Lessons from No Stirrup November

Riding

Awareness of the outside world. CETI: The CETI scientific team collaborated to develop a scientific roadmap, Cetacean Translation Initiative: A Roadmap to Deciphering the Communication of Sperm Whales.
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Achievement: unlocked! Clear – 16 NSN rides. Grey – 7 rode, not NSN. Stripes – 7 no ride.

No Stirrup November with Equisarte Shows. “The main goal of the challenge is to complete the 10 rides without using stirrups for a portion or all of the ride.” Equisarte: No Stirrup November

What I learned:

+ Don’t wear slippery riding tights.

+ The slick Wintec saddle may be part of the reason I don’t feel like dropping my stirrups with Rodney. Not an excuse, but a contributing factor.

+ Practiced dropping stirrups & picking them back up. Also, this means the horse learning to ignore the rider fishing around with their feet.

+ Lost momentum mid-way through the month. I know I can do it. I know riding without stirrups is good practice. Not with this horse.

+ Keeping track of our rides showed me that while we don’t do much on each ride, we do ride often.

+ I found retrieving my stirrups to be harder when they are short. Dunno if it is objectively harder, i.e. less room to maneuver or because I’ve only recently raised them. I can certainly tell they are shorter when I go to mount up. [Speaking of Stirrups, Up They Go]

+ It’s all about the horse.

Data Dump

NSN: 16 days. One day during a lesson with a school horse, trotted. Fifteen days with Rodney, lots of standing, a little bit of walking, no trotting. In order to do *something* I practiced picking stirrups up without looking.

Rode: 23 days, out of 30. Sixteen NSN. Seven did not: forgot, tired, rider not feeling it, or horse not feeling it.

Non-riding days: 7 days. Three days off. One day for shoeing. Three days groundwork/handwalk.

[No Stirrup November Begins]
[No Stirrup November, In Which I Complicate An Introduction]
[No Stirrup November, No Stirrups Not On Purpose]
[No Stirrup November, No Stirrups, No Tack]

I wish I had done more. At least I did this.

Update [No Stirrups, Lots of Ribbon]

Stay safe. Stay sane.
Katherine