Hooray…another mini epiphany! Do you feel like you experience my lessons with me? I’m sure many of you already know this, but just having to think it out as I write it helps solidify it in my mind much as taking notes for a test does. (That is why I also often write down what I learn in a daily journal).

I started riding later in life so this doesn’t all come naturally. Therefore, I have taken many lessons over the years. One of the most common threads, as you all know, is to steer with your seat and legs and not with your hands. Moreover, creating a wall with your outside aids helps to guide the horse, keeping him straight, and so on and so forth. Okay, doesn’t that sound simple and make sense? As I have slightly improved through the years, my ability to learn more sophisticated skills has increased. (Remember, it is all relative and my idea of sophistication might be very different from yours…horse wise that is.)  The first challenge of course is to separate your aids. When I used to teach skiing, if you asked someone to make a “wedge” or “snowplow”, their arms would curl like two big “C”s on either side giving them what we called a “Gorilla Stance”. The same thing happens in riding.  When you focus on the legs, things, as in the whole body,  get stiff. It is kind of like chewing gum and walking at the same time.

I have two degrees in education and one of the most important fundamentals is “incremental learning”, building block upon block as success is achieved. Who would ever think it would take so long to lay a new block. I’m sure all of us are at different stages in our riding prowess. Learning to create the wall, I have learned, isn’t just closing the outside hand and laying your outside leg on for the duration. I have learned, that for me, in this moment in time and in Sean’s,  that  giving little kicks or nudges occasionally and giving with the inside hand just a tad has made a world of difference. I guess it is more like support as opposed to  clamping or nagging with the leg and allowing in a way that is subtle: more like, as one trainer said to me, “a state of mind”, is what works. Softening my leg, and I don’t mean a floppy leg, allows me to have more flexibility. I realized, with Sue’s help,  that when I grip or clamp with my outside leg, I am essentially just getting stiffer and less effective, unable to really direct Sean and unable give a little kick because I am so locked. Additionally,  it is even harder to do that if you don’t feel balanced on your horse or in your saddle, because if you are striving to find neutral, the result is overall tension. That tension can tumble many of the “blocks” you have finally stacked.

For me,  learning to separate one body part from another has and does require concentration. It became most noticeable to me when learning to make challenging, tight or roll back turns to a jump. First, Sean was feeling like he had swallowed a  telephone pole until I realized that I had created the telephone pole. Once I “allowed” but supported him, the tight turns improved.  It is helping me so much in both my flat and jump practice. This less constricting effort is enabling me to become softer overall. Of course, when I screw up and things go downhill, it is easy to start to revert back and I have to remind myself and revisit my mental and physical checklist. I do feel we have improved though it may not yet be obvious to others. Recently, I entered a Team Jumper Challenge to give us more pressured exposure. On one jump, I was supposed to take the longer route due to Sean’s inexperience but I got over zealous and forgot and turned the way my teammates turned and we had to make a very tight turn and jump an oxer at quite an angle. Guess what? It was a breeze because of what I had worked on.  Block by block we are building our tower. It is so much fun to finally be at a point where nuances make the difference. Of course, one’s nuances are again, relative. But, that is what keeps it so interesting and never boring. There is always another block to stack.

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