Riding Thoughts for November

I've been in the saddle at least once a week since my last horse/riding update.  Mounting is getting easier; more fluid, less twinge in my left knee.  Encouraging.

Both Camaro and I need want to do more than walk, so I've devised a plan for rising trot in 'sets'.  Kind of like when I am doing physical therapy exercises for my knee and the therapist has me repeat an exercise 10 times, then rest, then do 10 more.  I began with posting 10 strides of trot, then sitting 10 strides. Which also is great to work Camaro on sitting trot and relaxing at it because he finds me sitting to be worrying--probably because in his previous life as a hunter pleasure horse sitting trot was only done right before canter and canter is was a stressful thing.

I interspersed my 10 rising/10 sitting strides with 10 rising followed by 10 walking and also got a little work on upward/downward transitions.  As my knee allowed, I pushed the 10 rising strides into rising on long side of arena, sitting on short side, rising on long side for circuit or two in each direction.

My most recent ride I felt good, Camaro felt good, and for the heck of it, I asked for a canter depart on his easier (left) side.  Lovely, calm depart hooray!  Nice balanced canter, keeping it to half a lap of the arena, and then I asked for the downward transition into trot.  It was a nice downward transition but somehow jolted my knee and made it irritated for the rest of the day.  Hmm.  

I'm still thinking on the biodynamics of what happened in that downward transition.  It really wasn't a bad transition, not too abrupt, not rough or dumping on the forehand.  Perhaps it was just that the energetic trot we went into (love how canter improves the impulsion of the trot!) was more concussion than my knee currently has shock absorption for.  For a great part of the summer I had absolutely zero shock absorption in my knee, and if I bumped my foot on anything, that would cause excruciating pain to shoot up my leg.  As my knee heals and strengthens, the shock absorption is slowly rebuilding.  Very slowly.  It's only recently started to come back and is at maybe 25%

I guess you could say that in my current state of limited physical riding, I'm spending more time mentally riding.  A few weeks ago it occurred to me that I haven't needed to do a half-halt in a while.  Not because Camaro was so wonderfully balanced and obedient that I didn't have cause to half-halt him.  No.  The real issue was that in my weakened and painful state before I stopped riding in late summer, and in my being super careful with my knee state now that I've resumed riding, I've allowed him to just kind of coast along.  Get doggy.  We're lacking the proper amount of forward energy.  You can't half-halt if there's nothing there in need of the 'halt' portion.

This revelation led to another: if Camaro was quicker off my leg, as in more sensitive and obedient to it under lighter pressure, my leg also wouldn't tire as quickly.  Oh-ho!  And so for a few rides now I've been carrying my whip and backing up my nicely applied leg with a quick (and not stinging) touch of the whip.  He's a quick learner; typically one light tap of the whip is all that's needed and he remembers for the rest of that ride. His peppiness has been refound.  And, as a result of that more forward and closer attention to the touch of my leg on his side, leg yields are improving--we have more correct lateral steps in a row.

We might not be doing anything fancy in our rides,they are still short and mostly walk.  We probably won't be back up to full work load (at least equal time in trot as in walk, and working on canter briefly in both directions) for a few more months, but we're making progress.  Because working on basics is always a good way to improve the tougher stuff.  Forward in contact with a relaxed swinging stride is the name of the game.