Equestrian Team Summer Day 2

*I can still say my legs are sore and bruised today, Sunday.

Friday

So I haven't had a lesson in about a month. This was basically like a first lesson all over again.

I got on this massive horse (but they really all look massive compared to the Pasos) named Alex and went in the super huge arena. Stacy once again reminded me to think of my legs since my hands and core seem to be down pat and it's my legs that are all floppy once I start trotting.

At least I got my diagonals right! I like horses with long strides at a trot, it's easier to see diagonals at.

And again, to all of you people who ride regular gaited horses, you deserve so much credit. It hurts to lift my leg to move it forward to walk after all that posting.

I'm also not used to having to have to much contact on the reins and keeping them short with a horse with such a long neck is a little unbalancing, so I kept falling forward trying to reach for the reins, then losing balance, then losing reins, then repeat the cycle again. I felt beautiful taking a canter and Stacy said I looked awesome until I started forgetting about keeping contact and Alex started to go faster. My downward transition to a trot was atrocious and it took an entire lap around the arena before I composed myself.

In short, I felt horrible.

But then she explained it like this: I need to be like a boxer and keep my weight down to be able to take anything up top, which I then converted to a dancer's analogy: you can't do a triple pirouette if you have a high center of gravity, it's just not possible. You need to stay low to maintain that balance. And then it clicked! But then the lesson was over. So I have that for next time.

She also told me that what I'm doing with the Pasos, with the whole collection and the double reins, they don't do with an English horse until they're like a level 5 dressage horse (is that really true???), so it's kind of like I'm going backwards with focusing this much on my legs.

That, and I never trot. I won't let the trot be my downfall! I already know that I'm most likely going to miss the team's first competition because it's the same weekend I'll be at Nationals (if we go), so I have a little more time. Hopefully my balance will improve in the next couple of weeks and I can start the little jumps again and Stacy might override the paperwork to put me into a jumping class instead of just staying on the flat, because when I'm walking or at a canter, I can pretty much handle it, it's just this darn trot that's throwing me off.