Winter Work

The fall/beginning of winter, for me, is a good time to focus on skills I want to improve. I often try and pick something I want to focus on that I need to fix. This may be a flaw in my position or something I need to improve in one of my horses. Often there are many things I am always working on, but I have one thing I really put most of my focus into.

After looking at lots of pictures of me doing dressage the thing that bothers me the most is that my elbows are often slightly out. This sort of ruins the pictures for me, I don't often buy pictures of me doing dressage. This is unfortunate because I really love dressage (not as much as jumping obviously haha). Last year I was focusing on keeping my upper body tall, I always had my shoulders forward. Now I need to work on those elbows.

When I am working on something like this I really enjoy riding alone. This allows me to experiment and play with what I am doing and how I am doing it. I don't have to worry that I am doing something wrong or don't look perfect, I can just really concentrate on what I am doing and how it feels. The horses are just coming back into real work so it is a good time to focus on myself. In doing this I realized that something an instructor had been saying to me I had misinterpreted. I was often told, elbows on your sides. I thought this meant my elbows were too far forward and I needed to bring them back to my sides. This would then make me lengthen my reins, then to take up the slack I would stick my elbows out. Now I realize she has meant bring my elbows in from side to side, not front to back. It all makes sense now!

Another problem I have is my reins are often too long (hence the elbows out!). I'm not sure which came first the elbows of the reins, but I have been told to shorten my reins a ton and that hasn't worked for me so elbows it is! While I am bringing my elbows in and actually a little forward, I am having shorter reins and a better connection with the horse. When I do this I can sit up even taller and I feel like I am able to ride more from my center.

Theses elbows out seem to have created all kinds of other problems because while I have been working on it I also realized I think this is part of why I don't release enough when jumping.  My elbows are out so my reins are too long and that means to give a big release I would have to throw my hands up the neck. If my reins are shorter, my elbows are more in front of me then the release is more natural and not such a big move!

So when I am riding I am thinking of letting my elbows brush my sides just in front my my torso. It is feeling less and less weird but I am still at the point where I constantly need to think of it. It has not yet become something I just naturally do. I know it will take awhile but now is the time to fix it and I am lucky to have so many horses to practice on, so I hope to have it corrected sooner rather than later.

I have to say I am pretty excited about all the things I am discovering while I am working on this. I feel like if i can fix this problem a lot of other things will fall into place. Yay for good winter work!