Training in the Relaxation

Posted Thu, 01/26/2012 - 12:04 by Sadie  Sadie

 I have been trying to write this post for the last two days!
 
I bought the box set of the Mastery DVDs and one of the first lessons that was shown was 'Relaxation through partial disengagement'. Relaxation is something that jack has a problem with when in a faster gait and since we are working towards our freestyle level 3 we need to be doing more in canter.
 
So on monday i tried partial disengagement. At the walk went ok so i decided to move onto the trot...we were there a while! I wanted to stop on a positive so that jack would understand what i was asking him to do. Well it took a couple of hours of working through different variations of the exercise but finally jack started to blow out and after a couple of releases and bending him again he slowed down his walk for a couple of strides so i stopped there.
 
i felt a bit deflated monday night, it had taken so long and we had only made progress in the walk. but its darkest before the dawn so i tried again on tuesday...
 
and what a differance!! our session lasted about 10 minutes and jack had a lovely relaxed walk with is head lowered and he really strided out. it was fantastic! i decided to have a try in the trot, he was way more relaxed but still a little fast so i had to bend him a couple of times but as soon as i got a couple of strides of a really relaxed trot we stopped and i got off. jack had a big lick and a chew which was great!
 
we did the same yesterday and the session was even shorter! today im going to see if he can hold the relaxation for a few more strides :)