Time - well over time - for a new post!
I have been gadding around America teaching clinics, and have seen a number of long term pupils who have over-used the 'slingshot' idea. Any good idea when taken to the extreme can become a bad idea, just as any cake cannot be successfully baked when one ingredient is out of proportion with the others. My plan was to write about the antidote for the slingshot, but I think I need to save that for another post and start by explaining how the slingshot works.
When a rider needs to move further back in the saddle, we usually suggest that she thinks of her thighs like the elastic in a slingshot, imagining that her knees are at the ends of the stick that would form the 'Y' of the slingshot, and that her pelvis is the stone. When the thigh muscles elongate and come under tension they form a longer, narrower 'V', just as the elastic does when you pull out a slingshot. The knees and the seat bones move further apart through being pulled in opposite directions.
The easiest way to access this is to put the heels of both hands on the pommel, and to make a sustained push back off them. The trick is to do this with your seat bones continuing to point straight down, so that they slide back over the flesh of your backside and do not point forward or back in a way that makes you round or hollow backed.
I am of course assuming that you are in 'neutral spine' with your seat bones pointing straight down as you begin this, which is a big assumption, given how many riders either lean forward or lean back, often whilst also either rounding or hollowing their back! Sitting in vertical and neutral cannot be taken for granted, and once there you might still find that your first response to the slingshot idea is to lift your seat bones within your backside, or to point them somewhere other than down. If you can, halt your horse sideways on to a mirror so you can check that you remain vertical and neutral as you push off your hands.
If you are sitting reading this with a table in front of you, try finding neutral and pushing back off the edge of the table. Experiment until you can feel your seat bones move back over your flesh and your front firm up. This should make your torso feel stronger.
As your seat bones slide back you are bringing your whole torso and your centre of gravity back. This may become necessary on a horse who delights in pulling the rug out backwards from under your feet. He is the lethargic or even nappy type, who attempts to get you 'in front of him'. You can then find yourself sweating away to no avail, as you are no longer in the place where your aids have meaning. You can kick and flail about all you want, but he will take no notice of you until your centre of gravity moves back over his.
Is it difficult, but very effective, to 'slingshot back' instead, using your energy to keep yourself still and firm, with narrow elongated thighs. If you then kick from that further-back-place you will find the 'go' button, as your aids suddenly work. On this kind of horse, you are unlikely to overdo the slingshot - in fact it is far more likely that you will not some far enough back, and that feeling weird will stop you from making an adjustment that is as extreme as the situation
demands.
This may sound paradoxical, but on easier horses, the idea of the slingshot can also help you move the horse's centre of gravity back. As your thighs elongate back and your torso moves back, you need to think of the horse's insides moving back within him (as opposed to you moving back relative to him). Some of the riders who have been doing this for a while are the ones who have reached overkill. They needed to change tactics and find a way to draw the back of the horse towards the front of the horse. But more of that in the next post!

Oh my, I have just seen that I last wrote this blog in August 2010. I knew I was behind with it, but had no idea it was that long. Oh well..... thank you those of you who commented on how helpful it was (breathing well never goes amiss!) and thanks for your patience, those of you who follow these posts.
Fortunately it is quite recently that Tavia has responded, telling me that a chiropractor has pointed out how distorted her spine and pelvis are. She is sure that this explains her inability to turn her horse left, and wondours if she should give up riding until the treatment - which apparently will take some time - is complete. She asks my advice.
This is a difficult one. The bottom line is that none of us are symmetrical, and we all do the best we can with what we've got. Sometimes I do suggest that people would be better to spend their money on bodywork than riding lessons or training, but I rarely suggest that they don't ride. However, I have known riders driven to tears of despair and frustration by their asymmetry, very upset by the way they feel they are torturing their horses, and tempted to give up riding because of it!
I think I have solved my own asymmetry to a pretty large extent, forging a path that few if any riders have previously trodden. This has been a thirty year saga, but it has yielded knowledge that makes it progressively faster and easier for the pupils who join us. But realise that we are all like the goldfish who would never discover water - we are so deeply ingrained in our asymmetry, and it plays a massive role in patterning how we walk, breathe, drive, and even lie in bed. To step outside it (whether it is based on a significant injury or just on the habits of a lifetime) is inevitably a challenging, demanding process. And because of the goldfish effect, it cannot be done alone.
Realise that the chiropractic treatment will not make you perfect. I think some body workers make the mistake of thinking that all they have to do is to treat a rider and a horse and 'Viola!' they will ascend into a symmetrical Heaven! It is not like that - new neurological pathways are needed to make muscles fire in a whole new pattern. They have to be learnt, and this has to happen against the pull of the old pattern. Only when the new pathways work well can the muscles themselves change significantly.
