Over the course of this winter my coach , Belinda Trussell , has been asking me to “give, give give”. Give before every half halt, before every change of direction, before every transition up or down.
Well that is new muscle memory for me. I tend to freeze and hang on. But at last that old muscle memory is finally being altered and “giving” is getting easier and more automatic for me. The results are just as Belinda promised. The more I give the less Biasini pulls down.
The process of creating new muscle memories is not easy for an older rider like myself. I have gone through frustration and discouragement in this quest. I have talked with Belinda about this and she has been very helpful and encouraging. In the last couple of weeks I have begun to turn a corner and those new muscle memories are begining to stick. Here are a couple of videos from a recent lesson that my husband took . We are not perfect but getting better! As an aside I should let you know it was a HOT day at 31+Celsius or 87.8 Fahrenheit But I don’t mind the heat and Biasini is ok with heat too. We also took lots of short walk breaks which are not on the videos.In this video Belinda asks me to do some 10 meter circles. My circles are a bit random and she tells me that it is important to ride the quality of the circle and with good patterns. 10 meters is 10 meters not 8 and not shaped like an egg!
In this next video Belinda asks us to collect the canter to a pirouette canter in the corners and not loose the frame or activity on the way out of the collected canter. We then move on to a few steps of pirouette.
Thank you to my husband for the videos. And thank you to Belinda for having been patient with my slow progress.
- featured photo (C) Connie Gee*
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