Five Things I’ve Learned

6 April 2007 4 Comments

(I’m writing this specifically for the Blog Carnival, and Bridlepath is saying this is a “five things” meme. I don’t know if that means the “Five Things You Don’t Know About Me” meme that was going around for a while or if I can pick any five things I want. I hesitate to ask, because what if I don’t like the answer? And I did the first option already on this blog. I think I’ll go with the latter interpretation.)

So—Five Things I Learned (many in retrospect):

1. Sometimes, in lessons, I begrudged the fact that Super Saint and I would jump a line two or three times and be done, while the other girls would continue jumping and working. At the time, I thought I was being “punished” (in some non-logical way) for buying an older horse. Later, I realized my trainer was keeping my inexperience from punishing Super Saint by drilling and drilling over exercises he could do with his eyes closed. And by preventing us from over-working in any individual lesson, she helped me keep Super Saint going strong for years—in the long run, I learned more from him than I would have if we had drilled every exercise to perfection.
2. I sometimes envied the girls on their green bean horses, because they seemed to have it all—they were riding, they were training, they had years and years and years to go with their horse. Much later, I heard a rider lament that she wished, just once, she could ride a made horse into the ring—and I realized that for all I envied my barn mates’ young, strong, go-go-go horses, there were probably times they envied the experience Super Saint brought to our relationship. And just like I didn’t necessarily realize the tradeoffs they made, they probably didn’t realize the tradeoffs I was making. I started to appreciate the greenies and school masters for what they were—instead of agonizing over what they weren’t.
3. Less is more. When we first learn a movement, we might exaggerate the aids in order to make it very, very clear what they are. The movements might be awkward, and I know my body certainly wasn’t always convinced it could move in the way I was being told to move it. But as my understanding of different movements improve, I realize how much easier they are when I don’t exaggerate the aids. As I learn to ask questions of the horse more subtly, he responds with more nuance. We talk, instead of shouting.
4. I don’t have to be doing X by Y date. I don’t need my lessons to end on a big bang—it’s enough that they end with a feeling that this is how it could be, because next lesson, we will work more on how to get it to that “could be” point. And even when we aren’t working on something “new,” to have old concepts gel in new ways is itself an accomplishment.
5. I am responsible for my own knowledge and progress. Even the best trainer can only do so much to teach a student—if I do not find a way to make sure I truly understand the concepts we’re going over in lessons, at some point it’s all going to fall apart. I can bring the lesson back to this blog to work out what I think I’ve understood, so later I can check/refine/correct my understanding, or I can mumble in the car like a mad woman while I sort out everything that was said and done, but somehow I have to process the lesson and find a way to make all my trainer’s suggestions and corrections mine. I can do mental homework between lessons, so our lesson time can be spent more on putting together the physical aspects of the movements. Ultimately, I learn faster and better than when I show up, ride, and forget about it for the next seven days.

Horses and Riding, Progress and Training, Training the Rider, Horses I Have Known, Super Saint, The Wide, Weird Web

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