With or without our help, you will probably spend many years working out how to turn left. The answer can only reveal itself in layers: each one makes a significant difference, and can make you think that you have 'got it!'. But in reality it is only one small step on a long journey. After the elation you will soon realise this, as the next layer of the problem reveals itself (again and again!). You cannot go straight from A to X and neither can your horse - especially if you both have a history of riding during which he has patterned his body around your asymmetry!
So Tavia: read the chapters on steering in the 'Clinic' book and if you can, get some biomechanics based coaching to help you as the bodywork progresses. You almost certainly have a significant rotation left if you cannot turn that way. Work with it too as you drive your car: can you weight each seat bone evenly? Can you stop your upper body from creasing on the side as you go around bends and roundabouts? This is far harder than you think, and a good test of progress. Exercises on a gymball will also help.
Whatever you do, realise that it is about enjoying the journey instead of longing to arrive. Each new insight can give you so much satisfaction, and make your horse's life easier too. Savour them, but at the same time, be ready for the long haul.
Good luck,
Mary

Let's continue with the theme of breathing.
The following might seem a highly unlikely scenario, since we are talking about a rider and horse who were, at the time, about to make their debut at Grand Prix Dressage. Two years later they were placed in competition in Germany, beating some very big names. But one of my best breathing lessons ever was with Heather Blitz and her horse Otto, who was sold on soon after that German success.
Otto was a tense type, who was pretty unruly when he was first given to Heather to prepare for sale. She really liked him, however, and soon realised his potential, so she set about finding a buyer who would let her train and compete him. Despite her enthusiasm, she has described to me one occasion when his head went up so high that she could see his nostrils! Whilst this was a one-off, he always kept a 'veneer' between himself and his rider, as a way of reducing the rider's influence.
Many horses do this, and it can give them a look that I describe as 'brittle'. A rider can look 'brittle' too - she might or might not sense herself like a china doll that might break, but she can certainly have that look. Seeing this 'brittle' look in either partner immediately makes me question how much breathing is really happening, and I know that changing this can be the turning point that changes everything else.
When the rider does not breathe well, the horse is unlikely to. Even when the rider does breathe well, she may need to use the power of thought to transfer this to the horse. So we like to think of 'breathing down into the pony' . I say 'pony' as we so often teach this to children, but its usefulness spans a spectrum from their first few lessons on our school ponies to top class riders on their Grand Prix horses!
So in breathing down into Otto, Heather thought of her breath infusing both her body and his. It can work well to think of it as a colour. It probably took 20 minutes to begin to really change him - he lost the look of a 'cat on hot bricks', and he also lost his veneer. His muscle quality changed as his movement changed, and it was a turning point in his training. He had finally let Heather in - and perhaps he had finally let go and breathed deeply, in a way he had never done whilst ridden.
I am sure there are sceptics out there thinking 'yeah right', but the power of this kind of thought is incredible. The rider firstly needs good breathing skills herself (which of course Heather had), and then that additional focus. It can work wondours. Try it.

It's time for a change of topic, and I am going to go for breathing. Breathing whilst bearing down is a cornerstone of riding skills, and hard for almost everyone. Take a few breaths and notice, do your ribs lift at the front? If they do, and if an in-breath makes you taller, you are breathing into your upper chest. This is not a great breathing strategy for life as well as riding. It means that you are likely to be a hollow backed, both on and off horse. Your attempts to fix this will be frustrating, because every inbreath lifts you into that posture.
When you inflate the lower part of the lungs you have a much more efficient breathing strategy, which goes with a much more viable posture. Your lower ribs are allowed to expand outwards, making a bigger diameter and a bigger circumference to the 'circle' of the rib cage, but they are not allowed to lift up.
Anatomically, your diaphragm is like the cap of a mushroom, with its edges connected to your lower ribs. It keeps your lungs separate from your guts, and on an inbreath it is pulled down, making room for the lungs to expand into.
Imagine that someone has bought a big pile of loose shavings, covered them with a big tarpaulin, and put tyres on the edges to hold it down. If the wind gets in under the tarp it billows up. This is like upper chest breathing. Imagine deep sobbing, which is the extreme of this strategy. In diaphragmatic breathing, it is as if there is a suction pump at the bottom of the pile of shavings that sucks the tarp down on the inbreath. This will make your lower ribs expand but not lift.
