Contact, the nuchal ligament and other “a-has”
Last Thursday I managed to snag a lesson with Jana, and she re-established the idea of contact in my head. I had this down pat, I swear, but it went out the window during our bad December.
We kept the rhythm a little slow, kept me really tall with leg stretched waaaaay down, and kept the contact. Jana was on me CONSTANTLY about my contact. The result? Sid got really super connected and stayed that way. I mean REALLY. This was one of those lessons where we spent most of our time doing transitions on a 20m circle, but I didn’t mind. He gave me the best feeling ever.
I FINALLY, after a bad weekend as far as my schedule goes, got to ride again tonight. We picked up where we left off. I started with some free walk (after lunging first, it was cooold) and then picked Sid up. I did some halts, asked him to really stretch down, and flexed him side to side to flip his nuchal ligament like Jana showed me. This makes a HUGE difference in his lateral suppleness. We did all kinds of bending lines, flexing, counter flexing, stopping and flipping the ligament.
We picked up trot and the same thing, true flexion, counter flexion, back. SOLID contact. He was a bit spooky but I rode him into the contact and he forgot about it. We got back on the 20m circle and did lots of canter-trot-canter transitions. Then, the litmus test now that he really, really felt connected – sitting trot. I tried some shorter stretches and it. was. good. YEAH!
We stretched – still flexing both directions, and leg yielding away from my inside leg. I quit with that – only about a 30 minute ride, if that. I think we had a breakthrough…
