2023 Military Grant Fund Recipient: Charity Weaver
What an experience! Last Friday I loaded up my horse, Kalimero (K), and drove six hours from Norman, OK, to the Houston, TX, area to ride with Jeremy Steinberg. I stopped briefly near Dallas to pick up my best friend/groom extraordinaire, because isn’t everything more fun with friends? We arrived early afternoon Friday to get K settled into his stall and give him time to rest before his big weekend. We were able to stay on-site in a bunkhouse and could not say enough about the hospitality and kindness of everyone we met!
Saturday, I had two rides with Jeremy, one very early and one at the end of the day. On our first ride, we talked to Jeremy about K being completely willing to do flying lead changes but being late behind in his change from left to right. He watched us warm up and asked us to do a few specific movements. He told me that he thinks the issue is a lack of impulsion/engagement and that K needs to think more about coming under with the croup instead of up. He prescribed many exercises to help with this and we got to work! We started with trot/canter transitions on a 20m circle, encouraging really through transitions. Jeremy said each transition should feel like a good flying change, if it doesn’t, go back and do it again.
Then we added some impulsion in the canter on the circle, tickling with the whip until he came under in the croup and up in the shoulders, and asking him to hold that feeling for five to six strides. Once he could hold that we added some haunches-in to the circle, with a correct bend in his neck and angle in his body. With this, we asked for more impulsion and jump for a few strides. On to trot work, we asked K to be really energetic, but not to let him get faster so that his energy lifted the trot. From this, we took the energetic and upward thinking trot into trot/halt transitions keeping his shoulders and head UP in the transition (NO diving!).
In our second lesson, we tested the trot/canter and trot/halt transitions, and he was already so much more energetic and responsive! The second lesson mainly focused on teaching him to tuck his pelvis with the idea of piaffe from the walk and me holding completely still and not “helping” (read “nagging”) him which is definitely my '"MO." He quickly took to the idea, but we had to work through him wanting to come up in the croup as he used to do instead of tucking under. I can't tell you how much I enjoyed all of Jeremy’s anecdotes and analogies, they are so helpful for remembering all of the ideas, principles, and knowledge he shares!
Sunday rolled around and I was SO excited to work on all of our homework again under Jeremy’s watchful eye! Jeremy and I discussed that I should have a plan before each ride, e.g. today we will do 40 quality trot/canter transitions, tomorrow we will work on the piaffe work making sure K is up in the bridle and tucks his pelvis, the next day we will do powerful uphill trot into the halt making sure he is really tucking under and listening to my aids. Jeremy suggested doing this work for two to three months and rewiring his instinct to dive down and pop up in the croup before we start trying our flying changes again. He also suggested videoing each ride and evaluating each movement on how it looks, not just how it feels, as feelings can sometimes be deceiving.
It does not escape me that I went to work on our flying changes and didn’t do a single change all weekend, but it's totally worth it to encourage K to be more correct and understand what I want! Super grateful that my friend/groom also videoed all my rides so I can go back and see the reactions and hear all of Jeremy’s advice again. I very much plan to take all of Jeremy’s advice and try to do a video lesson with him in a month or two to see how our progress is coming. I am grateful to The Dressage Foundation donors for this opportunity as it would not have been possible without them!