So imagine this within your body, and maybe put your hands around your ribs, feeling them expand without lifting, and think of the suction happening from low down in your abdomen.
At first, this can feel difficult and stressful, and after a few breaths you will probably be longing to gasp, and lift your ribs. Do this if you must, but come back to the new pattern. Practice whilst driving your car - for you need to master this way of breathing, making it how you breathe all the time, not just when you are riding. I guarantee that you will not breathe one way 23 hours a day, and get on your horse for hour 24 and breathe differently.
In time, breathing 'down' rather than 'up' will leave you taking deeper, slower breaths, and you will supply much more oxygen to your muscles. This will increase your endurance, and perhaps even lengthen your life! It will certainly improve your riding, and it will encourage your horse to breathe too, for he may well take his cue from you. Like people, some horses are naturally much better 'breathers' than others, and good work can change their breathing pattern. When the horse begins to breathe diaphragmatically he usually begins to snort, and this is a sign that his body is releasing in a really good way.

I'm sorry, it seems ages since I have 'blogged' - blame lots of travelling and teaching, with a huge backlog of tasks that needed doing at home. But the last few months have been a very productive time in terms of some new skills and understandings that are enhancing both my riding and teaching.
My last series of blogs have been about the challenges of riding lazy and whizzy horses. Maybe I can bring those two strands together through the following analogy.
Imagine two people standing opposite each other playing a game of catch with a tennis ball. This is a co-operative game - neither person is trying to catch the other one out - and each throws the ball so that it bounces once, giving a reliable rhythm of bounce, catch, bounce, catch, bounce, catch....
Then imagine that one partner secretly substitutes a more bouncy ball, which would speed up the rhythm of the game, and make it much more precarious!
Also imagine that one of them secretly substitutes a bean bag! That is the end of the game.
Our 'bounce, catch' analogy illustrates the energy exchange between horse and rider in rising trot, and we want this to work as if each one were throwing the other a tennis ball. But the lazy horse might want to throw bean bags, which deaden the bounce in the game, making it 'wind down'. Many draft crosses are of this type. The rider might also tend to throw bean bags, and one of my pupils once nicknamed herself 'bean bag butt' (I would not have said this - it's too cruel!) But it was certainly true that every horse she rode tended to 'give up the ghost'. She was a low tone rider, and her body naturally had a 'bean bag' quality that she had to work very hard to change, holding her muscles much more firmly than their natural level of tone.
Many riders throw the horse a bean bag when they want him to go more - they land heavier, dig their seat into his back, and expect this to make him go forward. But they have deadened his bounce, with the inevitable result that he will go less If the horse is a 'bean bag' type, the rider has to keep throwing him tennis balls, and not get seduced into throwing bean bags back at him. If she does this, he will inevitably loose impulsion.
It is not easy to keep 'tennis ball' quality in your body when paired with a 'bean bag' horse! His hind legs have to 'ping' off the ground more than he wants them too, and he has less recoil energy in his tendons and ligaments than, say, a thoroughbred. The tempo has to stay faster than he would choose, and you may need to learn to give leg aids in the way I have described in previous posts. If you nag and shove you are doomed.
You also have to be able to diagnose the moment when his bounce descreases. Most riders 'wake up' then both they are the horse are well into the process of 'winding down' - and by then, it is a huge big deal to re-find 'tennis ball' impulsion. Prevention works far better than cure!
In contrast, thoroughbreds might well want to throw you a bouncier ball than you want them too, increasing both the speed and the force of their 'throws'. Your job is then to slow the tempo, keeping their hind legs on the ground for a little longer than they want them there, especially with the proverbial 'cat on hot bricks' kind of horse. This is the only way that you can regain control of the speed of the 'throws' and the force of the 'throws'.
I wish I had understood this better years ago, as the wonderful thoroughbred horse pictured on the cover of the 'Essentials' book would con me by speeding up the game, and I would match her thrust-for-thrust, only to have her try and speed it up more. It was as if she was saying 'any way you can thrust I can thrust better/faster/harder...' (she was a wonderfully exuberant soul, and loved to run away with people in medium trot!) It was a long time before I realised that my job was not to match her but to slow her. I had to become extremely pro-active to make pauses at the top of the rise and the bottom of the sit that were effective enough to slow down her legs. I had to develop good enough 'chewing gum string rise', and to keep a reliable 'windscreen wiper rise', before I could maintain my ideal amount and speed of thrust. (See previous posts for an explanation of these analogies.)
