The Laziest Dressage Rider Ever Part IV: October 25, 2010

I have a sore on the inside of my knee. Why?

Because I didn't move that extra piece of the stirrup leather that had scrunched up between my knee and the saddle. You know that extra piece of which I speak. Not during tempis. Not during collected-medium-collected transitions. Not even during canter pirouettes. I was just too lazy to move it. And now I have a sore.

Procrastination has paid off again. Oh yes, procrastination has paid off again.

October 13, 2010

Things I focus on every day with Nikita:

Sitting more in the pirouettes and not travelling

Straightness in and out of pirouettes

Elasticity in the transition from medium trot to collected trot or passage

Straightness and rhythm in the half passes

Most of the trot tour in the I-1 test, making sure she stays elastic and powerful

Staying straight in the 4, 3, and 2 tempis

I have a tendancy in the trot to want to make it too short, almost too much like passage. I just realized watching the video of half passes below that doing such causes the trot to totally lose power.

October 11, 2010

Video of half passes from the Grand Prix test.

October 5, 2010

Fucking one tempis.

New Trot Video 10-2-2010

Nikita and I seem to have overcome the first hurdle in our trot work. It's getting stronger every day, and every day she starts to use her haunches more and more to create a very powerful FEI-level trot.

We've started on the half passes in the Grand Prix. The angle isn't as hard as I'd imagined, and we've had general success in keeping our tempo regular throughout the half pass. This stuff isn't easy for the horse, though, and I don't like asking for it more than I really have to. We had started a little passage work, but I noticed the quality of our collected trot diminished, so I've stopped working on it. The passage and piaffe are there, and will still be there when the time seems better to work on them.

September 30, 2010

Note to self: Stick to your knitting. If you can produce a good product, you're almost there. Alexander didn't become Alexander the Great because he had a good PR guy.

High-level dressage is 90% about the product. It's tempting to take the easy way and attempt to prove yourself through positive PR about yourself or through negative PR about other trainers. This is false bravado and the effect is momentary. The concrete ability to train is most of the battle and ensures longevity. The rest is just smoke and mirrors.

Horses on Vacation: September 4, 2010

Nikita has been on vacation the past 3 days off this week thanks to the heat. Sometimes she feels great and is very fresh, and then she suddenly feels tired and perhaps a little burnt out. What we're doing is hard on a horse, I suppose, so those feelings are normal and expected. So, she's had her mini-vacation, and yesterday seemed all the better for it.

Yesterday we picked up our work on 1 tempis again, which we hadn't done in a while. I've been sleeping through 2 tempis for a while, and decided yesterday that I'm for a new challenge. So, we came, we saw, and we conquored those 1 tempis, and I hope we can do more soon. I'm not confident in them yet, and yesterday Nikita seemed a little fried after, so we're sticking to doing 2 consecutive 1 tempis until I sleep through that exercise. Then we'll start adding more 1 tempis as I become more confident.

I noticed in my last video that my canter pirouettes weren't really in one place, so we've focused on making them smaller. In Harry Boldt's book, Das Dressur Pferd, he states that if the pirouettes are too large, it's because the horse hasn't been set up correctly by the rider. Thus, I've made sure Nikita is very straight and very collected before I attempt a pirouette. And they've been smaller since. I've achieved straightness by looking at whatever letter I'm heading towards, and then looking at the horse once the pirouette has started. Yay for Harry Boldt!

Nicole, on the other hand, in on vaction because she lost a shoe, and super-farrier Mike isn't coming out until Tuesday. No loss, since Nicole does better with periods of downtime anyway.