A Lesson for Lancelot

 You know when you have one of those lessons that just changes your whole perception of how great your horse really is? That was yesterday for me.

Thunder is back in work (and he's being AMAZING!), but I didn't feel like he was fit enough for a real lesson. Coach comes over to the Friesians every second week, and I lesson on a couple of Friesians and then usually the beloved brings one of my horses over. Usually I ride Thunder, but it's actually been a year and a half since Coach J set eyes on Lancelot, so it was a no-brainer to load him up and take him over to the Friesian farm.

Lancey was not great to load, which surprised me a little until I remembered that the last time this little guy was in a horsebox was actually in February 2020. Sorry, bro! I also started to panic a little bit when I realized how long ago our last lesson really was. Last time I rode him was at Coach's place before I even had the Friesian job, and he was... pretty interesting. I think we maybe did one 20m circle where he wasn't hollow.

At home, I honestly haven't actually schooled him as much as I would like. I've really enjoyed having a good trail horse again, and also, sometimes I just don't have the mental energy to school two horses, and Thunder is the priority right now. Still, we get into the arena once a week or so, and we've gradually been putting on the Elementary and EM movements. He can do a little walk-to-canter and a simple change and a shoulder-in and a few weeks ago we started touching on a bit of travers, renvers, and half-pass. He is really nice off the leg, especially laterally, and the gaits feel solid, but that hollowing thing he does - ugh. I spent so much time focusing on just getting the connection, then getting it solid, then making it so that I can change things within it without completely losing it.

Honestly, when we walked into the Friesian arena yesterday, I was pretty sure that it was going to be one of those lessons where you find yourself on a 20m circle doing the same thing over and over and over as Coach tries to fill in the training holes. I really didn't think we would do more than a working trot.

I was pleasantly surprised, though, with how good Lancey has been. He does have a lot of show miles that he acquired with his previous owner, but he really hasn't been to many places with me, and the Friesian farm can be pretty spooky. Baboons on the hill, turkeys and chickens all over the place, construction noises everywhere, a busy road nearby - he's not used to any of that. But he was totally fine. At one point he was hanging out with a bunch of the turkeys in his paddock.

He did come into the arena a little snorty and tail-flaggy, but that's just the Arab in him. It doesn't mean a thing. Coach did ask when he'd been gelded, though, so clearly he was putting on a bit of a show, LOL.

He had one spook while we were walking around, and then settled completely as we worked, barring one of his little fits where he thinks he's a very scary bucking bronco. I don't think there was a single actual buck in there, just a lot of putting his head down and swishing his tail. It's just excitement.

We trotted around for a bit and to my surprise Coach didn't put us on the dreaded 20m circle at any point. Instead, he grunted at our adequacy and then asked us to do a little lengthening. These are kind of Lancey's party trick with his flashy little forefeet, and as soon as Coach saw that, he started to crack down on us a little. Lancey has a really great trot in him - but I need to ask for that level of engagement in the collected work as well, not just in the medium work. I especially need to keep him floating and forward in the lateral work, particularly in the leg-yields.

To help with this, Coach had us do one of his pet exercises - transitions from medium to collected/working and back again in rapid succession down a long side: medium out of the corner, transitioning to working or collected trot for a few steps over the middle letter, and then medium back to the next corner. 

This sounds pretty simple, but honestly, I find it really, really hard. Getting that medium and then bringing it back quickly enough, and with enough power and connection and balance, to get another medium - it feels super hard. For some reason I have trouble using a strong seat aid to make the downward transitions together with using my leg to keep the engagement from behind. This is definitely homework, on both him and Thunder (and the Friesians, too).

all the pets for the goodest boy

Another new position quirk I need to work on is this thing with my hands being too high all of a sudden. I always used to have low, turned-out hands with straight elbows, and now apparently my hands are floating around near my belly button for some reason? Honestly I have no idea. But shorter reins are the order of the day.

Then we moved on to the lateral work, and the medium-collected-medium transitions had really helped here to get him both forward and engaged. Lancey historically has had a lot of trouble falling down on the forehand (part of his nose-flipping habit) and we had to work really hard to keep his chest up. He can feel pretty deceptive in the mediums at times, since he can do a toe flick and feel powerful even when he's on the forehand, but Coach had me think about riding his ears upwards instead of downwards and that helped a lot.

