Full body effort

I’m back in the saddle, but as I mentioned earlier, am dealing with a very painful knee that is limiting my riding.  However, I discovered tonight that my Albion saddle, with its thigh blocks, aggravates the knee.  I jumped on Manny in my Isabel after  a meh lesson on Derbs in the Albion. I was much more comfortable in the Isabel.  Derby is going to give that saddle another shot tomorrow night, needless to say.

Anyway, over the weekend we had our first ride outside. It was lovely to get back out in the sunshine, and Derby comported himself like a gentleman.

Tonight in my lesson we did some nice work, but I was focused mostly on continuing to strengthen my position while not killing my knee.  We had a few nice moments but it wasn’t much of a ride, though we did have a bit of a breakthrough, when I was going around on a loopy rein, concentrating on keeping my hands still, and my right leg back a little.  It wants to creep forward on turns which works against my attempts at balance and bend.  I was struggling but finally managed to align myself, and engage my core.

“There it is!” said Christy, who had watched numerous fruitless attempts.  I continued on, bug-eyed from the full body effort of keeping hands still hip open heels down legs draping hips to hands outside  shoulder and leg back where they belong and core engaged.

I finished up by doing a little no stirrup work but everything was uncomfortable and I didn’t give it my all

Things were different on Manny, though.  I was much, much more comfortable in the Isabel with no blocks, and actually could ride him forward. We did four laps of the arena with no stirrups, we cantered around and we did some good trot work.  IT was a much better ride.  So tomorrow we’ll see how Derbs goes in the Isabel, because goodness knows it works better for me.