Riding clinic with Sue

Today was a riding clinic at the barn, which means that a special trainer from outside came and gave private lessons to some of the riders. I rode Tasha at 9am. She was relatively relaxed and did not pull any door-related tricks. The beginning of the ride was the most different part compared with Rachel's lessons - Sue made me go real fast around the whole arena many time, first in the canter ("think like trail-riding!") and only then in really big trot. I was supposed to not care about the collect-ness and position of the head. She also didn't let me do any circles for the first 10-15 minutes. Only go around and change directions all the time.
Then I made the reins shorter and we started working more collectedly, but still I had to keep her really forward and keep the strides very big. We did some trot sitting, after which Sue made me shorten my stirrups by one hole each (I put both them in #5, so now i guess they should be in #6). This made my leg more stable, which helped me sit a little better. Sue said that my seat is very good but that I put too much weight on the seat and too little in the stirrups, and I should NOT work without stirrups because it keep my legs weak and I need to learn how to deal with putting more weight into them ("you need to marry them!"). Sue made me take the legs out of the stirrups, lift the knees half-way up, then release VERY slowly! after a couple of these my hip-flexor started aching, a sign of how weak it was...
Another issue we worked on was the straightness and how to make Tasha bend from her rib-cage and not from the hips or neck. Sue claims that the rib-cage is the source of her flexure problems, not so much the hinds. To do this, I did some 20-to-10-to-20 meter circles, transitioning through leg-yields, which helped get her to bend. But her head needs to be exactly in between her shoulders! When Suzanne was riding her after me, Sue taught us them "Shoulder-four". It is a baby version of shoulder-in, and basically it means that the haunches stay on the track, the shoulders come slightly off it to the inside, the angle of the body is no more than 10-15 degrees, and the body very straight. For Suzanne, Tasha's head was too much bent inwards to the left, which made her shoulders pop to the right. The other direction was better. When spotting a shoulder-for from the ground, it needs to appear that the hind inside leg is showing between the two front legs, but not stepping between them. It looks from behind like the inside hind leg is lifting diagonally under the body (which makes it look like good circle steps?). When Sue explained to me the idea of bending from the ribcage instead of from the neck, she demonstrated it by putting her hands between her shoulders and ears. "This distance must stay the same at all times".
In the end I did some shoulder-ins and leg-yields which went very well. The first one did not go so well and lacked energy, but once I big-cantered again they all became very good and forward.

So major points are:

1) Forwardness!! from the beginning. Make her run and sweat and become active and through. Key exercise - big canter, big trot, no circles. If possible - work withput the draw reins.

2) Straightness and place of bending in the body. Key exercise - shoulder-for, shoulder-in. 20-10-20 circles with leg-yields, keeping the 10-m bend on the straight line.

3) Putting more weight into the stirrups so that the weight in stirrups is equal to weight in saddle. Key exercise - make my hips stronger off the horse, make the stirrups shorter, on the circle turn body outwards pressing the inside leg down to the ground. She suggested doing a few
lounge-line lessons to work on this (blaaa...)