made it to another lesson!

The weather deigned to cooperate and our trainer's home was no longer flooding. So - lesson time!! Never mind that I was super green around the gills and trying to avoid barfing on my lesson-mates... We gotta ride, right??

Seriously, tho - while we were actively riding everything was fine. But whenever we just stood around in the middle... ooof no bueno... 

Isabel flatted pretty well, considering she'd only been ridden once in the past two weeks. My goal for the day's flat work was first and foremost focused on my position:

• sitting up and back - esp around corners when I want to collapse to the inside
• 'standing' on my seat bones
• stretching through my legs
• squeezing my belly button (weird yet effective terminology for engaging my core)
• bending elbows and hands in the 'batter's box' - letting the weight of my arms do the work for me

And I hoped that these efforts would help me better engage Isabel's hind end. I need to keep her ACTIVE behind - and not get stuck in a backwards blah trot. I want to feel her really pushing *into* the contact - rather than pulling her into it. 

To the left she's SUPER consistent and steady when I can get my pieces put together, and the right side is coming along, tho always trailing. I'm optimistic that we'll see major improvement when I can ride more frequently (I hope!). The canter is interesting bc that's the gait where it's most obvious just how much leg it takes to get her round. But of course, when I use that much leg the rest of my position suffers ... boo weak core!! 

four fences across the middle

Whatever the case, I'm heartened by the current state of our flat work bc it's pretty clear that Isabel is retaining all of our lessons, despite irregular/infrequent riding. 

That said, tho - it's also pretty clear that she's sick of the indoor. Our jumping efforts were all fine - in fact they were all whatever I made of them. Isabel kinda phoned it in. Not in a bad way, exactly, but she didn't feel particularly *bright* either, if that makes sense. (Altho nothing felt particularly bright to me since I literally wanted to puke... so maybe you'll watch the video and think Isabel's amazing and I'm just crazy lol).

We started with everyone in the lesson trotting down over an X as a group - over and over a couple times to warm up. Isabel kinda 'blahhed' over it a few times, earning me a reminder from P to keep my leg on and rider her to the fence (duh Emma!). She was also drifting left per usual - so I had to actually, ya know, steer... 

Then we moved on to cantering loopy 'courses.' Again - Isabel did whatever I asked, for better or worse. If I held for the tight distance, she complied. If I pushed for the longer spot, that was fine too. All good stuff, I suppose. We didn't do a very good job of landing on the left lead when appropriate - tho probably if I had been better coordinated she would have done that too. 

video here

So idk - I'm not really complaining bc it was actually a pretty positive lesson. Isabel's an educated horse who's pretty straight-forward to ride. Maybe I should even be happy in thinking that the fence height in this lesson seems so boring now? 

But really, all I'm thinking about is galloping across an xc course. Yea. I mean, look how happy she is in that picture!!! THAT's the brightness I'm talking about. We'd like to do that please! Any day now!