Almost half way through the month already, I know but I need to get better about the planning bit of ST. I’ve been messing about in a very unfocused way for the last three months or so due to him moving and it being super busy but things are beginning to be less stressful so I’d like to make some clearer progress!

So the aim for October will be to resubmit my longeing touchstone. At the moment his schedule looks a bit like this:
Monday: ST
Tuesday: polework
Wednesday: hack or ridden schooling
Thursday: ST
Friday: day off
Saturday: ST
Sunday: hack

I’m trying not to school too much as it confuses the straightness training work a bit I think but the polework is useful to try build up some cardio fitness that the ST doesn’t really help with. I’m hoping we can get our hacking confidence up enough soon to go out on our own. I don’t think it will take long!

My ST plan for each session is:
– standstill exercises: concentrate on keeping him off his shoulders, and getting him a bit more willing
– LFS on a small circle: focus on getting him out of ‘zimmer frame mode’ and moving a bit more forward
– LFS on a straight line: focus on getting him out of ‘zimmer fram mode’ and moving forward but without the push, particularly on the left rein
– LFS on the small circle, then moving onto a larger circle: focus on keeping the balance and rhythm, with him moving away from me and not me moving away from him
– stopping on a circle: encouraging him to keep him head down in LFS when stopping, not adopting an immediate giraffe stance.

That’s quite a lot now I write it down!!!

I’m trying to take a bit of a review of where we are at the moment and it’s a challenge. I took some video earlier to help me see and it’s probably not great on YouTube but here it is!

My main feelings are:
– I’m confused about whether he’s still left bended. I think he’s more even than he was, and he is getting his weight a little further back. I feel like he’s less ‘in his shoulders’ than when we started but I’m no 100% clear.
– I’m finding him very pushy on the left rein, especially in the haunches-in.
– I’m not sure if the shoulder-in is going the right way!

By way of one comparison: top is December last year and bottom is today

I don’t think his muscle has changed much but he’s less on his shoulders.

Haunches-in is tricky, isn’t it? We’re getting there I think, but it’s a challenge!

We’re still working towards our first touchstone, here’s where we are in March:

Here we are in January, after about 3 months. We’ve started on the Mastery course now.

As part of the mastery material we have to complete an asymmetry report. I did this for Dino on 20 December and you can see it below:

asymmetry-report-december-2015

I really struggled with this!! I don’t yet have my eye in to understand what I’m seeing. I’m hoping to repeat this at some point later on and see what’s changed.

We’ve been doing very basic ST stuff for about a month. This is what it looks like now:

We’ve just signed up for the Home Study Course. This is some video of us just starting out: