Reflections of Germany - The Realisation That Riding IS HARD!!

My imaginitive way of packing up my room -
Loading my stuff outside my window to my
car that is parked right outside. Easy or
what! Oh and those are my breeches that
are still drying after washing them haha.

Today is the day that I leave Germany - sob! - so I must kiss goodbye the safety net of incredible German training and soak up my last ride on Seb under the helpful squawks of Leonie. After today, its all up to me.
Yesterday I did a post on my reflections of Germany, the personal part of growing up. Today I want to write about the riding side of it, and try to explain just how much my eyes were opened to the real world of riding.
I have been training with Leonie for three years already, in short bursts for weeks at a time throughout the years. I thought I pretty much knew what it was about and just got a good kick up the bum every time I went back to ride. However, staying for a few months is a completelt different ball game. I have found a whole new world of riding I had no idea existed! It's like a door with a big sign on it saying "Months of German Training and Hard Work" has been opened, and I have found myself in a position where I really can't imagine going back to how I was riding before.
It wasn't that I was doing anything wrong before, it's that I never rode positively enough or with a proper aim in mind to actually improve the horse. I thought because I had Seb, who is pretty much a been-there done-that horse, he would teach me the higher-level stuff and I would be fine. Ohhh how wrong I was! There is a hell of a lot that Seb struggles to do, and he needs me, his rider, to take lead and point him in the right direction to keep him on the tracks. He showed me to a degree what I was supposed to do with a talented horse like him in the early days, but that doesn't last forever. He needs to be kept in line and heading in the right direction in order to keep his respect for the rider.
The only way I could gain Seb's respect back was to ride harder than I ever imagined. Constant half-halting, legs on, seat in, engaging, bending, making him through in the ribcage, getting his hocks underneath him - Gosh by the end of every session I was just drenched in sweat! But that's what the real sport is all about. This is real riding. Once I said to Leonie "I find it hard when he drops behind my leg, it's hard to get him out of that hole" and she screamed "OF COURSE IT'S HARD!!! Riding IS hard Casey! But you have to get through that and not just accept what he gives you" and then I thought oh, okay, good point there. Note to self: Riding is hard.

The first month was bloody hard that's for sure. There was doubt in all of us whether Seb would come to the party, and whether I would stay sane. I did, obviously, but Leonie had to do the good trainer thing and talk me through my personal problems, like my need for perfection and fear of failing. That is something that I had to get over, and I think I'm doing pretty well at it now :) To ride at this intensity and under this pressure, your mind has to be all there with you. Some days I would have had something bad happen to me in relationships or stressed about some kind of situation, and I rode like a complete numpty at first but then worked myself out of it. Leonie would see it and ask me what was up at the end, and once said "bloody hell good on you for riding that well when all of that is going on in your head". Because that's what I need to make happen, for my riding time to be the time when everything gets pushed out of my mind, and only the horse and task at hand in my head. It takes practice, but I'll get there.
The biggest relief is to actually have a system in place now. Instead of jsut riding around trying to aesthetically make it look good and just do some shoulder-ins and half-passes, now I am making it good from the inside out. This means constantly leg-yielding down the wall, changing to traverse, then a shoulder-in, small circles, half-passes, all done with REALLY riding every stride and aiming for releasing the ribcage and getting the hind to step more under. In my half-passes I don't just sit there with the aids and go, because the horse won't always do it perfectly like that. He will evade in some way and disconnect. So now all the way across the half-pass I am constantly reconnecting, getting more shoulders, more quarters, making the neck straighter out of the shoulders, checking my outside aids are linked up and inside seat bone and leg is on for him to bend around and keep forward pushing. There are SO many elements that go into just a half-pass, and even before you get to the half-pass there is a lot that needs to be done along the wall to get the suppleness through the body.
And that's what it is all about - the suppleness through the body. I am constantly told to "work his back" or "work him behind" because every aid I apply must trigger a response behind the saddle first, and then the effect flows up into the bridle. The front end is only good and correct when the back end is working properly, so it has been good for my mind to do a complete turn-around into thinking of what's happening behind me first, and keeping a contact in front which allows the adjustments behind to flow through.
Now the task at hand is to remember all of this when I am back in England, and especially after a couple of weeks without riding now. I am heading off to Portugal next week for a little holiday with my dearest mother (who has just arrived in Germany to help drive me back - it is so good to see her again!) and then waiting for the horses to arrive in England between the 5th and 10th of September. Then it is back to work! I made a poster of everything I needed to remember though, so I hope it saves me from falling into a hole!