It carried over into the lateral work. He lost some power in the leg-yield, but actually it turns out that if I ask for more power, he like... obeys and gives me more power. I genuinely still have it in my head that Lancey is a barely-Novice horse when honestly he has almost all the Elementary-Medium moves. The trouble with that is that I ride him like a Novice horse, not expecting enough, even though it's there if I just ask for it. Well, yesterday, I asked - and he delivered!

something approaching straightness? what sorcery is this?

We moved on to the shoulder-in next, and although it was slightly harder work to keep the little guy going, he was much better for that than for the leg-yield. Shoulder-in has always been a huge struggle for me, so I was really delighted when I saw the video and it actually doesn't look back at all.

A continual challenge for me on this horse has been that he feels hollow to me when he's actually perfect. I think it's the difference in his conformation compared to the Friesians that does it, but things are going a lot better now that I think about riding him a little bit hollow to get him to the right spot.

We did a few more medium-to-collected trots on the other rein, and then Coach seemed actually pretty content with his trot, albeit giving us lots of homework to do. I really expected him to pick our lateral work apart, but he didn't. It was fine! It just wasn't forward and powerful enough, until I asked for it to be.

here again I had trouble keeping him uphill in the medium, but dang his butt muscles are awesome

We moved on to the canter work next in a rather startling manner when we were contentedly trotting along and Coach was all like, "OK, now walk only three steps and then immediately canter." I was somewhat discombobulated by this request but Lancey just did it like it wasn't even hard.

The canter work has been the hardest for us - I am generally better at riding the trot than the canter (aren't we all?) - so here I was really expecting Coach to get on our case about something. Instead, he watched us go around for a little bit and then had us go straight into the lateral work in canter.

Let me backtrack a little here and say that this little guy - and his relatives that I've known - has a really, really super canter just by nature. When he's not strong or forward, he gets on his forehand pretty easily (what else is new?), but his canter has always been really balanced. It made him a very nice little jumper for his previous owner and it makes him a very pleasant little dressage horse for me, and it also makes cantering across the fields epic in every way.

However, the hollowness issues we've always had have always been WAY worse in the canter than any other gait. In fact, about a year ago, I couldn't actually canter a single 20m circle in a connection. His previous owner accidentally taught him exactly how to lock his underneck and go 100% hollow - like, ears up my nostrils kind of hollow. Being an Arab, this isn't exactly hard for him, either, so it was quite the mission to get him to stay connected in canter.

Still, it's naturally his best gait, and so once we had that out of the way, the tricks came pretty easy. Hence, when Coach asked for the shoulder-out in canter, we had actually done it before (maybe twice lol).

And you guys. It was incredible. He just popped his bum in and carried on in a lovely little rhythm without even throwing his head. We did that for a bit, and then Coach asked for a leg-yield track to centerline, so we did that,

and when we hit the centerline around X he yelled, "OK, now do a flying change."

I was like, "a flying what now?"

"A change," bellowed Coach.

Lancey has never done a change in his life, but we were running out of centerline by that point, so I put my right leg on and gave him a couple of incredulous spur pokes and what do you know? He popped out a clean flying change and cantered off as though nothing had happened.

Naturally, I fell on his neck and petted him in surprise and awe, and then Coach yelled at me for dropping the connection.

We immediately got back to work on the other rein. Lancey - like almost every other horse I ride - is slower off my right leg. I'm sure it has something to do with my struggles to sit evenly on my left seatbone, but I also tend to feel guilty about not sitting straight and then not reinforce my right leg properly. Anyway, we did the shoulder-out well enough and then again came across the diagonal in a leg-yield towards the centerline.

It was here that Lancey hollowed for the first time in the entire lesson. This is the harder way for him, and he protested by popping his nose up for two or three strides. I actually got him back down again almost instantly with a spur touch from behind and a small take-and-give of my ring finger on the inside rein (which Coach would normally view as a cardinal sin, but it is seriously the only way to get Lancey out of a proper nose-flip) and he went on his merry way with nothing but a sassy tail.

I've been so hung up about these nose-flips that I kind of expected Coach to get on our case about it, but he didn't at all. Actually, I think it's time to accept that we're over the nose-flipping thing. Sure, it's still going to be his go-to resistance when we do hard things, but it's not actually an issue anymore.

