A chilled Filly

Friday 27 December 2013

Outside leg isolations

Yesterday we had a nice but short hack out. I rode in the indoor school first playing with inside leg isolations (asking Filly to turn by bending around my inside leg) and then outside leg isolations.

In the inside leg isolation I place my leg where it naturally hangs down her side and ask her to bend her body around it. At halt this just brings her nose around (neutral lateral flexion without the rein), at walk because her body follow her nose it turns her towards the leg I'm using.

For outside leg isolations I place my leg forward of neutral. When exaggerating to teach this may be as far forward as on her shoulder itself. When pressure is applied there the leg I am touching should step over under her body. To get the opposite front leg to move over and step out away from her body I ask with the rein held out to the side. So the rule is "my left leg talks to her left front leg and my right hand held out to the side talks to her right front leg".

When asking her to turn on her haunches to the right she has to extend her right front leg out to the side then cross her left front leg over it, then her right leg etc. This makes the timing of the aids critical. Apply rein pressure, release when the associated leg moves then apply leg pressure, release when her leg moves, apply rein pressure etc. Difficult to describe when writing about it, even harder to time correctly ! To make sure she doesn't drift forwards with her hind legs I apply a little back pressure with the other hand from time to time to keep her weight back over her hind legs. The weight has to be there in anycase to free up the front legs to move.

To make a game out of it I place a cone in front of her and one behind her. The pattern is to turn her with just her front legs moving so that her nose goes from one cone to the other. Once she got the pattern she put real effort into turning, especially the last step or two.

This exercise is having lots of beneficial effects in other parts of her training. I can now push her over if she trys to turn to early during "follow the rail" for example. Her ridden sideways work is getting better as I can keep her shoulder in line.

What is more is it is great fun. Not to watch maybe but to ride it feels like a real conversation.

Initially of course she didn't understand what I was asking so we have done lots of groundwork to prepare her. One good exercise is to ask her to yield her forehand around her hind legs in a circle using porcupine pressure. For this I use one hand to apply pressure to her shoulder to ask that leg to move over, release, then apply pressure to the side of her head to ask the opposite leg to move over. Afterall it is this side of the head the she will feel the pressure from the bosal so it is a totally congruent exercise with the ridden work.

When ridden I started moving my leg way up onto her shoulder and pressing, if I got no response I tapped lightly with my toe, still no response I used coils of the 45 foot rope to tap where my leg was. None of this was hard, just rhythmical tapping to get the response. The coils were actually hitting my leg, not her. They just made the aid really obvious. And that is what it means to exaggerate to teach, not more pressure or more pain as some folks use, just working out a way to make the desired response more obvious.

No comments: