Wednesday, June 2, 2021

Position Reminders


After my deep(ish) dive into Mary Wanless I made a short list of the most important position reminders for me, right at this moment.  They include:

*making a wall with my abs and pushing against it(nice side benefit is that making the wall before pushing against it fixes my tendency to hollow my back)
*putting both boards on in MW speak
*suction cupping my thighs to the saddle and then drawing them slightly away
*having a slight slingshot with my thighs
*pushing out the fascia in my calf and popping the tendons in my ankles

I’ve had a few easy for Jet rides where I got used to activating these PR’s mostly on a 20m circle and yesterday I used the Pivo to see what’s the what.  I have to add that I feel much more secure in general in the saddle.  Jet feels poll high and swingy and our posting trot feels much more effective.  The video shows a poll high horse, with a big swingy posting trot(thank you MW posting trot mechanic), and in general nice lateral and longitudinal balance.  

Things that need to be fine tuned:

*I need to remember to pull my thigh out behind me when I get on and frequently through the ride- it helps my leg position tremendously 
*in frame by frame stills I can see that I am moving my upper body at the walk more than my seat/hips
*in the posting trot I am (finally!) coming to the top of the post correctly but I am pivoting around my thigh slightly on the sit phase and tipping a little too forward
*about half way through the video my lower leg starts to flop around a bit with fatigue, which will just take strength I think
*in general I look nice and organized but I need to stay organized while following with my hips/seat to allow for maximum flowing working gaits

I think I’m going to continue fine tuning these basic seat biomechanics of core, slingshot, and managing my angles while sticking to Training Level type stuff for another few rides.  Then after another Pivo to make sure we are on track I will start adding in some First Level stuff.  Which dovetails nicely with working Jet every other day and gradually increasing his workload to see what his soundness workload limit will be.  

2 comments:

  1. Sometimes its a real pain keeping track of all of the things we need to fix with us while we try and ride the horse and fix things about them as well. Ugh!

    It is so tough and I laugh but cringe a little inside when people think "Riding is so easy".

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