A Trail Ride and a Lesson

Sunday afternoon I went on a trailride with Shamrock, his older owner and her horse. It was *awesome*, though a little disconcerting with the steep hills we were going up and down. Shamrock did great on the actual trail portion, and even went into the water first whenever we had to go into or cross a stream. He got a little spooked by a deer when we were out in the open (it jumped straight out at us!) but was fine for the rest of the ride.

Then I had a lesson Tuesday evening, and it was *awesome*! I'd been having trouble with my Albion, it seemed like it was confining me and forcing me into somewhat of a chair seat. My new instructor helped me to discover that by changing the angle of my hip and actually leaning forward a little (so that I was actually upright instead of leaning back a little like I'm used to doing even though it looks and feels straight)gave me greater weight in my feet and allowed me to be sitting with a straight line from ear to hip to heel...I was even able to shorten my stirrups a couple of notches!

After this epiphany we worked on alternating between sitting trot and two point, so that I can get used to the "correct" feeling of those positions for repeating them on Shamrock. I'll have another lesson in two weeks and between now and then I'll work on building up my own strength in those positions.

The big breakthrough came after the lesson. While mounted my instructor discovered that the muscle running from my armpits down my side are incredibly tight...they felt more like bricks than loose muscle like they should have. So she had me do some stretching exercises to help release and relax those muscles. There's already a huge difference in them today and I'm going to keep doing the exercises over the next two weeks to improve them even more.

We're moving Shamrock to his new home on Sunday, so I should be able to get more and better pictures of him after that!