It still gave me a bit of a wobble, though, because when I asked him to change on the centerline he hesitated a bit and then changed behind and I didn't follow through. Coach was highly unamused with this, but we went back and did it again with more meaning this time and Lancey did a beautiful effortless clean change. I would have expected him to be the kind of horse to buck through his first few changes but he didn't.

We did one or two simple changes - which were really good, Lancey's canter-to-walk is pretty amazing thanks to that packaged little canter he has - and then did another of Coach's pet exercises. On a 20m circle in canter, I worked on bringing his quarters to the inside. This is a great exercise for collection, connection, lateral response off the leg (and thus flying changes), balance, and ultimately I assume it'll be a big part of preparation for the pirouettes. Lancey and I honestly haven't done a lot of this one, and Coach declared that this would be our homework in the canter: 20m circles with quarters in, and using those to improve the flying changes, like I've done in the past with Thunder and the Friesians.

5 seconds after being yelled at to shorten my reins and hey, what do you know, my hands are better!

After the lesson I cooled Lancey off and then stopped him to ask Coach, "So... is he ready for a Novice test?"

Coach was highly unamused by that question. "He's ready for EM!" he burst out, and then followed a lecture that I thoroughly deserved. "You can sit on the horse and do things," said Coach, succinct and direct as ever, "so do things."

What he was getting at, and what a lot of people have been getting at lately, is that I need to stop worrying over: a) not riding well enough, b) the horse not having the movement, and c) messing up the horse by going too fast. In fact I need to get over my many hang-ups (although my riding nerves are a whole 'nother story) and just. ride. the. horse. To stop stressing over not being experienced enough for this job, or this level, or whatever, and just do it as well as I can.

I have a tendency to ride conservatively, not just in competition, but also at home. I would rather quibble over a movement I find easy than actually get on with things and do difficult movements, which is what I need to start doing. Sure, especially on a horse like Thunder who is at the utmost edge of my abilities, I'm probably going to do the difficult movements badly for a little while - but I'll never learn to do them if I don't do them.

Even in easier movements, I also need to start asking for more from both the horses and myself, to expect better quality work from us both. And I need to quit feeling guilty because I don't school as much as I would like to. Clearly, even if I don't school Lancey as often as I should, he's been making massive progress.

Something Coach said that really stuck with me was "Ride every single horse like it's a Grand Prix horse." Regardless of whether the horse/owner/rider has the aspiration/money/drive/talent to actually do GP, I need to ride every single horse - even a four-year-old - as if it's going to be a GP horse. It's a mentality that has taken my coach a very long way on at least one very unlikely horse. And isn't that a much more positive way of thinking? To be determined that every horse is good enough for the big leagues, and train it like it is? One would at the very least end up with a much higher-quality mid-level horse, and perhaps he would surprise you and go GP anyway.

Lancey certainly surprised me yesterday, and there were a lot of things Coach said that I've been mulling over. I know that I often go into the show ring (especially) with the mentality of "don't mess anything up". Sort of the same way that I approach a horse's training thinking "I hope he makes EM". Instead, I should be going down the centerline thinking "let's rock this thing", and I should be approaching each horse with "we're going to go GP someday".

Of course there's a time and place to ride conservatively. A young horse freaking out at his first show doesn't need more pressure than necessary on him. In general, Coach also places a lot of emphasis on being very slow, low-pressure and correct on a very young horse (in his four-year-old year). Even then, however, there's no reason not to be thinking of GP. He may not be doing a good working trot yet, but the lateral work in walk can be developed early since it's so low-impact. You could do half-passes and walk pirouettes on a three-year-old on the ground if you introduced it incrementally enough.

I've actually been looking into getting some sports psychology or mental skills coaching to straighten out my head, but dang, I could buy a lot of much-needed horse stuff with that kind of money. So I suppose, as usual, it's between me and God to sort out my issues.

One thing I do know: I am SO grateful for this incredible little white Arabian in my life! 💜 Yesterday was an absolute blast, and I can't wait to trot down centreline (not at Novice, lol) on my cutest little dance partner. Reviewing the videos (thank you Friesian owner 💜), I was actually totally blown away by what I saw. I haven't seen ridden video of him in more than a year, and I don't have mirrors at home, so I had absolutely no idea how fantastic he was looking.

I kind of didn't recognize my own horse. Whose fancy lil white Arab is this? It doesn't look like mine!

Thunder updates soon - it's so good to be back on board the big guy. For now, this will be a Lancelot appreciation post. Good boy, Lancey!

God is good 💜