A Slice of Humble Pie...

Warning: There's a bit of a whine coming up. If that's not your cup of tea, or you're just not in the mood for it, feel free to skip this post.  No hard feelings.  Really.

It's winter, which means that our trainer heads South for warmer climates.  Budget constraints, and educational and employment obligations keep us up North, freezing our tuckuses off.  No biggie.  As my Nana always said, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

Our trainer made arrangements for another trainer to teach us while she's away.  Before she left she had this interim trainer come and give the kids lessons so we'd have a sense of what to look forward to.  I was impressed by the new trainer's attention to basics and felt our time with her would be a positive one for the three of us.

Fast forward to last week, our first lesson.  Holy crap, what an eye-opener that was!  I went in to the lesson expecting to get some correction for bad habits.  What I did not expect was to come out of the lesson feeling like the world's worst rider ever.  Not that I feel I'm a particularly good rider, but I did feel I could be considered to be fairly adequate.  Let me tell you, I was disabused of that notion, fast and in a hurry!  I knew I had issues, but did not expect to have more than my kid did. (And yes, I am completely aware that makes me sound like the world's worst mother, but hey, I'm trying to be honest here, and you guys know I've never been afraid to admit I'm far from perfect.)

Sophie and I rode together, and as expected the new trainer, who will henceforth be known as T2, commented on and corrected a few of her form faults, such as her hand carriage and her leg position. Now, normally I'd have considered myself a slightly better rider than my kids.  If you'd seen our joint lesson last week, you'd have thought Sophie was the accomplished rider and I was the rank beginner.  My legs were in the wrong position, my hands were a nightmare, my seat was too heavy, my elbows locked, and my body moved way too much, like a sack of spastic potatoes, while I was jumping.  There was a whole laundry list of other issues as well, but I can't remember them all.

On top of that, T2 did not like Sugar at all.  She thought Sug was heavy on the forehand, stiff as a board, and unwilling to work.  I'll admit I actually took this worse than I did T2's assessment of my own skills.  I may suck, but every trainer I have ever had has loved Sug, finding her supple, light in the hand, and extremely willing willing to work.  All of them have commented that of the horses they had to ride in the course of their day, Sugar was one they looked forward to sitting on.

When I've ridden in clinics before, every clinician (Bernie Traurig, Jeff Cook, and Eric Horgan) have all loved my mare.  One of those clinicians is an Olympian, one was a top show jumper who won numerous grands prix and represented the US on many Nation's Cup teams, and the other was assistant trainer to George Morris for a number of years, a successful rider in his own right, and a frequent contributor to Practical Horseman magazine.  My point here is that is these guys liked Sug, so she couldn't be too bad, right?

To say I was a bit taken aback is an understatement.  And yeah, I realize my ego was bruised, and yes, I know I was in a strop because of her assessment of my horse.  I couldn't figure out if this lady just didn't like me for some reason or if I truly do suck, in which case, why didn't any of my other trainers point this fact out to me? Had they just given up, feeling I was beyond help? Is T2 right in her assessment of me and my other trainers did me a disservice by allowing me to continue as I had been? Or is she wrong and the other trainers right?  I had some serious soul searching to do, and I needed to try to take my ego and outraged horse-mama self out of the equation and look at the reality of the situation.

The way I saw it, I had a couple choices:

1)  I could say we were not a fit and discontinue working with her while my kids my kids continued to lesson with her.  After all, I'd only be on my own for a couple months.  Not ideal, but hey, you can say that life is too short to deal with something that doesn't make you happy or makes you  uncomfortable.  Especially as riding is supposed to be fun.

~OR~

2) I could do a couple more lessons with her, see what happened, see if there was improvement, and reassess from that point.  I was a swimmer in college, and played softball, basketball, and soccer during my school days.  I know that anytime a coach adjusted my stroke, swing, shot or kick it felt awkward as hell for a while until I broke my bad habit and retrained my muscle memory.   I could tell myself that T2 has trained many people in our area successfully, so odds are she has something to teach me.

I'm going with option 2, at least for the moment.  My bruised ego and I will stick it out for a while and see what happens.  Option 1 feels too much like giving up and quitting to me, and that's not how I roll or what I want to model for my kids.  I don't want them to think that when things are different or uncomfortable that you just get to throw in the towel. I'm willing to concede that I'm having an issue because this situation is uncomfortable for me, and that there is a very real possibility there may be something positive that will come of this.  So I'm hanging in there for now.

I've since had another lesson, and while I still felt like a remedial rider, there was some improvement.  More importantly, I've seen how her attention to detail has improved the kids' riding, so if she can help them, well, I have to believe she can help me.  I have another lesson today, and I guess I'd say I am cautiously optimistic.

