Lesson #50: Bending Towards Fall

Sept 6, 2013

The seasons are changing. By the time we were ready to ride, the sun had set and it would be impossible to ride outdoors as there is no lighting. Fall is in the air, literally! In addition, we start our fall season with a new instructor, Jennifer. And for me, to make things even better, I'm assigned Aspen!!!! Woohoo!! He even looks pretty lively tonight so I hope that things will go well.

Jenn starts us with a good warm-up of trotting. We do a lot of work to hone our preciseness such as turning, transitions and bends. We haven't worked much on bends before but I remember reading about Present Tense's experiences with a bend, back in December. There is a good article about what bends are, and how a rider is to aim to accomplish them. I suppose I didn't really realize that all these things can (and should) be broken down for further analysis.

While we don't get into specific details about the technicalities of bends, Jenn elaborates for us the reason we have to do it and if the bend is present. It's kind of like getting the feel for things when we were starting out. We accomplish the exercises by cutting the arena in half and focusing on touching the tangents of the circle and bending at these specific tangents. Looking at the picture now, I realize I was placing my legs in the wrong places. Next lesson!

I've got the "bends"!

We continue to work on our 2-point position over the x-jump and Jenn refers to "crest release", which is something that we haven't talked explicitly about before. That's only partially true... Lenka refers to "your hands should be further up on the horse's neck" which is basically referring to a type of 'release'. We never go into detail but it's new for me in terms of technicality. We are asked to do a "short crest release" and a "long crest release". Next time I think I'll need to take better note of what my body is feeling and where things are. After all, I'm starting to think that much of what is happening is slight unless we hone in on the details.

Anyways, some new stuff for a new season! :)