Awareness
Recently I watched a professional friend school a lovely
home-bred pony. With several years of careful and methodical
training, the pony's flat work and jumping skills were coming
along handsomely. Frustratingly, he was also stuck with not
being able to make clean and proper “flying lead changes.”
An answer was found by seeking help from a more elite professional,
who watched them working from the ground. Rather than choosing
to drill the lead changes, they instead spent an hour or so
just re-building a subtly more balanced foundation --- but
only at a careful walk and trot. By the time they carefully
adjusted those changes in body language, there was only about
20 minutes of actual physical "work." Suddenly there
was a soft and natural elevation at the trot that was so exquisite,
any further work --- even at the lowest level of canter work---
would have destroyed this new moment.
By understanding it was time to quit, and not pushing the
pony past his trot work, they instead created lovely moments
of relaxed suspension. This can be grown further, while working
at home. By confirming the moves, those same quiet physical
skills will become natural. This in turn will eventually achieve
the faster-paced "flying lead changes" that had
been originally sought.
This pony will now be able to come back into his canter work,
quietly and lithely adding natural elevation --- thereby allowing
"the moment" of suspension to occur. During "the
moment," he will be able to make easy, comfortable, and
automatic changes, instead of physically struggling his way
into them. It was a nice lesson for everyone to learn.
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