Rainbows, not onions

Because of the busy adaptation schedule, I haven't had a dressage lesson from Shannon in a while.  After my lesson this week, I've decided that learning to ride is more like a rainbow than peeling an onion.  While the peeling an onion analogy works very well - there's always another layer under the layer you're at - also, I cry - I like my new rainbow analogy better.
It's like this:  pre-horses, I was dimly aware of a world that I wanted to be in that I knew existed but I had no idea of its scope.  Those first few rides were like the big bang - from nothing to everything all at once.  But since then, it has been a gradual process of going from close to dark, to dimly lit, to black and white, to shades of gray, to primary colors, to the basic rainbow, to the whole palette of nuanced colors that exists.  Why I like this analogy is that my progress is like this:  I'm in solid black and white world, and I'm happy there.  And then I have a lesson, and I see this amazing flash of brilliant blue, and I know there is more.  And then one day the blue stays a little longer in the sky, then a little longer, then I realize the sky is always blue, and there's a flash of green for the grass. 
Because what I've found is that wherever I'm at, I think that's the end.  And then I get these tantalizing hints - if I pay careful attention - that there's a whole other layer of complexity in the world that I wasn't aware of.  And each time I take one of those steps, I know I don't ever want to go back to the comfortable world of black and white because the world is so much richer the more color it gets.
My lesson with Shannon was like that.  I had a huge giant flash of magenta - I finally FELT the inside leg to outside hand.  It was only for a second - Shannon says three strides but I only really felt it on the final one - but there it was.  It was just that one moment, but now I know it is there and I'm not color-blind (like I was beginning to suspect I was).
We worked on a lot of new nuanced (to me) stuff.
My left hand likes to turn sideways (knuckles on top) and break at the wrist.
I keep my feet in the dressage stirrups in my jumping position (little toe on outside bar) - I need to work on my foot a bit deeper in the stirrup and even between the bars.
"Bend more" does not mean chin to chest.  It means in the corners, look at the inside eyelashes.  Every corner.  But then go straight on the straight lines in between.
Poll should be highest point.  This is so easy and yet I completely and utterly forgot about it.
Try riding with my stirrups a hole or two shorter since I am still struggling in the dressage saddle to get my heels down.
But also - this was a flash of azure - when I slump over and let my left arm drift forward is when Charlie goes on the forehand.  When I am jumping and have my hands planted in his neck, or I am riding with my hands in his neck because Shannon has told me to - or when I am sitting in a proper frame with my elbows bent and not stretching my arms long - this goes away, and suddenly we feel connected.  I haven't gotten a good enough grasp of this to fully explain it, but all of a sudden I saw and felt what I was doing wrong this whole time, fixed it, and felt the fix work.
Spiral in and out is a good exercise I have let slip because I have been doing Major Beale's.  Think about leg yielding.
In corners, push Charlie around like a wheelbarrow (this is tied to the flash of azure) - don't pull him around by the inside hand. 
There was probably a lot more than that, but my tiny brain got full.  I think I could add to the analogy that as you develop, you go from a tiny little palette to a bigger and bigger one.  Right now, it doesn't take much new paint for mine to get full and things to start leaking out my ears again.