Many thanks to those of you who read through this whole whine and for allowing me to self-therapize.  I'll keep you posted on how this goes.  Feel free to comment with your thoughts, even if it's just to tell me to pull my big girl pants up. I can take it.

Breaking Out The Bad...

Last night's lesson was pretty darn good, if I do say so myself.

Actually, the last several lessons have been really good.  (Smiling and doing a little happy dance.)  After about a year of working on my rhythm and making sure to keep my canter consistent over baby fences, I've gotten consistent enough to warrant moving back up to 3'.  In the past raising the height of the fences would have put me in the fetal position, but since I've worked on my mental approach and the whole consistency thing, the "fetal thing" wasn't so much of an issue.

My trainer built me up to 3' in stages.  I usually share lessons with my kids, which made sense since we were all jumping about 2'6".  Lately during lessons she'd raise one fence in a course  to 3' for me.  Then maybe a second fence would be put up to that height.  The rest would be the 2'6" my kids and I normally jumped.  I'd jump a course with the 3' fence or two. No problem.  Wheeeeeeee!

In the interest of honesty I should mention that the first couple times my trainer raised the fences on me she totally fibbed  and told me they were only 2'9".  I'm no expert, but she's the coach, so I believed her, even though they looked bigger to me. Finally during one lesson she raised a fence and it looked waaaay too big to be the 2'9" she told me it was, so after I'd finished Sug's post-ride grooming I snuck back into the ring and measured it.  Sure enough, it was 3'.  Ah-hah!  Mind games!  I can appreciate those!  She knows how I work, and bamboozling me into thinking I'm comfortable at 2'9" when I'm really jumping 3' is not a bad strategy on her part.  Well played, coach!

So, anyway, back to last night's lesson.  Soph and I rode together, and usually our Tuesday night lesson is mostly flat with some cavaletti work or exercises over small fences.  Last night the exercise was the "circle of death" exercise, where you ride in a circle over jumps working on rhythm, staying the center of the fence, and getting the horse to land on the correct lead.  My trainer had complicated things by making the fences into ridiculously small targets - a flower box and two bales of hay.  First we jumped the one hay bale, working on getting a rhythm and making sure we could get our horses to the middle of an obstacle only 3' wide. Then we did the hay bale to the flower box. Then the hay bale to flower box to the second hay bale.

Sounds easy, but it ain't.  Luckily for me, I'd geeked out yesterday and had read Amanda Steege's article on nailing your lead after a fence in the November issue of Practical Horseman. Amanda advocates making sure you look up and across the fence in the direction you want to go, and that you close your fingers around the rein on the side of the lead you want as your horse prepares to take off, while you apply slight pressure with the opposite leg and step into that heel to move the horse's haunches over and cue him to land with the correct hind leg first.

I'd also watched a little EquestrianCoach.com while I was on the treadmill at lunch.  Hope Glynn's video on "Making the Most of Your Turns on Course" was super helpful.  She demonstrated how making a good square turn to a fence sets the horse up for a good jump.  She also showed how fading in or out on the turn affects the horse's landing and approach to the the next obstacle, and thus affects balance and smoothness and your distance, as well as time if you're a jumper.

Well, DUUUUUHHHH, right??  I mean, I should know this stuff, right?  But you know how sometimes you get to the barn after a long, crappy day at work, you've fought rush hour traffic and somehow all the stuff you should know doesn't seem to come out in your ride?  I just read a blog post on Eventing Nation by Denny Emerson's student Lila Gendal on Being More Present and it touches on this.

So last night, I was present during my ride, and I nailed that damn circle of death exercise, right from the get-go!  And what made it even better was that my daughter had trouble with it for a while, and so did my trainer's daughter (a fabulous little pony jock with several trips to pony finals under her belt by age 9).  My trainer was telling the girls to watch me (watch me!!!) and how I set up my turns, how I used my outside aids, and how I got Sug to the middle of each fence. LALALALALALA- time for the mounted happy dance!!!! (I know, real mature, huh? Great parenting moment, right?  Pffffftttttt!!!!  Sometimes Mom gets to win! LOL.)

Yeah, I was getting high on my big, bad self.  Got my strut back on, feeling like a badass!  That's me, vanquisher of flower boxes, slayer of hay bales.  Bring on that 3' course, baby!  I'll kill that muthah!!!

WAAAAAAAAHHHHHH! Or, Get Over It Already, For Heaven's Sake...

Hi. My name is Amy and I am a Chicken.

Today I had my first lesson since I attemtped to emulate a lawn dart at my last show.  My travel schedule for work as been crazy, so it's really only the fourth time I've ridden since I damn near found oil two weeks ago.  Certainly the first time I've jumped.

