I woke up early the next morning with a mission. As soon as my alarm went off, I turned on the coffee maker, opened the blinds and typed “Floratio” into Google. The words of the great Freddie Mercury filled my brain… “Under pressure”… I knew I had heard the name before, but I am a big bloodlines nerd, so I was thinking that maybe I had recognized his name from a stallion show or maybe one of his offspring was at an auction I was shopping through. I also thought that maybe he was living in Imke’s stallion barn because the other barns were full or maybe they had brought him up into that barn because I was going to be riding him daily. What had NOT crossed my mind was that he could have been Imke’s own horse. Yes… Imke’s personal horse. This time, as soon as I walked into the barn, I stopped the first person that would know more about him and asked, “Is Floratio Imke’s horse?” and it turns out that he IS Imke’s horse and is owned by the Bartels and the owners of Imke’s Beijing Olympic partner Sunrise. Imke competed Floratio small tour in the fall and he is now developing his piaffe and passage. He is one of those horses that really holds your attention, both on the ground and while being ridden. He will really be a knock out in the show ring one day... At first, I was super blown away that she would allow me to ride him, then I felt quite honored about this whole pairing up, but then I started thinking about the way that I feel when someone is riding my horse. It’s never easy to watch someone ride a horse that you are training. Even if that rider is doing well, they are most likely doing things different than you would be. As that horses trainer, you begin compiling a list of things that you will want to correct during your next ride. Well, I was going to be the one riding him again tomorrow and the day after that… and the day after that… so I wanted to do my absolute best to keep Imke’s list as tiny as possible. The best way to keep your trainers list small is to do everything that they tell you to do. Sounds easy enough, right? If you just rolled your eyes at the thought of doing everything your trainer tells you, allow me to clarify what I mean. I know that everyone is somewhere on the long journey of learning… every… single… rider is, because we are all learning, every day. When I say do “everything”, I mean pay attention to everything. During a typical lesson, you should hear several different categories of instruction. Some instruction is given as an order, “Keep your hands steady.” Some instruction is given as a notification, “Did you feel his back just come up?”. Some instruction is given as a warning, “If you use the whip like that again, you are going to know exactly how firm the footing is today.” and some instruction is given as advice, “If the trot is not super in the corner, the half-pass coming out of that corner won’t be either.” For some reason, the first three are easy to absorb, because we can all keep our hands down, if your trainer tells you what it feels like when his back is up, memorize that feeling and now you know, and you will remember the whip thing… one way or another. At times, the advice that is casually given during lessons does not enter our brains in the same way, but remember that your trainer would not waste his/her time offering that suggestion if it wasn’t something worth listening to. When I am coaching, I will occasionally toss a soft suggestion to a rider when I feel that I am already asking a lot of them, but I notice a little something that needs to be mentioned. Maybe this suggestion is not super important now, but I would not have even mentioned it if it wasn’t important in some way. Imke does this a lot. During todays ride, we were working on steep, high quality half-passes in the canter. In the beginning, we really prepared the canter. Quick, honest response to the leg, good neck control and a solid balance. Once this is established, we started moving into the half-pass. Imke has many great suggestions for riding the half-pass, but she will occasionally quietly mention, “Ride your corners.” Now there are two ways that you can respond to that quiet little suggestion. Number one and the most popular is, “Yeah! Corners are important. I love good corners! Corners, corners, corners….” and you keep on riding your corners like you had been for the past thirty minutes. OR… you can really RIDE that next corner and try to see where you can squeeze out that little bit extra your trainer noticed that you needed. These little suggestions are just as important as the big ones, but in a different way. The big ones have to be done and preferably now. An order - “You need more bend.” Translation: Bend more now. A suggestion - “Corners are important.” Translation: Your corners probably aren’t absolutely horrible or she would have mentioned it, BUT they are not as good as they could be and if you don’t take advantage of really using the corners to improve what you are currently working on then you are wasting too many opportunities and all of those wasted opportunities will compile one day and start negatively impacting the way that your horse uses himself in other areas of the arena and that will negatively impact his balance, his straightness, the quality of his gaits and the expression of the movements… ok, so the point is that the small suggestions are worth listening to! Here are some of the little drops of wisdom from Imke…
I can't wait for tomorrows ride....
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