and some other exercises.
Another area I've been working on with Max is to strenghthen him laterally by doing some shoulder-in work. For this, I will work him along the long side of an open area about 200-300 feet long (it's actually a driven dressage area) in each direction, first at the walk and then at the trot. It's really not a lot and I don't want to work him hard in this area.
OK, now to the lesson. Lots of leg yields and transitions! One of the key thinkgs here, at least for me, is leg yielding while at the same time maintining a good working trot. Max has a tendency to speed up in these in order to "get 'er done". Probelm is, it's not a matter of rushing but of precision, especially since he also likes to fishtail with his haunches out. It's a constant issue that I have to keep on top of Max about (helped along with a dressage whip to push his haunched into position. After about 20 minutes of this, Max finally settled down and we managed to get some nice leg-yields with minimal fishtailing at a working trot.
Some other things we worked on was alternating colecting and extensions at the trot and then the canter. The goals here were to keep quiet with the hands and use the seat and legs to do most fo the work. It requires some concentration but paid off in the end. The curb bit has really improved Max's collection because I can give him a bigger "hint" to start collecting up- there's no mistaking what I want (although sometimes I have to remind a little harder than I'd like).
In the end, we did some seriously collected canters, progressively slowing him down and focusing the enegy upwards- it should feel like the legs are working like pistons underneath you and while it may at first seem like the horse is crow-hopping, he really isn't- it's the shifting of weigt to the hanches. The other thing that will happen is that the haunches will drop slightly and it feels like you're going uphill- here you have to resist the tendency to start leaning forward (which totally destroys your seat). One of the major benefits to collection is that it will helpMax's arhritis in that more weight is being shifted to the rear, away from the front end where he seems to be affected the most.
After all of this, both of us were pretty tired out and I was sore, to say the least. We made our way home and Max definitely got a nice bucket of A&M and the rest of the day off (by this point we'd been three hours in the saddle).
We're getting there and so far, Max doesn't appear to be having any issues. :-)
We did our usual lesson this morning, preceeded by about an hour-long warm-up session. The warm-up primarily consisted of a lot of walking in the beginning, gradually moving up to trotting alternated with walking and finally, cantering alternating with trotting and walking. As part of this, I've also been doing a lot of transitions in order to get Max more attuned to my aids.
For myself, I did a number of sretching exercises (but as the lesson later proved, not enough!) to inlcude moving my hips from side-to-side, posting without stirrups (ouch!) and some other exercises.
Another area I've been working on with Max is to strenghthen him laterally by doing some shoulder-in work. For this, I will work him along the long side of an open area about 200-300 feet long (it's actually a driven dressage area) in each direction, first at the walk and then at the trot. It's really not a lot and I don't want to work him hard in this area.
OK, now to the lesson. Lots of leg yields and transitions! One of the key thinkgs here, at least for me, is leg yielding while at the same time maintining a good working trot. Max has a tendency to speed up in these in order to "get 'er done". Probelm is, it's not a matter of rushing but of precision, especially since he also likes to fishtail with his haunches out. It's a constant issue that I have to keep on top of Max about (helped along with a dressage whip to push his haunched into position. After about 20 minutes of this, Max finally settled down and we managed to get some nice leg-yields with minimal fishtailing at a working trot.
Some other things we worked on was alternating colecting and extensions at the trot and then the canter. The goals here were to keep quiet with the hands and use the seat and legs to do most fo the work. It requires some concentration but paid off in the end. The curb bit has really improved Max's collection because I can give him a bigger "hint" to start collecting up- there's no mistaking what I want (although sometimes I have to remind a little harder than I'd like).
In the end, we did some seriously collected canters, progressively slowing him down and focusing the enegy upwards- it should feel like the legs are working like pistons underneath you and while it may at first seem like the horse is crow-hopping, he really isn't- it's the shifting of weigt to the hanches. The other thing that will happen is that the haunches will drop slightly and it feels like you're going uphill- here you have to resist the tendency to start leaning forward (which totally destroys your seat). One of the major benefits to collection is that it will helpMax's arhritis in that more weight is being shifted to the rear, away from the front end where he seems to be affected the most.
After all of this, both of us were pretty tired out and I was sore, to say the least. We made our way home and Max definitely got a nice bucket of A&M and the rest of the day off (by this point we'd been three hours in the saddle).
We're getting there and so far, Max doesn't appear to be having any issues. :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment