Gia - session 203 - A lesson with Suzin!

 I decided to double down with Gia, and talked to Suzin about taking lessons with her once a week, in addition to the lessons I have with Charlie once a week.  Luckily, she said "Yes"!  

So, Gia and I had a lesson with Suzin today.  She had me focus a lot on my position, and reminded me about things like keeping my feet flat in my stirrups, keeping my elbows in, keeping my shoulders down and back, feeling my seat bones, and loosening my thighs.

With Gia, she had us focus mainly on stretching down.  Our goal was (and is) to get a good downward stretch at the walk, and trot, and during transitions, and as we travel in figures around the arena.

Gia was quite relaxed, and even a little slow, but Suzin did not want me to worry about making her quicker right now.  It's better to allow her to be slow, and to relax.  I had to really concentrate on keeping my connection consistent with her as I asked her to stretch down and out.  It took her a while to get it at first, but once she understood what I was asking for, she was much more consistent with it.

Then we tried to get the same stretch at the trot.  She seemed to pick that up fairly quickly.  The harder part was to keep the stretch as we made the up and down transitions.  We did manage to get it a couple of times though.  We finished our ride by trying to do a figure 8 while keeping the stretch.  That was also a bit difficult, but we will definitely keep working on that!


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