This week has been a great week for training. I feel like I have had a mental break through with my riding. Not a huge one but little things that have added up. Jan has been really helpful giving little bits of advice about riding tempi’s and pirouettes.
Every rider kinda panics when it comes to test riding or all of a sudden having to put a line of tempi’s together… any movement. I tend to over think the tempi’s and focus to much, “Ok, gotta make the next change” and over ride it too much and become stiff in the body. When I’m schooling I ride everything to perfection and I’m sure I am not the only one that feels this. Today in an early morning training session before Jan left for England to go to the World Championships to coach Minne Telde he stopped and said, “Alex, don’t think about the next change or think about turning in the pirouette. Just focus on riding the first change because if that one is set up then the rest will come. Same goes for the pirouette just collect and there is no rush for the turn. Just do it slowly and keep half halting.” This made a lot of sense to me. Instead of thinking about everything and how to prepare it I just rode it. My motto from now on is “Just ride it”.
Friday night Jan’s wife had a big party for her law firm from Denmark. There were several games organized for during the day and ponies from down the road came which drove all the stallions mental. The event was fully catered and more than 30 people stayed the night. At night fall, Tullstorp became a “night club”, a full on party scene. It was pretty entertaining to see all these lawyers come crawling out in the morning. All I can say is “Who says Lawyers are stiff?”
