Surya and I will attend our first event in two weeks, and we (well, I) am excited! Our goal is to complete the event. Going for blue will come later. But, in the interest of fostering a future winning streak (ha), I am concentrating on preparing for the competition season. In our last lesson my trainer commented that in order to be truly competitive in dressage, we need to work on Surya’s consistency in the bridle and our transitions.
Transitions are important, blah blah, yeah yeah, we all know. Over the winter, we did a lot of walk-halt transitions to extend our warmup when it was cold and to encourage bending even before we started trot work. Our downward transitions have steadily improved from full-stop-on-the-forehand to moving forward into the bridle. In general, though, I have eschewed work on transitions in favor of work on the bit, suppling, and bending.
I have especially ignored upward transitions. My approach has been to expect Surya to get it over with as soon as possible. Namely, I ask for canter, you canter, or you get smacked/kicked/named Acting President of the You-Are-in-Deep-Shit Committee. Not surprisingly, this approach improved reaction time and minimized fights over forward motion. Also not surprisingly, Surya does not particularly enjoy upward transitions. Sometimes she will pin her ears and swish her tail before I remind her of her pending application to juvenile delinquency camp. When she does comply, whether from walk to trot or trot to canter, she wrinkles her nose, throws her head in the air, and lurches forward into the faster gait.
Shockingly, I also do not enjoy upward transitions. They are uncomfortable before, during, and immediately after. They are an unfortunate intermediary between what I was working on (such as trotting), and what I would like to be working on (such as cantering). But, it is time to add transitions to the list of things we are schooling.
The past three weeks, I have spent the first ten minutes of each ride doing sitting trot and canter without stirrups. I like the schedule quite a bit. It warms my legs up (fast!), and gives Surya a chance to putter around in a pony trot before I go back to posting and am capable on insisting on a “big girl trot.” The other upside is that my sitting trot is vastly improved. Don’t be too impressed. By vastly improved, I mean improved to the point where I have a decent chance of keeping my stirrups on my feet and keeping my butt connected to the saddle.
This means that if I concentrate very hard, I can sit in the saddle, keep my back straight, and ask for a transition to canter without leaning forward and throwing the reins away. However, I still have a tendency to wish the transition to be over as soon as possible. Grit my teeth, clench my fingers, squint my eyes. My whole body screams “I’m uncomfortable, just go!” Surya reflects my body language, I reflect hers, and we reflect each other in one tense unhappy bundle.
The solution is obvious. I need to ride through the transition, before, during and immediately after. I need to breathe and stay with the uncomfortable feelings. If I always insist on rushing, no matter how fast her reaction time, Surya will never learn balance in transition and will always lurch forward. If I only have good technique and position when things are predictable and smooth within one gait, what kind of rider am I? There is a difference between insisting on immediate reaction to my application of leg and insisting on transition to a higher gait no matter what kind of balance she is in. I need to bend her, squeeze her to contact with the bridle, then apply leg and ask for the transition. Only then should I end her world if she doesn’t respond.
It will hurt. I will want to close my eyes and wait for it to be over. But I need to be unafraid to breathe and feel. The pain is good. We are not really hurt. Surya and I just experience an explosion of feeling when moving up. Our natural reaction is to shrink from intensity. Instead, we need to embody full awareness, and meet the challenge with equal power. Instead of a transition from one kind of work to another, I want the transition to become a moment outside of gait. A full stop to the music, a pause, a breath, before resuming in greater color. I want to love transitions. I want to want to ride nothing but transitions. Because dance is call and response, transformation from one step to another.
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