Dressage Lesson #3 - I coulda been a trail horse!

Dressage lesson number three happened yesterday morning. This time the Pivo fail was not having enough space on my phone to record the video. Some time soon we will get this right... 

It was just Yoshi and I today, so we got right to it. Today he did start out much brighter and with more push from behind, and dressage trainer was really complementary of that energy. I think that is thanks to our jump lesson and REALLY moving forward in the gaits. In continuing the parallel lessons, we worked on... transitions! Yoshi is pretty sure this is horse torture. 

She had us getting really round and even a bit deep before asking for the upwards transitions. I was instructed to "keep riding and bending" through the transition, the parallel to jump trainer's "don't throw away your hands as you ask". We also worked on the small trot, big trot exercise again, although this time she called it collected trot, which is so much of a stretch it's kinda funny. But that was the idea she was going towards, which makes sense. 

She had us start working on this in the canter too. First, she addressed my position and told me to put my butt down in the saddle and not let it leave. Shoulders back, lift up, sit bones down, drop femur straight down from there. Then we started working on collecting. Just a continuation of horsey torture. He was pretty sure that collecting a bit meant trot. Which gave us some very nice canter-trot transitions. I need to be more clear in my seat that we are still cantering. She said this should be an easier gait to work at, but that this was all going to be hard for him because he was a big, long horse, more rectangle than square. So the lateral work will come easier but the collection will be harder. Again, collection is used very loosely, we were basically asking him to go from his normal canter stride, which is around 13 feet I think, based on the pole exercises I've been working on with him, to maybe a 12 foot stride. Holy hell though, baby horse and I struggled. I think we struggled just as much 2 weeks ago when she introduced the idea at the trot, but I've already suppressed that. She had us shortening the stride and then moving to a 15m circle. Then we were allowed to go back to his normal stride and then back to the 20m circle. She also started to introduce the idea of a stretchy trot at the very end. Just across a diagonal and then we walked and ended there. He actually looked less exhausted at the end of the lesson today, I think the muscles we're using are getting stronger! I may be anthropomorphizing, but he seems to be enjoying the work as well and is becoming much lighter and easier to ride. It's so much fun! 

Homework: 

- Collect and extend the trot and canter (again, still using those words VERY loosely) 

- ROUND in transitions. There shall be no popping up with his head and hollowing his back. The trot-canter are allowed a bit more leeway, she said not only is he not strong enough, its a habit now, so progress, not excellence, is our expectation. The walk-trot should be held to a higher standard. 

Screenshots from the jump lesson

At the end I tried to unpack this continual turning left with my body when going right. At the halt, dressage trainer stood in front of Yoshi's face, about 1-2 feet to the left and told me to turn my body towards her, then the same thing when she stood on the right. It felt much more natural and easy to turn left. Turning right was hard and something in my shoulders fought it. I've been using my husband's foam roller recently for an exercise he does for his neck/shoulders/elbows - lay flat on your back with the roller along your spine (it's broad enough that doesn't hurt), then extend arms out with humerus perpendicular to body and forearm up/parallel to body (so a 90 degree angle at the elbow). Palms are up. In this exercise, with him visually checking, I am less flexible in my left shoulder, at least in this way. When I do abs exercises that are supposed to be straight up midline, I have a tendency to want to twist my body to the left (ie lengthen right oblique muscles, shorten left oblique muscles). So the left turn in the shoulders is, I think, just the final culmination of unevenness lower down. The right seat bone is also failing to engage and the left leg is not doing much when tracking right. I was struggling with the "put more weight in your right seat bone" instruction. I want to do that by tipping/tilting, which is incorrect (obviously).  Speaking to my husband he said it sounds like the gluteus medius may need to be strengthened and engaged on that side. So that's what I'm looking into now. I'll probe dressage trainer more the next time I see her. She did note that the weakness/slowness of the left leg, which she attributed to people being right-side dominant mostly, will lead to late changes from right to left, when compared to the left to right. She said if I fixed it now, I would be ahead of the game. I don't feel like there's really a choice to fixing it now, he is so clearly uneven and stuck when it comes to bending right from my inability to actually turn my body to the right. 

"The piriformis muscle is part of the lateral rotators of the hip, along with the quadratus femoris, gemellus inferior, gemellus superior, obturator externus, and obturator internus. The piriformis laterally rotates the femur with hip extension and abducts the femur with hip flexion.^[1] Abduction of the flexed thigh is important in the action of walking because it shifts the body weight to the opposite side of the foot being lifted, which prevents falling. The action of the lateral rotators can be understood by crossing the legs to rest an ankle on the knee of the other leg. This causes the femur to rotate and point the knee laterally. The lateral rotators also oppose medial rotation by the gluteus medius and gluteus minimus. When the hip is flexed to 90 degrees, piriformis abducts the femur at the hip and reverses primary function, internally rotating the hip when the hip is flexed at 90 degrees or more. (Netter's Clinical Anatomy, 2010)" 

From this description from wikipedia it seems that the dropping the femur straight down with the toe forward, parallel to the horse, the piriformis will need to be relaxed and the gluteus medius engaged. I'm not positive that fixing that piece will fix everything above that, nor that it will engage the left leg, but I don't think anything above or below it can be right until I do that properly. 

Just a pig enjoying his kiddy pool