Shoulder Issues

Rain was in the forcast today and I had an appointment with the eye doctor at 10 AM.  Dr T's operation is a well oiled machine and I was out by 10:30.   No rain yet - so I headed to Mallory's Paradise to get a ride in on Sister before the rain came in.  Amazingly, I had all  my riding gear in my Honda Farm Truck.

After a brief lounging session, we started working on trot and bend in the round pen.  Since left bend is difficult, that is what we focused on.  When going to the left, I really struggled to keep my weight even.  Sister seems to be right sided and so do I.  So, I tried to keep my left leg on at the girth and I was inconsistant - so Sister was too.  Leg-yield right was the correction I could get after not getting bend.  So C suggested we work on my seat.

First, we worked to the right so that I could focus on my position without worrying about left bend.  Within 2 minutes, we had uncovered a real issue.  My left shoulder moves up and forward - so, my left seatbone lightens and my right side gets heavy.  Not just a little.  Yikkes!  So, I practiced sitting deeper, rotating my shoulders back and level, and NOT leaning back.  I made some progress and Sister was pretty consistant, keeping trot regular on a fairly loose rein.  Next we reversed direction.

Going left was so awful I started laughing - that didn't help.  My seat was non-existant.  Sister and I both lost our left shoulders, mine went up and she dropped hers.  We slopped around cutting in and loosing my balance.  I could not sit the trot going left.  It was not pretty.  Using my left hand on the back of the saddle, I held on and tried to keep my shoulders even.  We worked until I got a couple of better left bends and I practiced keeping left leg on and right leg light.  It was hard.  It looks like Sister and I have some serious work cut out for us to resolve our Shoulder Issues.

A few rain drops fell while I was loading up and the rain really came down shortly thereafter.  But some sun came through too making a beautiful rainbow.  I take that as a sign the we can overcome all our issues.  Yaya!