Gia - session 1030

 I worked with Gia yesterday on her flatwork.  We did a lot of work on her impulsion before we could work on her straightness, but we also had to work on her impulsion a lot throughout the ride.  She can be deceptively "forward".  She seems "fast", especially because she is big and covering a lot of ground.  However, speed and ground cover don't always mean that the horse is actually forward, or one of the other many terms you may have heard used - "in front of the leg", "having impulsion", "having activity", etc. 

A horse with impulsion is a horse with ENERGY.  That energy is created by your leg, and/or whip, spurs, etc, or the horse might have it's own natural energy.  But what is the difference between impulsion and speed?  My logical brain, likes to go to the scientific side of things to help explain.  Impulsion explained scientifically, would be called kinetic energy, and the formula for that would be:


The scientific formula for speed is:

So, impulsion and speed are not at all the same. 

First, you have to create the impulsion, or energy, and then you can figure out what speed you want.  But as you are creating that impulsion, especially if it's on a horse that's lazy like my last competition horse Butch, or huge like Gia, it might feel like you are going too fast (speed).  Don't be afraid to let that happen.  Worst case, you can always slow them down.

So, back to yesterday - whenever I felt that I had the impulsion (energy), we worked on straightness and transitions, at the medium walk, free walk and working trot mostly, but we did a little at the canter as well.

Feel free to leave questions in the comments if you want to learn more.  I'm happy to answer them!

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