Dressage chronicles

In between our jumping days we do dressage. Jumping may be really fun, but so is dressage.  I grew up in a mainly dressage barn and I'm finally getting to a point in my life where I don't take that for granted. 

I had an amazing Swiss instructor/mentor that required excellence without making it seem impossible. I left every lesson inspired to ride better, work harder, push more. He always seemed to know when a lesson needed to leave us dripping wet or when it should end after 20 minutes. I don't think I ever finished a lesson feeling defeated. 

My instructor made things like an open hip angle, tall shoulders, and steady hands seem like second nature. We could go from communicating with nearly no words to taking a break and discussing the minutiae of dressage training. I mentioned a while back that I wanted to get back to doing lessons with him, I'm pretty sure March will be the month that happens. 

I am looking forward to getting my ass kicked about my terrible green horse habits. Prisoner isn't completely green anymore and I don't need to ride him like he is.  Most of all I want to work on my sitting trot. I used to do it so often that I preferred it over posting. Now I do it and while the position looks ok, it inhibits my horse's trot. 

I get all bouncy bouncy and we lose that beautiful forward movement.  Watching my video it looks like I need to lean back more which will give his withers more room to come up and allow the energy to keep flowing. 

I'm very pleased with our canter right now. He is reaching with his stride more and more instead of having that tiny rocking horse canter. A big part of that is making sure that my hands and seat are not blocking him. I think a big challenge for ottbs is teaching them how to contain that big gallop stride and learn about a dressage type canter. 

So there we have it, I'm loving his progress and looking forward to more, because even though some of you will deny it, dressage is fun y'all. 

 (warning: turn your music down, youtube went crazy when I had to replace my music with theirs and decided you should rock out)