I've been on a mission to get to the bottom of my remaining positional flaw, namely "wigglefoot". Even though my feet stay down better, I still have too much of a wiggle in my feet, i.e. involuntary movement. I've been looking at videos of olympic riders, who are my benchmark of course, none of them have wigglefoot. My trainer doesn't have wigglefoot. None of the really good riders have it. Grrrr. Any attempts to eliminate it so far have failed. Contained somewhat, yes. Eliminated, no.
Last week, for the first time, I doubted that I could do this (and by "could do this" I mean learn to ride like the very best). Until then, I've always felt like no matter what I needed to change, I could do it, and become a truly great rider. But the mystery of the wigglefoot almost brought me to my knees and put some serious dents in my otherwise fairly well developed self-confidence. I went as far as to think, if I stopped riding, what would I do with all my time and obsession? Travel the world perhaps (and with what money...)? Because one thing was clear, if there wasn't a chance that I could be riding that well at some point, than there was no point in continuing the insane quest.
But after contemplating other career options, my fighting spirit returned and I thought to myself: it can't be THAT hard. So I went over my notes from the Andrew Murphy clinic. Coccyx down, lean back stood out. Then I binged on YouTube videos of performances of the Spanish Riding School. A lot of those videos were clearly not of professional quality and every time I was zeroing in on something, the camera switched abruptly to something else, blurry on top of that. The big question was: Where am I not absorbing motion from the horse that ends up as excess wiggle in my feet? After staring at the SRS riders for a couple of hours, I saw something that was quite stunning about every single rider. Although I couldn't quite put my finger on it, I figured that my problem must lie somewhere in my pelvis. I got up and tried out several degrees of pelvic tilt, noting how much energy still ended up in my feet, and came to the conclusion that I needed way more pelvic tilt upward.
I couldn't wait to try that out today. And I think, as far as I can tell by looking in the mirror, I'm onto something. That definitely puts me way more on my tailbone, it pretty much eliminates that arch in my back without me having to think about not arching my back, it makes me feel like I'm leaning way back (but really am just at vertical). Now I've fooled myself plenty of times before, and one of my previous barn owners used to say that it doesn't count if you don't have a witness. But I'm pretty sure it's one more step in the right direction and goshdarnit, I WILL learn how to ride. I'm just hoping my trainer will agree. Tomorrow, when I'll be asking her to look. (And let me down gently...)
