Rode Cello this morning at 6:00 am (before work) and he was hot! I don't know if it was because he's not used to being ridden before breakfast, or if he didn't get ridden hard enough yesterday (his owner rode him) but he was a little snorting firecracker. So, because he gets stiff when he is tense, instead of warming him up going large, and going on circles, I immediately rode him in rising trot head-to-the-wall leg yields, both ways. We just played with the angle and the flexion, and the rhythm and tempo. When he started out he was not supple and resisting the contact a bit, so I stuck him in an under-tempo trot and just waited it out, making sure to ask him to be round with my outside rein/leg, not my inside rein. Doing this type of LY, you really have to be mindful of that. 

Once he startet stretching to the bit and asking to be let out longer in the neck, and started swinging in his back, I was able to let my reins out and adjust the tempo so it was a little bigger trot. He then felt supple enough and warmed-up enough in his back to be able to make little transitions within the trot and elasticize him longitudinally that way. 

The beauty of warming him up like this is that when he's hot, he likes to go too much forward, and I HATE discouraging a horse from going forward with my reins, so instead, the physical barrier of the wall, which he was angled into in the LY position, kept him in check speed-wise, so I didn't have to. Horses respond much better to this in the contact than if you just keep shutting them down, than asking them to have a nice contact. They get confused. 

After that I did some really relaxing, supple canter circles each way, which is coming along so much better now (he's giving me a nice place to sit, and letting me ride both sides of his body). 

Still his biggest weakness is his left side - the ribs like to push against my leg, and he avoids flexing that way. I really have to make sure I always ride him hollow on that side, get the left flexion honestly THROUGH, and keep the connection honest. It's too easy to just abandon the left rein and try to just rie him off the right rein (he can fake it well)