When worlds collide

So what are the odds my jump coach and my dressage coach would choose to focus on the same muscle group on the same week? Past experience would say almost unheard-of. Logic would say pretty likely. Given that all involved are very aware of what said horse needs work on most so logical next steps are the same for both disciplines. But still, it doesn’t happen very often.

So Tues we had a dressage lesson. Absolutely brutal. And by that I mean incredibly amazing, but pony was *zonked* the next day, and *I* was feeling it the day after (that doesn’t happen often! Mental note, skipping pilates for dressage kinda defeats the purpose of skipping pilates). Anyways fast-forward to Friday and superpony is sound and energetic and happy, but clearly still very stiff in areas we worked on Tues. And what does coach set up? Exercise to do just that, over fences *sigh*.

Suffice to say it was not one of our more successful lessons. Superpony was still amazing (the jumps are never the issue anymore and these were tiny) but she had real issues where none were expected on the flat. Didn’t feel I could say “ummm this is cause she’s just too tired to do this” so I think we’ll just have a miraculous improvement for next week :)

On the plus side, the first exercise we did involved being able to accurately land on whichever lead was requested off of whichever lead we took off on. I know my coach expected this to be the challenging part of the day for the pony who less than a year ago literally couldn’t turn right. And less than two months ago would have a temper tantrum if you tried to canter right. But she did it flawlessly. I was super proud of her :) We nailed every single lead. (German school of riding folks, once isn’t gonna cut it. I used to go w/ the “once is luck, twice is a fluke, three times means you know it” theory, but I think my current coaches are working off more like 10 :) However that meant we moved to the more difficult exercise, which was the whole “muscles that are still exhausted from Tues” issue (think jumping off a 8-10m canter circle) and that just did not go over well *sigh* Ah well, like I said, next week it’ll seem like a HUGE improvement *g*

oh and as a side note... dressage coach sticked the pony, who we always knew was not a pony but who barely reached 15hh when I got her, she's now a HUGE 15.2hh!!! Woohoo :) hahaha moving up in the world. Unfortunately I'm reasonably certain she's stopped growing, but that's ok -- tis a really good me hight :) And since I'm not trying to sell her at the moment, that's all that matters *g*