Lesson #153: Circles are Hard to Do

I took a day off to go riding yesterday (left over vacation day--I thought I had none left!). The weather is freggin' freezing; looks like winter is well on its way. I still love getting out there during the day to ride though... morning or afternoon beats going out at night. Anyways, Ariel's been ridden during the jumper/hunter clinic already so we're not going to be doing anything too extenuating. Good thing for me because I need to sort out my issues with that 20m circle from Sunday.

Such a busy day today... clinic and then a lesson with Deb

So what do we do? We school the 20m circle after a trot and canter warm up. There aren't any issues at either gait during the warm up but into the 20m circle we go and things just aren't coming together properly. Ariel would fall in and the circle would spiral smaller without any success of more inside leg. J asked me to try a variety of exercises on the 20m circle, ranging from:

• posting the inside hip towards the outside hand, just a little
• dropping my inside hip and "polishing the saddle with my arse"
• pulsating the inside leg but keeping the outside in case we drift outwards
• spiral the trot circle in and then back out

As a continuation from the last lesson, I even peeked the at the outside of the circle at one corner again and again and Ariel would take that as an excuse to drift outwards and it would mean that my leg wasn't enough to push her back in. I do get a bit too handsy when things come last minute so I'll need to work on paying more attention to what's happening and using my legs (seat is even better) to redirect us.

Eventually Ariel just protests and says enough. She is rearing a bit and refusing to turn into the circle. Since she's had such a busy morning, it was likely the explanation to her fussing. Not one of my better lessons but not every lesson is going to be totally ah-may-zing. I still accomplished some of the things listed above so that's a success in my books!