lesson details

So you already saw the fun part of our recent lesson - where I fell off. Oops... But here's the feature length recap.

As previously mentioned, it was pouring and cold outside. So to the indoor we six lessoners went. And some kids very conveniently volunteered to take video! Score for not having to beg for once lol.

trying to join the dusty mirror selfie club. lol

Isabel flatted ok - with nice moments interrupted by sassy head flings. I need to revisit some of the bio-mechanics concepts of lateral balance on a small-ish circle bc we may or may not have regressed a bit. Either that or Isabel is getting pretty good at faking it and drawing me into a tug of war with her.

The first jump exercise was four cross rails set up in the center in the shape of an X and cavaletti at A and C, like so: 

my work of art

We more or less muddled our way through this. Isabel was kinda behind my leg and I was kinda loose in the saddle. I forgot to shorten my stirrups for jumping too, which wasn't great... 

Anyway, we were just finishing our first trips through the course at crossrail height when four more riders started schooling their horses. So P rearranged the exercise into a grid up the center line. It started out with a placing pole to an X, 18' to a vertical (to eventually become an oxer), then 19' to another vertical. 

We were all really struggling with this for whatever reason - even before that last vertical was built. Isabel actually did two strides in that 19' once... Ugh... So P moved the whole shebang further up the centerline to give us more room after the turn and shortened the lines to 16' and 18', respectively. 

This definitely helped... but we were still on the struggle bus and I fell off after whiffing my turn, drifting right (for once! we usually drift left...), and ultimately running out at the last vertical... 

In a way tho I'm not even upset about falling. The circumstances all called for a stronger ride: 

• a backed off horse stuck behind my leg
• rain roaring on the roof
• 9 other horses in the small arena, all doing different things

And yet I was just cruising. Sure, I should have been supporting Isabel more and it was totally avoidable. But as someone whose lack of confidence typically leads to overriding and micromanaging the horse, I feel kinda like maybe this is progress? 

I tend to swing wildly between extremes -- so maybe I'm riding too passively now that my confidence is improving?? 

In any case, it really wasn't too bad and we were able to correct the problem and make it through the grid just fine a few more times. 

Here's video of pretty much all our jumping efforts for the day. Complete with some hilarious squeals while I was falling off. (The squeals are particularly funny bc they kinda come in waves since it took just about forever for me to finally fall...). 

It definitely wasn't our best outing... but we more or less made it through ok.