Sweet Seat!

Poor Greta has probably been horribly confused by my seat ever since I got her. The last two or three times I've rode her, though, I've realized that maybe my seat (among many other things to work on shared between Greta and I) might have something to do with improving the quality of our riding and I've tried working on it. Initially, I just tried to keep my legs straighter - lining up my heels with my butt with my shoulder blades with the back of my head, so I've been told - and fix my chair seat, but I didn't pay attention to the fact that my back was either too far back or slouched a bit.

After doing a daily browsing through YouTube last night at around 10:00 (I was tired of Neil Diamond and the Boston Pops, too family friendly haha, though I did watch a bit of the fireworks: oooooh, ahhhh!) I found Jane Savoie's YouTube channel. I wasn't totally shocked, for God's sake the Vatican has a YouTube - no pun intended - and so I was glad to see that a favorite rider of mine who I've yet to have been able to attend a clinic taught by her did in fact have a YouTube channel. Now, I don't have to go out and buy all of her books and videos. She has a YouTube channel.

Did I mention that she has a YouTube channel?

For curiousity's sake, I looked through the videos as I always do, to see if I could find something applicable to an extreme-novice-amatuer-beginner-newbie rider. I think I got the half-halt thing down, the leg yield I'm holding off on until I can actually sit right.... wait, a video on how to improve your seat! And then the Hallelujah choir sang and I spun around in my chair.... and then I proceeded to watch the video:



Good stuff, huh? Mrs. Savoie makes it so easy for my easily-distracted-and-confoozulled teenage mind to comprehend! Although, I thought it was kind of funny when she felt the need to explain to the rider what FYI was: the rider didn't ask by the way, and hopefully she should know by now...

But anyway, I tried the hand-behind-my-back exercise today to straighten my back. My legs seem to go back, my seat deepened, and my arms actually made that almost-90-degree-angle that both my instructors have always tried to get me to perfect (before I got Greta I took my initial dressage lessons on an Appendix gelding named Southern Slugger who was amazingly sweet, there's a video of he and I at my first show, which was his last before retirement and boy did he go out of showing with a bang! and I was initially taught dressage by his long-time owner and rider, who was totally awesome and gave me some very good foundations). Afterall, with long stick arms like mine, it shouldn't be too hard to get the position right and it definitely wouldn't be too hard for judges to notice if my arms were straighter than they were supposed to be!

So, in other words, the exercise seems to have helped significantly. And Greta seemed to get my aids a lot better. We still have a ways to go, and I need to continue this exercise even after I have gotten my seat correct, but I feel like we've gotten over one speedbump.