Briefly, just to get them down, some notes from Monday’s lesson. It was short, because it was 10 degrees and I didn’t want to push too hard.
First, some good things!
- overall, he’s more forward and loose than he has been, so our work there has been paying off
- he was also much stretchier into the contact, which showed even more payoff
- he was surprisingly cheerful and willing for it being so cold
Things to work on:
- my position; still too much gripping with the knee and ankle and scrunching my leg up to get my heel on him and keeping it there. we worked a bunch on even pressure through the whole leg, and talked about how it made my thighs feel tight/a little bit too closed on the saddle but that’s ok for now
- his rhythm/tempo. I had downloaded the metronome app that Emma recommended and we worked together to find a BPM for his trot. Right now we’ve got it set to 2/2 at 140 BPM, or a smidge faster than a beat per second. That’s his stretch goal; right now he’s hovering more around a 132 BPM. Just to give you a sense of how freaking slow my horse is.
We also chatted briefly about a topic that causes perpetual angst for me and will be the subject of a future blog post: cooling down. I’ve had a lot of different trainers with different opinions on it over the years and it’s left me an anxious mess about what should be a really simple thing. I felt a little bit better after we talked, so that was nice.
beljoeor.com 
awesome that the metronome app seems like it might be helpful for you!! it’s interesting too bc it sounds like your settings are a bit different from mine, resulting in a very different bpm that ends up being actually basically equivalent anyway. for instance, mine is on a 4/4 setting so my 77 ends up being more like a 154 with your settings. i didn’t really realize that function until this exact moment tho haha
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I actually had no idea about that function either! I handed my phone to my trainer and started trotting around and she announced she had changed it to 2/2 because that made more sense to her (just two-toned clicks, 1-2) and gave me my number. Eventually ideally Tristan will start getting more to 150+ but he just can’t maintain it and also any kind of connection/organization right now.
When I went to download the app it told me I already had at some point in the past, so I must have been thinking of this at some point and forgotten about it, then your post reminded me!
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