Well, as you probably picked up from the title, things did not go well.  Number one, due to the severe neck sprain I gave myself (the Doctor's terminolgy, not mine) anything more than light exercise has been VERBOTEN for the past two weeks..  Think "gentle stroll on treadmill." So, my fitness level, never great to start with, is close to non-existant.  (Can somebody PLEASE tell me why it takes a 40 year old woman MONTHS to gain any kind of muscle and a nanosecond to lose it???  PLEASE?  That my friends, is one of life's nasty little ironies.  The others involve childbirth, but that's another discussion and you'd need to buy me a drink before I get started on that one.)

Plus, I'm still sore, so some things, such as turning my head to look for the fence, were uncomfortable. Thus,  I didn't execute them well and we had missed distances, awkward jumps, and some "Oh Sweet Baby Jesus!" moments.  So why was I attempting to lesson under these circumstances?  Well, if you haven't realized I'm not exactly the brightest bulb in the string by now, you haven't been paying close attention to this blog.  I suggest you go back and read a few more posts.  You'll get what I mean soon enough.

Basically, I rode to each fence in a state of high alert, fearing the worst and rendering myself darn near incompetent.  My trainer said I was exaggerating ( this would not be unusual, I am known to amplify things a bit) and not riding badly at all, but you know how you it is when you feel like you're only moments away from a trainwreck.  At this point I was about one sniffle away from starting to bawl.  Not just tears, but a full-on, snot pouring from the nose, howling like a crazy person meltdown.  Luckily my mare turned to me and gave me one of her LOOKS.

What is going on?? Are you leaking up there?

No, Sug. (sniff)  I'm fine. (sniff)

You don't look or sound fine, and you're clenching. Stop that, please.  Do that breathing thing, would you?

Sorry, Sug. (Sounds of deep breathing ensue.)

So how do you take one ad incident and stop from making it into the 800 pound gorilla in the arena??  For some reason the Friends episode where Phoebe, Rachel and Monica do a cleansing ritual to rid themselves of bad boyfriend karma.  I thought briefly about a cleansing ritual, but I saved up a gazillion Dover's gift certificates to get that hunt coat, darnit, and knowing my luck I'd set the house on fire anyway. 

I asked my trainer to lower the fences and to let me work on easier groups of combinations of fences, rather than entire courses, which she did, and things still weren't going great.  I couldn't keep a consistent rythym, partly because my mare was feeling herself  and dragging me to the fences, and partly because I was picking at her till we went from a gallop to darn near going backwards.  You can imagine what kind of jumps these resulted in.  Let's just say I was inadvertently dropping some words that would have gotten my mouth washed out and my behind blessed with a wooden spoon about 30 years ago.  Thankfully my kids weren't in the arena.  Her Highness Princess Sugar Britches was not impressed either.

Hellooooo! Koninklijk Warmbloed Paardenstamboek Nederland!

Gesundheit, Sug.

Sigh.  Translation: Royal Warmblood Studbook of the Netherlands. Such language is inappropriate in front of an equine of my eminence.

You know, you may not want to take that tone with me today, Miss Thing.  Ain't no Royal Netherlanders standing in line to pay your massage bills.  Just saying...

So I told my trainer I thought it would be a good idea to go back to basics.  More longe lessons.  More gymnastics, more work on my form and the security of my position and leg, until I feel secure again.  I have the chance to show again this week, and quite frankly, I'm hesitant about doing it.

I like feeling fully prepped.  Knowing I CAN do something (usually by the skin of my teeth and feeling I've just received a miracle) and feeling like I can do something succesfully is a big difference.  I feel that when I ride with confidence, I can ride well.  When I don't ride with confidence, things get dicey and I'm worried one day I really will hurt myself and my horse.  To be fair, my trainer does prep me well, working on exercises that she knows will prepare us for the courses we'll face.

George Morris famously said that he "faught chicken" all the time. Sometimes that makes me think, "Wow, even George has moments. How liberating!" Other days I think, "What a load of crapola. If he were chicken why was he jumping 5 foot fences so well for so long? If George really wants to see chicken, he should come see me approaching a 3' oxer. You can see the "Oh sh#$! Oh sh#$!" cartoon thought bubbles over my head!"


So what's the deal?  Am I just a big whiny ninny who needs to pull on her Big Girl Pants, pull down her skirt, and suck it up?  Or, do I pat myself on the back for getting back on and giving it a go, and then realizing I'm still hurting and the more prudent decision is to retrench and go back to basics until confidence is restored?
 
Or, do I hire a Native American Shaman to burn sage and do a healing dance for me?