Blog :: Progress Journal
August 2007
In which I do that thing I said I would not do
Jump, that is.
Three little cross rails. With a surprising lack of drama.
Which, really, is exactly how it should have gone.
July 2007
What a year of walk lessons gets me
I cantered this week.
Oh, I’ve cantered a few times since I started riding again, but for the past year or so the majority of my lessons have been spent at the walk. This is fine with me, because the walk is endlessly fascinating and, if I ever feel like I’ve “got” it, there’s that minor thing called a halt to humble me again. Why is stopping the hardest part of riding for me?
But this second lesson I’m taking every week is with another trainer, in a group, and it should be a great complement to my very technical-minded walk lessons. And, as I’ve always known they would, the walk lessons paid off.
We walked through the corner, shoulder in, canter off. I expected, to be honest, to be thrown around like a rag doll because I figured I’d loose my position in the upward transition and would spend the rest of the time trying to regain my seat and such. Instead, even with the horse doing one of the most powerful steps up into the canter that I think I’ve ever ridden, I was right there and from the first stride felt like I was ready to do… whatever. Anything. Everything.
And in the second. And in the third. And into the downward transition.
It was such a cool feeling.
The two lessons will be a good complement for each other, I think. One lesson at the walk, to keep reinforcing and progressing in the mental/technical aspect of things, and the other lesson with more trot/canter work to apply the walk lessons to other gaits.
Leg yield vs. half pass, redux
All right—so the leg yield vs. half pass. Again.
My original question was why the leg yield comes before the half pass in the training scale. I would ask my trainer if I ever thought of these sorts of questions while at the barn, but I tend to limit my questions to the work we do in the lesson.
But in last week’s lesson we (sort of) half passed at the walk. It was not a “now we will half pass” moment; it built out of what we were working on.
So here’s what I felt as the difference between half pass and leg yield, and why I now (think I) understand their relative placement in the training scale:
In a leg yield to the right, the horse’s haunches are to the left. Every cross step asks the horse to step towards the body—so, in a sense, closing the angle.
In a half pass to the right,the horse’s haunches are to the right. Every cross step asks the horse to step away from the body—so, in a sense, continuing to open the angle and reach even further under and then across the body. The leg yield really only asks the horse to step under the body.
Which is a major difference, and explains (to my satisfaction) why the half pass comes after the leg yield in the training scale. I’m sure there’s more to it, but I’m happy to have figured out this much.
Now to get some books and videos so I can figure things out more quickly…
February 2007
Logical Progression… but why?
This is the sort of thing I could probably have an answer to if I’d just use Google. Or if I would buy a book or two about dressage. But I’m feeling anti-search engine at the moment, so consider this a note-to-self until I can go find out the official reasons.
Or, if you know, feel free to enlighten me. Seriously. Why is the leg yield before the half pass on the training scale?
They’re basically the same movement, except that in the leg yield the horse is bent away from the direction of travel and in the half pass the horse is bent in the direction of travel. I “know” the leg yield gets taught first—and is taught, usually, before other lateral movements like shoulders in/out and haunches in/out (don’t ask for the fancy French terms. I forget). And after all those basics are there, the half pass is taught. But why—what is so significant about the change in bend relative to the direction of movement?
All I can think is what I’ve seen happen when riders are first taught leg yield—they’re usually at a point where they are still working on riding from the leg into the hand and not from the hand into… nothing, really. So an inside “bend” means holding the inside rein a little more—because they’re still more focused on the front end of the horse and haven’t quite zoned in on the back end, much less really figured out how to influence it.
Which is, frankly, one of the benefits I see from the leg yield—it helps break up the horse’s body for the rider so they can figure out how to influence the hind quarters.
So: such a rider going right, on the quarterline, leg yielding to the left and out to the rail. They hold the right rein to maintain the “bend” and most instructors I’ve seen will have the riders ask for one step sideways (push the hind end) and one step forward (make sure the outside leg is still active and asking for forward movement). And most of the time, the horse will blow through the outside aids and zip on a diagnol line to the rail. So the exercise repeats, and repeats, while the rider figures out how to coordinate all four aids: inside (right) rein asking for the “bend”, outside (left) rein insuring the shoulders keep pace with the hind quarters, inside leg asking for sideways movement, outside leg asking for forward movement.