The tennis ball analogy is a lovely way to talk about the energy exchange between horse and rider. We as riders have the task of creating 'tennis ball energy' in our bodies - and some of us are more bean-bag-like, while others are more bouncy-ball-like. Our horses too have different energetic qualities, and we are (we hope) training them to become more tennis-ball-like.
Next time you ride, think about tennis ball energy exchange, and see if you can diagnose yourself and your horse, bringing you both to the more ideal game of throwing tennis balls!

One of the responses to my last post asked, 'How does counting 'te-tum, te-tum, te-tum' in rhythm with the horse's front legs slow down the canter? This is a good question, and the answer is that I really don't know, except that it really demonstrates the phenominal power of attention, and it works every time!
Just being aware of the tempo and tuning yourself into it slows it down, and increases the chances that as you begin the canter, you can 'take the horse' instead of having him 'take you'.
This difference is so critical. When 'the horse takes you' he is in charge of the speed of his legs, and the rider is often reduced to 'pull and pray'. She looses the ability to 'bear down' with her abdominal muscles, and to match the force of his movement in every stride. She becomes the waterskier to his motor boat.
I watched a lesson a short time ago in which the coach was working with someone in canter saying things that were totally irrelevant, because with the horse 'taking the rider', only this situation could be addressed effectively. No other change was available to the rider, as the horse and the situation made her so powerless. The rider needed to be told 'bear down', and the lesson needed to be set up so that she had at least some chance of taking the horse - otherwise she was doomed. Counting 'te-tum, te-tum' would have been the best way to turn this around.
When you 'take the horse', you have changed the rules of the game, so that the horse is dancing to your tune, in your way, at your speed. This is a watershed of a difference, that makes so much possible. You can bear down, and you can give your hand forward. But to make it work, you must begin counting from the very first stride, miss that one and it may or may not work. Try it, and prove its effectiveness to yourself!

Right then, those canter transitions. I confess to often messing up the first few of the day, and many riders do not ride these well, largely because they don't believe the transition will happen, so they over-do their aids.
A common strategy is to 'kick start' the horse into canter by leaning back and shoving with your backside. This means that you end up in waterski position as you 'push' the horse into 'motorboat'. He might just trot faster, or he might canter, but either way you have put your centre of gravity behind his, and will pay the price for this as he races off with you. The more you lean back, the more he speeds off. This is like a rug being pulled out from under your feet. It would slide away from you ever faster as you leant back.
Think of trot like the smooth surface of the ocean. The first canter stride is like a tsunami wave that arises out of it, swelling up and coming back down ready for the next wave or stride. Your aim is to go up with the wave, and come down with the wave, staying vertical throughout. If you fall off the back of the wave (either on the way up or at the top), you are unlikely to get canter, and if you do, you may well loose it after one stride. Many riders who lean back and 'kick start' the horse fall off the back of the wave. A smaller proportion of riders get 'in front of' the wave, and staying on exactly the right balance point is no mean achievement.
Realise that each successive canter stride is like another tsunami wave that you have to stay with.
The canter aid comes from the inside seat bone as much or more than it comes from the lower legs. The front inside shoulder of the horse lifts into canter, almost like taking off for a jump, and your inside seat bone lifts with it. In fact, lifting this seat bone can cue the horse to lift his shoulder, as if he were stuck to your underside. To make this work you have to be well anchored over the outside seat bone. (If all your weight is on the inside one, you can't move it!)
If you have trouble doing this, and/or you have trouble getting the right lead, think of looking over your outside shoulder. This is good advice at any time, as it makes your torso face to the outside, putting your inside hip and shoulder ahead of your outside hip and shoulder. This goes with 'inside leg on the girth, outside leg behind the girth', which you have probably heard
before.
Canter is the four legged equivalent of skipping, and you (like the horse) could skip on either lead. If he has both inside legs in advance of his outside legs you must match him, by putting your inside seat bone and torso ahead of of your outside seat bone and torso.
This also means that facing your body to the inside (and reversing your seat bone position) would invite the wrong lead - especially if you also pulled on the the inside rein and made the horse 'jack-knife'. He would then fall on his outside shoulder as this is the only one that free to move. Result: you are on the wrong lead.
Think of keeping your outside rein and giving your inside hand during the transition. This is a good policy because it helps you not to pull, and not to face to the inside. The horse's inside shoulder is free, and the horse who feels that the hand brake is off will make a much neater job of the transition than the one who feels constrained.
At the same time, the more you can demote the transition inside your head and make it no big deal, the more likely it is to go well. Keep aiming to keep your body lined up, and make this a higher priority than getting canter at any cost.
Good luck!