Ooooohhhh my core and my hips!

All for the love of the sport. ;)

Today was our first ride back after our awesome weekend. I ended up cancelling my lesson with Cindy Tuesday morning because we were both not wanting to get back in the trailer. And I was too busy playing catch up to fit in a ride, so... it was Thursday before we got to ride. 

I had a lesson with Kelly and since we missed our lesson with Cindy and had jumped all weekend, we did another dressage lesson. It was great!

We continued with our last few lessons and talked about my position again. How I needed to sit on my seat bones (not so much the triangle, but more just my seat bones as that gave me a neutral pelvis). And to NOT tip my shoulders forward. When I felt a little bit like I was leaning back, I was straight. Dan was round and on the bit much pretty much from the get go which was awesome. I need to remember to not give too much with my elbows and keep them at my side. I laughed and said I needed a bungee. ;) So then we worked on pinwheeling. UGH... Before we talked about it Kelly said "Remember that I like you". So... while sitting with a neutral pelvis and my feet out of the stirrups, I had to pinwheel my legs. So I took my right leg and lifted my knee up to the level of the knee roll and then out to the side and then down and back and then back to neutral. Then the same on the left side. And it hurts! The outside of my hip joint was burning. BUT... it did make my hip feel more open and down.

So then we moved on to the trot and I did some sitting trot. Kelly said that to increase the trot into a medium trot, I needed to increase the up and down tilt of my pelvis. And to compress the trot, I needed to decrease the up and down tilt. It worked, kind of. I need more leg. But it did change the trot. So then to do a downward transition, I need to slow my pelvis tilt slowly and incrementally until he walked. This worked great! It helped to keep him from slamming into the walk.

So then we went to the canter transitions. AHHHH. It was glorious!!! I started with a nice trot and nice pelvic roll, but still staying on my seat bones. Then I put my outside leg back and thought about rolling my butt from the back of the saddle to the front and lifting my pelvis, especially on the inside. And viola!! And BEAUTIFUL canter depart!!! With minimal fussing in the bridle. Yay!! We did the same thing for the canter to trot as trot to walk.

So yep.. Very good lesson. :)
My homework is to work on the pinwheel for a few minutes once a week to start, as it does hurt. And to work on the sitting trot and my core. And to work on my transitions that way. 

Fun fun fun