From Heather Moffett of Enlightened Equitation about
Alexis,
My wretched broadband is crap at the best of times but has been partivcularly
erratic tonight. Have only so far managed to download a few secs, but you are
behind the movement in rising trot, and looks like you may be slightly crooked.
You need to allow your upper body to incline more forwards from the hip in
rising trot ( only time this should be the case)-you are too upright- in order
that the pelvis can move forwards and back on an equal arc'.
Will try to download more tomorrow.
Heather
Ok have now seen the rest of the video, but it is so distant that I can only go
by the few fleeting seconds that you are closer to camera!
Definitely behind the movement in rising trot. As I said in the earlier post, I
would ask you to incline your upper body slightly forwards from the hip as you
rise, but even more especially in the sit phase. If the horse has big movement,
the impetus of the stride will bring your torso upright in the rise phase, but
it should be the horse's movement that determines this, not you. The whole point
of rising trot is to relieve the horse's back of weight and to make trot less
tiring for the rider. If you are having to thrust your pelvis in order to keep
your body upright throughout the phase of the stride, you will be using a lot of
unnecessary energy, and also if you are not quite in sync, causing the horse to
slow down. This will then cause you to have to use more leg, which you are
having to do by the look of it.
The use of the leg is too obvious, and slightly backwards kicking in movement. I
would correct this by asking you to think of lowering your little toe, and in
doing so, closing your calf muscle momentarily and then releasing again. In this
way, you retrain your legs to use the inside of the calf in a very subtle way
which is not even visible to the onlooker.
Your horse's walk is in danger of being two time, in fact is, in a few strides.
Which test was this, and which walk was this meant to be?
In canter, partly because the horse is on his forehand, you are not able to
adhere softly to the saddle, so your butt is slightly leaving it and slapping a
bit heavily on landing. This will not help the horse to lift his back and will
add to his being on the forehand- a bit of a vicious circle really.
If you refer to the clip I posted earlier in this thread of me working with the
simulators, have a look at the canter one, which shows and describes the
'backwards circle' made by the pelvis, pivotting on the seatbones, which is the
correct absorption/synchronisation of the movement with the horse, in canter.
Actually it is more of an ellipse than a circle, but a student said to me a few
months ago, 'Is it a vertical ellipse, or a horizontal one?. Wow, I hadnt even
thought of that! The more collected the canter, the more vertical the ellipse,
the more extended, the more horizontal the ellipse. Fascinating yet so simple!
So if we could get you absorbing your horse's movement more correctly and more
softly, he would be encouraged to lift his back and forehand and make it more
comfortable for you too- win, win situation! I would do this in the same way as
I suggested in an earlier post, lots of transitions, preferably walk to canter
if your horse does it, and maybe 8-10 strides, back to walk, or trot if the
canter walk is not yet established. Walk again, back to canter, and so on. I
would be doing a fair bit of rein back to trot too, to get him more up off his
shoulders. This would then help the canter.
Be VERY careful NOT to tip forwards on the first beat of canter- this is so
common, and sets up a sort of pendulum swing of the shoulders for the rest of
the canter which is hard to correct. The lower back has to flex as part of the
backwards ellipse of the pelvis. This shortens and lengthens the spine by the
same amount that the horses back is rising and falling, and allows total soft
adhesion to the saddle with the shoulders staying very quiet and almost still.
Hope this helps!!
Heather
Definitely behind the movement in rising trot. As I said in the earlier post,
I would ask you to incline your upper body slightly forwards from the hip as you
rise, but even more especially in the sit phase.
Sorry, meant to elaborate on this. By coming back to the saddle with pelvis
slightly inclined forwards, you are ready to receive the forewards and upwards
push of the horse, rather than having to make this or contribute to it, at
least, yourself. If I ride the simulator and get the student to place their hand
under the back of the saddle, and rise to the trot returning to the saddle
pelvis upright, the hand is squashed. If I try to return to the saddle upright
by strongly controlling my descent, I end up behind the movement and the maching
starts to go out of sync, and I then have to thrust the pelvis forwards and back
to catch it up again.
If however, I land with my pelvis slightly in advance of the vertical, the
student barely even feels me touching down in the saddle, the momentum takes my
pelvis forwards again and I have to do almost nothing. This is the whole point
of rising trot, to make it less effort for both horse and rider. I have so often
transformed a 'lazy' horse in trot, simply by getting the rider to incline
slightly more from the hip- horse just says 'thank you very much, now I can
move' and the trot transforms.
I expect I will have a lot of disagreement over this from other experts, but all
I know is, it works for every rider I teach. One of the first things I noticed
in Anja Beran's book was that she taught RT exactly as I do.
Heather