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August 2007 • VOLUME 24 • © HORSES For LIFE™ Magazine
Starting
Something Good
I hope I
won't bore you too much with this, but I am just so excited about our first
lesson, I can't help but share.
I of
course have not had a lesson in ages, thus it has been very interesting to find out what all I've been doing wrong
with my riding. By the way, Jamie, my
instructor, really liked Rocky.
The
biggest problem are my arms/hands. I am having all sorts of issues
here. First of all, I am not detaching
my lower arms from the rest of my body and I am not keeping my lower
arms,
wrists and hands flexible. Jamie showed me what a huge difference it
makes to
have that flexibility by holding one end of the reins while I was
holding the
other. She literally had me plant my elbows above my hips and she said
that
this is where the rein starts. "The fore arms become like blubber," she
said, "just imagine your forearms not having any muscles, tendons or
bones in them."
She took my forearms and wiggled them around, with my elbows still
planted,
until there was no more tension in them, until they became like
blubber. She
said that CdK would always say, give, give, give! But you can't give
unless the
tension in the forearm and wrist is totally gone.
Last but not least, there is an issue with contact, meaning the lack of. This is where I would really like your input. Apparently, my reins haven't been short enough. I noticed when Jamie rode Rocky, her contact was quite strong, but flexible at the same time. Rocky, I guess is not used to that, so his mouth was gaping wide open most of the time. At one point, he got behind the bit (never saw him do that), trying to evade the contact and he would try to dip down and it took quite a while until he finally complied. But after he did, he was going really well and he also came off the forehand. He looked sooooo good! It seemed like a struggle to get there, though. I have never ridden him with this much contact before. Jamie said that the contact is very important because it teaches the horse self-carriage, but the contact has to be flexible and cannot ever be firm or stiff. But at the same time, while she was riding him, she never gave in either.
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