Re: Steady Shoulders-In

On Tue, 01 Apr 2008 13:32:10 -0500, Robin Ryan <robin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Aunt Nasty wrote:
On Sat, 01 Mar 2008 10:01:48 -0600, Robin Ryan <robin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I'm thinking I'll do a combo of 1st and 2nd. I just looked at 2nd level
test 1, for example, and the shoulder in is only 1/2 the long side. I
can handle that. I just can't reliably keep a steady angle the entire
long side at this time. I always come out of the corner lookin' good,
then either lose the angle or come in off the wall on the 2nd half of
the long side, and start over-correcting the poor guy (who dutifully
tries to figure out what the hell I'm asking him to do)...

If you practice allowing the outside flank of the horse to swing
outward and upward, in a slow rhythm, by letting your whole
leg lighten up and out all the way to the hip, you'll be able to
sustain the shoulders-in for as long as you wish.

The same tactic will also assist less-advanced horses to improve
on bending in general.

Thanks for this - I'm late replying cause just got back from vacation.

You're most welcome, of course. Hope you had a great vacation.

Can you elaborate on this, including use of all the aids (or lightening
of all aids)? I get the lightening part to "allow" (using Sue's words),
but having hard time visualizing this PLUS the other aids. Can you
describe, for example, how you would do the SI start-to-finish? Thanks!!

I'm so glad you've asked, and I share your appreciation for Sue's words.

All good riding is allowing. A rider can't "make" a horse do anything
that'd end up being ultimately graceful. A rider can "allow" a horse to
be as graceful as the horse's conformation and fitness permit, though.

The shoulders-in is one of the most important and fundamental of the
training exercises. Certain vital elements are essential to its development.
First, the rider must be able to relax the rhythm to a slower frequency: a
horse feels the rider's relatively more rapid respiration and heartbeat, and
will often attempt to hasten to match that out of inexperience or sheer
eagerness or excitement, and the rider should deliberately lag that until
the horse adopts a more natural timing. The horse must be free to lift
the toplines with the spine fully stretched, and the rider encourages this
by sitting straight up, not forward, and letting the horse lift the toplines
up freely through the accommodating seatbones positioned out in front
of, not beneath, the rider's spinal column. Next, the rider should be able
to use larger and freer following motions in the seatbones to lengthen the
strides, while letting the upper body stretch back somewhat. After that is
confirmed, the rider can merely bring the upper body slightly up toward
the front (without leaning forward), as if to attention, while letting the
seatbones move more upward and less forward, to collect or elevate the
horse's strides. The rider can then establish the ability to lengthen one side
of the horse while collecting the other side (without any rein use) which
generates very precise circles, with true "straightness on the circle" once the
rider's feel is consistent. The horse thus tracks around with the foreleg prints
within the prints of the hindlegs, as in straight lines, on the arc. The rider
doesn't twist in the upper body, as is sometimes implied, but the action of
lengthening the outside while elevating the inside will, however, involve a
greater range of forward motion in the rider's outside side and a lesser one in
the rider's inside side, almost as if the rider were rotating the upper body to
the inside, but without the stiffening inherent in the suggestion of such an
action. On the circle or in the bend around in a corner, the rider directs the
center of gravity (a few inches below the navel) to the side, at the angle
necessary to achieve the desired radius of the bend. The inside leg is straight
down just behind the girth, while the outside leg is stretched back an inch or
so at the hip, to give the horse's body room to swing outward while keeping
the hindquarters tucked in and under. Once the rider has the accuracy of the
circles confirmed, the circles can be spiraled outward without counterbending
by decreasing the inward angle to which the center of gravity is directed and
by allowing greater swing in the horse's body to the outside. That skill can
then be honed to generate straight lines tangential to the original circle with
the horse remaining bent but tracking straight with the hinds while crossing
over laterally with the fores, which is the modern competitive form of the
shoulders-in (some notable early practitioners of the maneuver did in fact
allow for the crossing of the hinds as well). The rider can practice positioning
the forehand anywhere relative to the hindquarters, from aligning the outside
lateral to tracking both fores inside the inside hind (though that's a good time
to have a skilled ground coach offering feedback, at least at first). It's important
to note that this is all attainable without use of the reins, and that overuse of the
reins is one of the most important complications to avoid. There is also no benefit
to any attempt to push the horse with the legs. In addition to being a physical
impossibility, that sort of gesture tends to produce the opposite of the action
necessary from the rider's center of gravity. What is done with the legs is to
moderate the inward swing of the barrel and augment the outward swing,
merely by accommodating those actions somewhat more or somewhat less.
The horse will readily interpret the freedom to lift the barrel outward as the
signal for the maneuver, as it is what must be done to give the inside hind
leg room to come under the horse's center of gravity anyway. The action
in the rider's seatbones can encourage the front legs to reach sideward to
the outside, too: the top of the horse's shoulderblade descends rearward
as the leg is lifted, so as the rider's seatbones go down and back with it,
they can also shift slightly to the inside, allowing the leg to go farther
to the outside.

When the rider allows augmentation of the barrel swing to the inside of the
bend rather than to the outside, in contrast, it will assist with the development
of the travers, renvers, and the half-pass.
.

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