T-shirt weather!
It was so warm that I finally buckled down and body clipped Clover. She looks like a gray mouse, except she doesn’t, haha. She does look much neater, though, and soon she’ll shed out into her black (pre-sun-bleached) summer coat.
Hopped on for a jumping lesson, a semi with another student who rode our trainer's horse. Mostly we worked on jumping position while on the flat, from two point to closing up our hip joints and releasing with the arms. In rapid succession. I think my new running program is starting to pay off, I kept up pretty good, and had plenty of energy for the entire lesson—I was definitely ready to do some more jumping when we finished, even though I haven’t been riding consistently.
We worked on riding through a trot two stride crossrail combination, and worked on position over fences. I have a long way to go, but I felt like I was releasing more over the fence. I have a very hard time coordinating steering to and over the fence, regulating the approach to the fence (leg on or half-halt), releasing over the fence and organizing on landing and riding away to the next fence. Most of the time I can get several things going pretty good, but drop the ball on one or the other thing, usually the release over a fence. And today I wasn’t riding away very well from the fence—we kept landing on the wrong lead, because I wasn’t looking to my next fence, or even in the direction I was turning after the fence—not looking hard enough with my body, too much weight in the wrong seatbone and leg.
I always corrected the canter after landing, and rode off so Clover wouldn’t get into the habit of thinking we were done working after jumping the combination. But at one point, we got unbalanced, so that in the far corner, Clover tripped in the deeper footing at the far end of the ring, and her stumble put me more off balance onto her forehand, and it seemed like she was plowing her nose into the sand for the next several strides while I got my bearings and jumped off. She did plow her nose in the sand, her muzzle was covered in it. I worried that she may have pulled a shoulder muscle, or otherwise got injured in her front end, so we walked it off on a long rein for several minutes, and picked up a trot on the long rein. Clover was trotting sound, but I put her on bute for the next couple of days as a precaution.
Still, it felt good to ride on a warm day, and feel reasonably good over some fences.
Hopped on for a jumping lesson, a semi with another student who rode our trainer's horse. Mostly we worked on jumping position while on the flat, from two point to closing up our hip joints and releasing with the arms. In rapid succession. I think my new running program is starting to pay off, I kept up pretty good, and had plenty of energy for the entire lesson—I was definitely ready to do some more jumping when we finished, even though I haven’t been riding consistently.
We worked on riding through a trot two stride crossrail combination, and worked on position over fences. I have a long way to go, but I felt like I was releasing more over the fence. I have a very hard time coordinating steering to and over the fence, regulating the approach to the fence (leg on or half-halt), releasing over the fence and organizing on landing and riding away to the next fence. Most of the time I can get several things going pretty good, but drop the ball on one or the other thing, usually the release over a fence. And today I wasn’t riding away very well from the fence—we kept landing on the wrong lead, because I wasn’t looking to my next fence, or even in the direction I was turning after the fence—not looking hard enough with my body, too much weight in the wrong seatbone and leg.
I always corrected the canter after landing, and rode off so Clover wouldn’t get into the habit of thinking we were done working after jumping the combination. But at one point, we got unbalanced, so that in the far corner, Clover tripped in the deeper footing at the far end of the ring, and her stumble put me more off balance onto her forehand, and it seemed like she was plowing her nose into the sand for the next several strides while I got my bearings and jumped off. She did plow her nose in the sand, her muzzle was covered in it. I worried that she may have pulled a shoulder muscle, or otherwise got injured in her front end, so we walked it off on a long rein for several minutes, and picked up a trot on the long rein. Clover was trotting sound, but I put her on bute for the next couple of days as a precaution.
Still, it felt good to ride on a warm day, and feel reasonably good over some fences.
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