oldie48
Well-Known Member
I've been having some lessons with an ex working pupil of Carl and allbeit at a much lower level that's what we have been doing. Rose finds it hard and I find it just exhausting, not just physically but mentally as my brain is just too slow to co-ordinate my responses but I have found it so useful and it's given me the basis of a warm up that seems to work (well usually). Good stuff!Phew. Just back from the clinic with Hayley Watson Greaves. Well worth the effort and the skive off work (in fairness I'm owed quite a bit of toil from last week)
I always find it a bit weird starting out with someone for a one-off lesson when you have regular training, it's less of an issue I think when you don't have a regular trainer but as we set of I was trying to think of what we should work on... I hate it if I'm teaching and the person says they don't know or don't mind, cos then YOU have to think up something when you don't really know them... but equally I feel like we have a clear way forward with some of the advanced "tricks" which just needs practice and I don't want to mess with it while it's not established.
Anyway. What came to me on the journey was that Kira finds learning the hard things easy, but the basics of staying forward and nice in the contact are always hanging by a thread, and it's those thing that make the difference between cruising round a test and it feeling very very hard indeed.
So I said all that to Hayley, and she seemed really happy to help us work on that. So the entire theme of the lesson was Stay In Front Of The Leg, Small Pink Horse
We did on and back in every guise imaginable. On the long sides, on circles, in collection, in extension, in straight lines, in lateral work, in piri canter, you name it. Kira is exhausted, we both got our bums kicked but it's exactly what we needed, no compromise, just make it happen. Good stuff
Too tired to open her eyes
