When My Leg Won't Do As It's Told

If you ever meet me after a normal weeknight lesson you will quickly realize that I am a pretty useless lump of a human being post-ride. I always say that I need to do three things, feed myself, bathe, and put myself properly to bed, but I only at best have energy for two of the three. Which is why my husband sometimes peels me off the couch (or the living room rug) and herds me to bed. (Good man.) So now that I've finished tonight's riding lesson I'm not sure how writing a blog post will go. It's likely ill-advised and may result in getting none of the three critical tasks done but I have a full brain that I want to download so here goes.

I cried during my lesson (again). I'd like to say this is a rare occurrence or part of a phase but it really might just be my MO for learning hard things. Oh well, it's not hurting anybody. Tonight's episode was a short-lived loss of emotional containment and definitely didn't interfere with or extend the lesson any. There's no reason for me to feel bad about it although I still feel a little embarrassed.

This time they were tears from frustration. And maybe from feeling a bit like a failure. The problem was that I didn't understand how to do what I was being told to do, despite the fact that it was a very simple and straightforward direction.

Tonight's exercise was about asking for and controlling lead changes over jumps. So the idea was to trot a jump that was in the middle of the arena (the jump is parallel to the long side of the arena) and land cantering on the correct lead. We ended the lesson with actually changing direction over the jump but to start it was a simple trot in, canter out, getting the correct lead to continue your circle.

This shouldn't be hard. Or at least so I thought. And really that might be the problem right there, that I was struggling with something that I thought should be easy. Which, really, if it was easy then our trainer wouldn't have us working on it. Another probable mental error on my part was thinking that I would be better at this exercise since it's my second lesson on it this week. On Monday I did this same exercise, although with a different horse and different trainer. It's easy for me to fall into the trap of thinking I should do better in the second lesson because I've already done it once this week.

On Monday I rode a super-fancy, six-year-old warmblood, Annie. She's easily the most expensive horse I've ever ridden although she's still young and green at times. Tonight I rode a pony, Ian. It would be easy to say that Ian just wasn't as good at the exercise because his conformation and breeding aren't as good. But that would be a big fat excuse. I could also blame one trainer being better or worse than the other, but that is also an excuse.

I think it is likely true that the first time I did the exercise I was asked for the minimum level of competence to complete it as directed. But now on a second lesson through I was being asked to perfect and fine-tune my execution of the exercise more. After all, isn't a gradual increase in pickiness what we do when we train horses? It's easy to feel like you're performing less well when you are getting more feedback/direction the more often you work on a particular task, when really it is a matter of getting more detailed instructions. I definitely want to tuck that realization away for later thought. I wonder if the horses we are training feel that way sometimes too?

I probably should have told you by now what exactly this simple direction that I was struggling with was. Well it was a very uncomplicated, "Move your outside leg back." As we were rounding the corner approaching the jump at a trot Ian's front end was tracking towards the jump correctly but his hind end was winging out behind us instead of tracking in line with his front end. So I needed to move my outside leg back to balance his hind end and keep it from winging out. Also we were not getting the correct lead on the other side of the jump and since the outside leg is going to help support and cue the correct lead, it was critical to this exercise. (Although it was definitely not the only aid in use, a big part of the difficulty of this exercise.)

Well I was told to put my outside leg back and I tried but it was not effective. I thought I had moved my leg back but apparently this effort was not externally visible to my trainer so obviously I need to do more. She's telling me to really exaggerate it, move my leg back an entire foot, that he's a long pony and his butt is way back there which is what I need to be supporting/controlling, so move farther.

I was really struggling to get this seemingly simple "move your foot" direction accomplished. And here's where I overthink things, think too highly of equitation, and am a little too preoccupied with the physics of how bodies move (there is a fancy, science-y term for that but I can't remember what it is.) My problem is that since my foot is in the stirrup it can only move on a circle from the pivot point where the leather meets the saddle, so to move my foot drastically back I either a) have to remove my foot from the stirrup or b) have to move my foot up as well as back.

While I felt steady enough on Ian to ride with only one stirrup, I didn't think that was the right answer. But moving my foot up in order to move it back also didn't seem like the correct option. Because to my mind the correct place to be is heels in line with hips and shoulders and even if we are temporarily forgoing the proper place in order to give the horse the additional direction he needs, being long through the leg is still a top priority in order to stay on the horse, right?  But physically I only have these two options which is why my frustration is brewing. It's mostly directed at myself for being unable to understand what the right answer is even though I'm being told exactly what to do (just move your leg back.)

At my trainer's instruction I did drop the outside stirrup for a while to try to move my outside leg farther back. I think it helped some but it still wasn't enough. Instead my jumps got worse and I'm more off-balance on the landing because I've left the comfort zone of my normal position. Even without the stirrup there to create a pendulum effect there are limitations to how far my leg can physically move back before it is required to move up. So now I am without a stirrup and my foot is farther back and farther up than I'm used to which is throwing my balance off, but not actually getting the job done. I guess I need to move my foot farther back but how much more can I compromise my balance?

When we practice two-point position on the flat the physics say if your leg is too far back you will fall forward, if your leg is too far forward you will fall backwards. It's only when your leg is really directly under you that you can be balanced in two-point and not fall into the saddle. This concept is the reason I am so concerned about my foot not sliding up while it push it farther back, despite my instructor's assurances that it's fine. When my leg is up and behind me I'm finding it very hard to remain upright and not fall forward which is part of why I'm getting thrown around a bit more over the jump. I'm not anywhere near off balance enough to be at real risk of falling off but it doesn't feel comfortable or confident. Also the longer it takes for me to figure this out the more tired we are both getting so everything is getting sloppier.

Somehow we got something correct enough to land on the proper lead and finish this leg of the exercise. While waiting for our next turn I played around with putting my leg where it was supposed to be to try to get the feel for it. To get the degree of distance we were talking about seemed like it was going to create a charlie horse in my hip/butt region and this was at a halt. This might warrant asking my yoga instructor if there's something I can do to help loosen those muscles.

The lesson went better after that first round of jumping. We did the same single jump the opposite direction and then added a bending line and outside line to the course. As the course got more complicated we actually got better results. I think this is partially because when we switched directions we were going on his more balanced lead. But maybe I was really figuring out the leg back thing. I still feel like I have no clue.

This is the kind of thing that I will keep thinking about both in and out of the saddle. I'm not sure if it's a thoughtful preoccupation or an unhealthy obsession. I am going to choose to believe it's like one of those math problems that if you don't work on it your sleeping brain can figure it out. But I have to admit that lingering thoughts like this create a lot of brain busy-ness that can be distracting while riding. That is why sometimes I have to just focus on counting the canter strides to try to empty my head of all the other chatter.

Outside of the small amount of crying in the middle, I wouldn't count this as a bad lesson at all. I know I rode decently well and it was an interesting exercise that could teach me a lot. It's hard to feel good about the outcome when I'm left with this mystery of how to bring my leg back farther than what I was able to do tonight. I'm not sure what really to work on other than it will just come with time. I don't like to just let things happen but sometimes they really do fix like magic given some time. In the meantime I know that I tried and that's all anyone can really ask for. It's likely that my body learned something that my brain just hasn't caught up with yet. So that's what I'm going to try to take away from this and thank Ian-pony for dealing with my growing pains and tears.