June 9, 2012 - Day three clinic report

I did have one more lesson with brat on Saturday, but it didn't go nearly so well.  Brat was not terribly cooperative.  I got a bit frustrated, but I think a large part of the problem was that both of us are a bit unfit and after several lessons we were a little stiff.  I kept catching myself holding too much tension in various bits of my body, and even lost my stirrup once.  Brat was holding tension in his body too, which made for a bad combination.  In some ways it was good because we do have days like this, and it helped to get some tools to work through the trouble.  He never did get as supple and relaxed as we wanted, but became more responsive and supple than where we started.  At one point we were trying to do the exercise of transitions within shoulder-in and haunches-in but brat just would not walk in the haunches in.  I got him to transition to walk, but it was a horrible pokey thing and he tried to trot or canter when I asked for more walk.

The interesting thing was that Per had me do a couple of things that I wanted to do to try and break the resistance blocks (in both of us).  He had us do a bit of stretching and picking up in the trot (I had thought of trying that exercise to try and persuade him to relax, but it was a clinic and I didn't want to tear off in my own direction), then into canter.  Brat often finds canter easier to relax into and will bend and relax his jaw when he won't in the walk or trot.  It's an easier gait for me to ride which helped me release some of the tension in my own body.  Brat was better and we proceeded to do some loops, circles and transitions within the canter.  Then we did some of the little longer and lower stretches in the canter.  We did a couple of working pirouettes, but nowhere near as good as the day before.  Then back to trot and some shoulder in and haunches in, adding some transitions to walk and back to trot after a couple of decent passes down the long sides.  We did a bit of transitions within the trot, and between trot and walk on the short sides just to get brat more responsive to the aids so he would be ready to respond within the lateral exercise.

We did work a little on the walk into half steps exercise, though Per did note that with brat being less than his usual self we couldn't expect too much.  But he did very well and I really felt the bounce in the short steps for about three strides at the end.