A forward walk and longs legs...

... neither of which come naturally for us. Had a great ride on Jay yesterday. The wind was crazy but it didn't bother him one bit. It was also sunny and in the 60s!! He was very lazy to start off... I think he would have rather been lazing in the sun, but as usual he worked right through it and in about 10 minutes of posting trot and some cantering in 2-point he was ready to go. Once we were warmed up, we worked on being through in the trot and canter. As long as I keep him forward and am quiet and steady with my hands, he moves into the contact so nicely. He knows his job still, proof that time off takes away fitness, not training. The hard part is not pushing it. When we are really on, I feel like I could ride all day. But the key at this point is to be correct in our work while increasing fitness (for both of us!). Good quality work is what's important... rides can increase in intensity to what we are used to as we go along. We worked on some baby leg yields at the posting trot, some sitting trot, and some sitting trot/canter transitions on a circle. Then came the walk... Now, I hate the walk. Because it's hard. Once Jay gets going, his trot and canter are lovely and forward. Walk, not so much. And it is certainly my fault, because I hate it and it's hard, so I don't work on it as much. Well if I think we are showing in Birmingham, that has to change. So our main problem is that the walk is not forward and therefore not through. I understand and know that the way to fix this is to work on forward, but for some reason my body doesn't listen to my brain and my hands end up doing all sorts of weird things, I hunch and my leg creeps up. It's lovely. So towards the end of our ride I concentrated on a nice forward, round walk. I thought about keeping my legs long and my hands steady. Sit up straight, shoulders back! hhmmm.. success! We had some nice moments as long as I was correct. My trainer (who I haven't ridden with since LI, but is in my head still everytime I ride), always told me that to know if your horse is on the aids, ask for some sort of transition, if you get it good, if not something was missing. Well after some shoulder in work at the walk, I asked for a trot. Apparently I asked to strong and he was ready to go, because we got a nice walk/canter transition. I realized immediately that I was uneven and giving him a strong outside leg, but I called it an overall success. It was my mistake, not his and by getting such a nice transition and forward energy, that tells me we were at least on the right track with our walk. After that we did a bit of walk/sitting trot transitions before calling it a day. Probably won't be able to ride today, we have a wind advisory with gusts up to 50 mph. Not my favorite riding weather. In other news, I found a barn in Birmingham a few weeks ago! It seems perfect and I will blog about it soon!