This week I learned that there is no time to think. I must just act! “Ride like there’s a fire behind you.” My coach Belinda Trussell said this several times in my lessons. “Ride with more urgency” Ride as if there is a fire behind me? This is not about getting Biasini to go faster. It is about me responding to him faster.
Recently I have found that the key to a successful lesson is to start with no stirrups. My stirrup leathers will not cross over at the pommel so I take my feet out and the stirrup irons just dangle. Here is a video of some of my no stirrups time . I volunteered for 5 minutes and in the end the video was 7 minutes 18 seconds long. I have edited it (I hope) to a shorter version for this post.
When I took my stirrups back we worked on canter half pass, the pirouette canter and at the end three four tempi changes across the diagonal. In this video you will see an interesting moment when Biasini gives a little leap forward in the pirouette canter. I had felt he was stalling out on me and , without thinking about it, gave him a “Get Up!” aid. And he responded immediately. This is not what I might want in the show ring but it is an important lesson for him in training. There are many things that we do in training that we would not want to do in the show ring. But in training we are training. In this instance the fire was coming up to Biasini’s tail! We had to go!
We had two very valuable training sessions with Belinda this past week. And I am hoping to stay ahead of that fire!!
- Featured photo by Chiraq Navak.*
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