TRANSITIONS

TRANSITIONS

These last few months have been filled to the brim. Aside from finishing out the 2018 Three-Day Eventing season, hosting numerous visitors from the east coast, and navigating a few medical appointments, these last few months have lived up to their “autumn” mantra. It’s truly being a season of transition. My mother always said that she doesn’t do well with change, and I suppose I follow in her footsteps.

Set Yourself Up for Success

              While I haven’t had much time to write recently, I haven’t been slacking in my horsemanship. I continue to grow and learn much about colt starting, instructing, and refinement. The recent theme that I’ve seen reoccurring lately is that of transitions.

              The area of my riding that I’ve always felt the most lacking is in my cantering. In my younger years, I struggled for a long time with an inability to perform accurate canter departures, from any of the slower gaits. For years, I struggled to get Gabe to pick up his right lead, something that was a combination of his inequality in body strength and in my balance.

              Since coming to Colorado, I have focused a lot on improving that area of my riding. I worked on improving my body posture as well as insisting on responsiveness from Gabriel. Slowly our canter work has improved, showing the difference through cadence, collection and body strength in both me and Gabe.

Simplify It

              However, the cantering has still been lacking in comparison to the rest of my riding, especially when viewed through the lens of riding young or untrained horses. I was encouraged to set each and every canter up in such a way that I would never catch a wrong lead again, which is achieved by understanding how the biomechanics of cantering truly works.

              When cantering, the horse’s stride has three beats. The first beat is the outside hind leg pushing off, followed by the inside hind and the outside front landing in unison. The last beat is the inside front landing. There is a moment following where the horse pushes off that inside front and all of the horse is suspended in the air before landing again on the outside hind. When the horse canters this way, his body is balanced so as to canter in a specific direction. If he catches the opposite lead, and pushes off with the inside hind, then the entire process is swapped and it is much harder for the horse to remain balanced while traveling in the same specific direction.

              This means that to truly set up a horse to catch the correct lead, the hindquarters must be to the inside of the circle. This naturally allows his weight to be on the outside hind and gives freedom through the inside hind/outside front for them to follow. The easiest way to achieve this is, while in a riding arena, to travel directly at one of the rails. There is a moment when the horse begins to turn, in whichever direction you are traveling, where the nose will flex in the direction of travel and the hindquarters will remain to the inside. That moment is where you are best setup to achieve your desired lead.

              In the most simple terms, riding can be broken down to this: the nose leads, the shoulders follow the nose, and the hips follow the shoulders. If the horse can track in such a matter, with all of his body falling into line, anything is possible. It is when the shoulders or hips or nose are thrown onto a different track that you’ll find problems occurring.

Fear of Leaving the Known

I read a quote from Krishnamurti a while back that really resonated with me: “One is never afraid of the unknown, one is afraid of the known coming to an end.” That concept has really shaped my view and response to all the transitions I have been going through.

In the same way that I have had to practice my cantering transitions to improve those responses, I have had to practice the transitions in my life. There is a podcast that I have utterly fallen in love with this past year (That Sounds Fun with Annie F. Downs; check it out! It’s fantastic!) and this past week there was an interview with author Hayley Morgan. One of the things she spoke to was this generation’s inability to confidently make decisions. “They are paralyzed by indecision, because they want to make the perfect decision,” she says. She goes on to encourage people to make decisions, knowing that you will figure it out as you go, knowing perhaps you won’t make the right choice, but continuing to move forward anyways.

This insight was so powerful to me, as I am someone that never wants to pull the trigger on change. I know that deciding means I am signing off on a change to come. However, there is relief in knowing that if you have set yourself up for success, its okay to make the change and see where it leads.

Final Thoughts

              In the same way that I had to learn to set up my horse to catch the correct lead, I have had to learn how to set myself up to make the correct decisions in my life. As much fun as trotting around on my little Morgan is, I will miss the even greater joy that is cantering if I’m too afraid of not being able to pick up the right lead. Maybe I’ll miss it the first time, but that just gives me the opportunity to try again. And the more I practice it, the more I learn how to make well-informed decisions, the better my transitions will be in the future.