Postby Chisamba » Mon Apr 25, 2016 12:13 pm
Just a couple of comments, which i hope you will find helpful, if you need me to do screen grabs to explain better let me know. in the warm up where you are working him in a long stretch, and doing the poles, and circles, you are perhaps, overweighting the inside leg and seat bone, in both directions, this had Bliss leaning in on the circles and overweighting his inside front leg. The goal being to get the horse to distribute its weight equally over all four legs at all time, ie balance, i think you need to consider using a little more weight in the outside stirrup, or perhaps a little less stretch until he can do the stretch without leaning in so much. i have found it both challenging and useful to stretch, the horse to the bridle, for say, 3/4 of a circle, then ride them up into an elastic contact for one fourth of the circle and then stretch again, so that they assisted to distribute their balance and then stretch from a balanced position.
i agree with Khall about lateral work. i think a few strides of shoulder in, or even shoulder fore to set up and complete each exercise. lets say you were about to do a canter transition, do a few stride of shoulder fore, then transition, or if you were planning to do a lengthening, a few stride of shoulder in, then lengthen across the diagonal, then as you change bend at the end of the diagonal, shoulder in the other way. be careful of maintaining tempo as you do so.
finally a question, when you were doing the square exercise in the walk, were you slowing the tempo on the corners intentionally? If so, make sure you maintain your walk rhythm.
I think you and your horse look really lovely, and have huge potential. He does look lovely to ride, which is a compliment to the rider.