And from this realization (figuring out how the aids can influence the horse—front and back—I can see where you can then progress to shoulder in/out and haunches in/out. And as the rider “gets” the exaggerated, lateral movements, they can refine and start working on actual bend—the sort of bend that goes through the horse’s entire body and isn’t a head/neck set. So the leg yield comes early because the movement itself encourages the rider to sort out the aids and figure out how they influence the horse (front and back). Am I wrong on this logic?
Then half pass. So we’re back on the quarterline, going right, preparing to half pass back to the rail. Except this time the horse is going to be bent left… ah. In the leg yield, the inside (right) hand is keeping the horse’s nose tipped right while the outside (left) hand is slowing the shoulder… but in a half pass, I would assume the risk is that, with too much left rein, the horse will blow through the bend AND move the shoulders too quickly—and if the rider doesn’t have a true understanding of how to ride from the leg into the hand, nothing they do will fix it. They’ll just add more rein and rubber-neck the horse, but it isn’t going to fix the problem—because the fix has to come from the inside (now left) leg holding the shoulder on its line while the outside leg pushes the haunches over. And I would bet that in the half pass, as in the shoulder-in, when the aids are correct you can completely give the inside rein and the horse will still maintain the correct bend—because the inside rein isn’t what should be getting the movement at all. But if the rider doesn’t understand how to break up their aids or how to influence the horse’s movement and hind end with the leg… there’s never going to be any actual “passing” in the half pass. Just a lot of bee-lining for the rail. In the leg yield, at least you can help the rider understand that each aid is doing something different—that’s not as intuitive in the way the half pass sets up.
That makes sense to me. It’ll be interesting to see how correct that logic is, whenever I look this up.
In which the horse and I fool around together
Why is it that the one time I don’t copy my post before I hit submit (in case my control panel arbitrarily decides I’ve been idle too long and decides to make me log in again instead of posting the post), my control panel arbitrarily decides… look, you’re not going to make me type out that whole parenthetical statement again, are you?
It was a lovely post, but now it’s gone.
The gist of it:
While I love lessons, and they are invaluable, sometimes I really miss the chance to just ride. Me and the horse. And, sure, sometimes we’ll make mistakes. And sometimes, when I go to correct the mistakes, I’ll make them worse. But you keep trying until you make them better, right? And when you’re done, there’s a certain satisfaction in having worked through it on your own, even if it did take longer than it would have taken in a lesson.
Well, when I’m done. I shouldn’t speak for “you.” It’s this weird habit I have—I say “you” when I mean “I”. For that matter, I say “we” when I mean “I” too. The latter can be credited to my secret desire to the be Queen of Halt Near X-dom, and the former comes from years of poetry workshops, where any poem with “I” in it got the kiss of narcissistic death, but any poem with “you” in it was a brilliant attempt to bridge the gap between author and reader. Or something like that. I think my workshops eventually figured out “you” meant “I,” but they were too polite to mention it. Deep down, I’m horribly narcissistic. It’s why I blog. Wait… am I supposed to admit things like that? In public, I mean?
Anyway. My lesson this week turned into, in effect, an open ride for me—my instructor and I discussed the exercise I was going to work on, and then she let me work on it without any comments from her. It was really nice; I’d sort of forgotten how enjoyable it can be to concentrate on just the horse and the exercise, without keeping half an ear out for the instructor’s comments. And there’s a little more room to play—like permission to make mistakes—where I can keep trying slightly different things to see what effect they have on the exercise. It’s a different sort of learning process than what happens in an actual lesson, but it’s one I really miss. It was a good ride—by the end, I “got” what I needed to do in order to do the exercise correctly, and I got there on my own. Well, not on my own—with plenty of feedback from the horse. We got there together, which is how it should be, really.