This week in lessons

This week in lessons we will be working on two things:

1) Connecting your leg set behind the girth to your horse's corresponding hind leg. Our horses all understand the basics of leg, but to have fine control we need to make sure our horse understands the direct connection between our leg and their leg, and we also need to make sure our timing is such that we put out leg on when the horse is actually able to move/activate that leg. The horse can't move a leg if that is the leg that is bearing weight!

Step 1 is feeling what your horse's hind end is doing at the walk, trot, and canter. Your hip will drop on the side that corresponds to the hind leg being off the ground and reaching up and under.

Step 2 is timing your leg aids so that they work effectively.

In posting trot it is easy, as if you are posting on the "correct" diagonal to the left, then your outside leg will be set to cue the outside hind each time you go down in your post. This is why we swap to the other diagonal to leg yield to the wall. (When you are up, and on the way down in your post, is the same time you are best able to squeeze, and this is the time the horse's leg is leaving the ground. At the walk and sitting trot, your outside hip will drop as your horse's outside hind leg comes forward, so you should press with your leg AS you feel the hip dropping. This means when your outside hip is up, you should be ready with the leg! At the canter, the outside hind is ready to come up after the final phase of the canter (when the inside front reaches forward).

Step 3 will be using these skills for a new exercise I shall call the "Turn on the Forehand Square of Fun". This simply involves you riding a square, with the corners being something resembling a turn on the forehand (we will maintain forward momentum). You can also think of it as tell the horse to swing wide on the turns with its hind end.

Basically you will walk (or trot/canter) for a few strides to get the timing, then you will pulse with your inside leg behind the girth to push your horse's hind end around the turn until the horse has made a 90 degree turn...at which point you will again go straight until you get to the next corner. It will be important to have a balanced gait as you approach the corners as this would be very difficult if the horse is going too quickly.

The inside rein needs to be OFF the neck for this exercise as  the horse needs to be flexed into the turn even though the inside leg is back to move the hip over. If that inside leg is NOT off the neck, then the horse will think you want to counter bend the turn, and that is not what we are looking for; I want to the horse's hind end clearly moving laterally around the front end.

The purpose of this exercise is: 1) to work on controlling the horse's hind end, 2) to see how pushing the hind end around affects the front end, and 3) to develop the horse's hind end strength (as the inside hind will be asked to work harder laterally on the turns). I have also founds this very useful to get deeper corners when riding a spooky bay horse with big ears.... It should also help with horses that want to drop their shoulders in the corners as the act of pushing their hips out will have an effect on the balance of the front end, and should help get those horses off their inside shoulder.

2) In jumping we will use the above exercise with our warm up to see if we can use it to get better corners...which of course means corner jumps! Yeah! Corner jumps! Or end jumps. Maybe end jumps. I guess it will be a surprise on Tuesday! Corner jumps or end jumps also lend themselves well to lessons on using your eyes AND on using the inside rein off the horse's neck in the air (or shortly thereafter). Be able to steer n the air is the lead up to having a following release for those of you still working on one.

The tensor bandage will also be ready at ringside to help with wayward rider elbows, as will the bailing twine be ready for legs that want to come too far back.

Karen