Friday flatwork

As always we had a busy weekend, full of fun horsey plans. It may well be the last one for a while and that’s ok given the current circumstances. We have events and comps being cancelled left, right and centre which is inevitable. Right now our first event of the season looks to be going ahead with measures put in place to minimise the risks and comply with the government guidelines. I have a feeling that this will change over the week and am prepared for it to be cancelled altogether.

However not all is lost as there is still plenty of training to be doing, and Friday saw us attend yet another flatwork lesson. It was hard work and I was in the saddle for nearly two hours. Poor Henry was tired by the end but we got some great work out of it. We were focussing on the contact still since this is our biggest area of weakness. Plus Henry lulls me into not being effective enough so we need to work through it.

I told my coach that things always go great in lessons, I think I have a good feel for it, I repeat it once on my own and then after that lose it somehow. I always worry I am doing too much or not enough. We had a big chat about it half way through the lesson which was very useful and I made sure I really focussed on the feeling the correct contact gave me.

When I have the right amount of contact, I can make small changes very fast and can make corrects when something has barely happened. I can predict what will happen and change it before it happens, and everything just feels easier.

We also went over shoulder in and travers again and with the correct contact we got the angles spot on and Henry was nice and responsive putting in some good work here.

We also touched on getting Henry to stretch down and out in all paces. He was a bit hesitant to take the contact while stretching so we had to really encourage him to do this. He love stretching but doesn’t want to do it correctly.

So our main homework was maintain the damn contact and work him through his resistance gradually. Practice stretching into the contact and keep chipping away at the laterals, they are forming really well.