1st Lunge Lesson (non horsy people may just want to skip this)

Okay is is lunge or longe? I've seen both, which is it!!

My longe lesson went really well. I rode a 6yr, 17h, warmblood gelding named Garfield ; )

First, I've found it helps so much to wear my shoulder harness while riding. If I don't I just can't keep my back straight and sometimes even try to absorb the motion with my shoulders !?!?

The trainer really explained the dynamics of the seat really well. I had quite a few misconceptions about the leg/heel/knee/seat position. I'd hear phrases people would say during lessons and emulate that but the phrases by themselves w/o a detailed breakdown caused the wrong assumptions to be made.

Misconceptions:
Heels down heels down heels down heels down. So I'd jam them down. Turns out, a visibly down heel is a hunter thing. Jamming heels down tightens the leg and causes the toes to jack out. And heels down in dressage means "don't have your heels up" ie. relax your heel and put a little weight in your stirrup and your heel will be parallel to the ground or slightly down.
Don't have any weight in the stirrups. Which came from the statements: you should be able to post w/o stirrups & don't stand in the stirrup, weight in your heels. Which I took to be: how can you post w/o stirrups if you have weight on them... and weight in your heels means not on your toes. So I ended up tightening my legs and pinching with my thighs.
Keep your abdominal muscle relaxed not tense. So to achieve that I think I start leaning forward to balance w/o using my stomach muscles. Actually you use a lot of your upper 6 pack to maintain you balance. The lower muscles also are engage to maintain balance but not as much and tighten up in a different way to "ride the horse your seat".

Carin had me post with outside hand on the pommel and inside on the cantle. This put my upper body in the correct position which of course felt like I was totally leaning back too far. Then she had me sit two strides/post one. Once that improved we incremented to sit 3 strides/post one...etc. We also did some canter departs and I found that holding the cantle/sitting back really helped my canter depart! (I've known I've had a bad canter seat forever) I understand much better now how my canter seat is supposed to work I just need a lot more practice!

More practice and strength! Wow, the amount of pressure need to make Garfield go! I now understand when SF trainer said something like Thoroughbreds don't really need a gas pedal just brakes, warmbloods need a constant pressure on the "gas pedal".

Now I have to build up strength to hold my leg on the hair & post/sit with my leg in an unnatural twist to hug the horses belly. Sounds Easy! No Problem! (kind of reminds me of the Chinese binding feet...)