Excellent pointers that were hard to hear

As I think I already posted, the big change from this year to last year was my ability to think while I was competing.  Not only could I recognize errors as they happened (but unfortunately, not really before they happened) but I could think about what to do about them - ones I have dealt with before, I could match to whatever John or Shannon told me, but new stuff I'm not as good at figuring out what to do (like the soft footing in the dressage test).
So the good news is that not only was I identifying the right stuff, but it was consistent with me, Shannon, John, the dressage test, and the videos.
The bad news is I had to recognize it myself, hear it from Shannon, John, read it on my score sheet, and watch it on the videos.
So at today's lesson, John went through the list of ways I can improve in the future, which is terribly, terribly useful, but since I'm already feeling like I bluffed my way and didn't deserve a ribbon at all, like a total wimpy baby I started to cry.
He had some excellent suggestions which will be "easy" (I just have to battle with my constant nemesis, time) to do at home:
1.  Make a dressage arena.  Mark it.  Practice my damn lines.  Look at the judge each time I am coming up the center line so the judge is looking at me.
2.  In my dressage arena, use a cone to mark the corners.  Ride a corner different (deeper) than a 20 meter circle.  Quit cheating myself of all that space and opportunity to ride the movement correctly as soon as I hit the letter, instead of still being angling over towards it.
3.  Heels down is not coming from my heels, but from my core.  Work on not riding in a defensive crouched up fetus posture and once I overpower my quads with my core, my heels will be able to go down.  But the hideousness of my pictures is because I don't have my weight sunk in my heels, so I don't have a stable base, so my hips come forward instead of that folding in half motion that good riders do.
4.  Quit trying to do new things at the show.  Know that I practiced and trust in it.  There are three things to do jumping:  look at the center line, ride Charlie forward, and use half halts to balance him.  Once I've got him forward, it is way easier to do a half halt and then just cruise to the fence.  We did some work on this during the lesson, and when it is right, it is soooo easy and fun.
5.  Ride the short end.  From M to C, counterbend to the outside.  At C straighten for a few strides, then counterbend again to F.  Do this a few times, then counterbend to M and then just ride to C.  This will work on the deepness in the corners.
6.  Also, practice riding all my transitions 2 meters early.  That way, in a show, I'll have tons of time and can do a half halt instead of always being late in my transitions.  Think AHEAD and be proactive instead of reactive.
John had some incredibly good insights into how I tick - kind of eerily.  Like that at shows I start to choke and overthink it, and when I'm nervous, my brain tries to take over instead of my body.  And that while almost all horse people are Type A, beating myself up for every failure is his job (and Shannon's) and it just makes me feel defeated before I even start instead of helping me improve.  I can trust that he and Shannon will pick out the things I need to work on and tell me - I don't need to keep trying to do this to myself.  This was huge.  It has never occurred to me that picking on myself doesn't make me any better, but just makes me feel bad.  I just thought, "I'll never get better if I don't pick apart everything I do" (in every single aspect of my life).
He also said the big step is recognizing when something isn't working, but that I need to try to figure it out and how to correct it on my own - that too much reliance on a trainer actually will make me know less.
Then we did some nice exercises outside, and after a warm up, he had me ride a little less than 5 minutes where he called out the fence and I rode it.  I had a few really good ones, but I got frazzled as the time went on, and he used that to show how if I psych myself out, by the time I get in the ring I'm frazzled instead of pumped up.  It's the same - the first few jumps Charlie might be kind of checking it out, and then when he realizes it's just little stuff, he goes on cruise control.
The other big part was that John recognizes that Charlie's tendency is either 0 (pukey, forehand) or full on (heavy in the hands), and that it's hard to get him in the middle - forward but light.  But when he is - holy cow the fences just float under us.
Also, John was talking about why he had some of the fences set up the way he does - like practicing a bendy line before Aspen, or an oxer after a hard corner.  It is kind of amazing all the things I have never been aware of and don't know about.  That was the point where I want to just ride every day with someone who knows what they're doing and make up for all this time I've wasted puttering around.
It's good to feel those good fences, to know that when I get it all lined up, they are wonderful, and it's just going to take a lot of practice before I can consistently get all the elements lined up.  It's also good to be working on something that is definitely more nuanced than last year - it's just that I had no idea how big the damn onion is when another layer comes off.
Oh, and I almost fell off.  I jumped a vertical at an angle, and wasn't looking where I was going early enough, so I planned to go right around a fence but never told Charlie, who planned to go left.  So he shot left while I was looking right, and I went up on his neck  on the right side but scrambled back into place and kept riding.  John said that means my heels aren't totally wacko because otherwise I would have shot right off, but I was being such a piss that I was like "well, if I was any good, I wouldn't have put us in that situation to begin with."
So - a lot of progress and a lot to work on.  It was easier a few years ago when I was so ignorant I thought I was already good.

Charlie Jumping - 2 XC & SJ

Charlie's Dressage Test

Charlie the Champ!

At NWEC this weekend, Charlie was, like usual, a champ.  I was fair to middling, but he dealt with all the details and helped us stay in 1st all three days.
The big take aways are the same things I've been working on in my lessons - bigger canter for show jumping, better use of my back for half halts instead of my hands, and get my heels out of his side.  That lesson was clear to me in all three phases, but the good news is I could feel a lot of improvement from last year.
And I was so proud of Charlie.  It was hot all three days, but particularly on Friday and Saturday and he just worked his heart out.  He loves cross country, and I love him.

How many times does it take for me to learn?

Today I watched Shannon ride Charlie, while she told me what she was doing.  This made a lot of things "click" for me - things she has told me when I'm riding that I think I understand, but then, once I really DO understand, I realize I didn't understand before.  (The bright side of this is at least I am now aware of the next level of things I don't really understand.  Last year at this time, I was blissfully ignorant of the whole world I'm riding in now, and I thought I was hot stuff until I (slowly) began to realize I didn't know jack.)

So the big, big take away is the very closely related issues of too much hand and not enough leg.  This sounds so simple:  don't brake with your hands (close your leg, use your hands as a "soft stop", and then use your back/core to halt or half-halt or do a down transition).  But even though I know this, I am still relying far too much on my hands, which means that it is hard for Charlie to collect because he doesn't know if my hand aid means "come on the bit, please" or "brake!".  It's also harder for me to ride him, because I don't have his "engine" going well enough from behind to drive him into the soft hand, which, when done properly, results in those floaty down transitions and the big, lifted movement.

Second big take away?  I don't work him hard enough.  The theme of this post is that I know all these things, I've written about all these things, and yet I'm STILL writing about all of these things.  Each time it's like a miracle that I figure it out, and a few weeks later, I've forgotten again.  So - it is REALLY useful for me to watch Shannon ride Charlie, especially when she explains what she is doing and why (e.g. Charlie is stiff in the jaw, so she is bending him to the right, left, overflexing, and then releasing) but then I think "no, it's a better use of time to have lessons" and I stop watching, and then I watch again and I'm all "this is genius, I should do this every week, it would help me advance so much!".

Shannon puts Charlie to work right away - even when she walks, she has him walk round and over his topline, not dragging around like a camp pony.  She has told me this, and I thought I was doing it, but I definitely have not been now that I see how she does it.

Third was the light going on about his left hind leg.  Seeing her ask him to move it, and how he barely moves it across but mostly forward (especially contrasted with his right hind), and how hard she had to ask before he started doing it, just made all kinds of sense looking at it from the ground.  No wonder leg yield to the right, shoulder-in to the right, and haunches-in to the left are hard!  He's barely moving that leg!

So I need to:  a)  work harder right away, b) STOP using my hands as brakes and use my legs instead, but c) don't squeeze - give the aid, and give a smack if he doesn't respond, d) then work on flexion and softness, and e) then that pesky left hind.  It's so close, and yet so far away ....
It makes me crazy how slow I am to put this stuff into place.  I think I get it, but then another layer peels off and I realize I was only seeing the tip of the iceberg.