I had to make up a lesson and so I ended up coming on Saturday during the day. I’m so happy I did. Looking at the horses in the snowy field standing there with their blankets on just waiting while I walked through the virgin snow was something that made me reflect on the many reasons I love coming out to the barn. Future stood there as I put his halter on and while I know he’s not supposed to eat while we’re working I couldn’t help but let him nuzzle through the snow in search for grass below.
It turned out to be a semi-private lesson and the other rider was a girl who happened to have to work on almost the exact same things that I did. She had been riding for much longer than I and I realize that she was much better at certain aspects but we both had our sitting trot to crank through. And we both had a gymnastic line to master.
First of all, sitting the trot. If anyone reads (does anyone read?) this post you know my love/hate relationship with sitting the trot. Well, we pounded away at it some more. In general, I need to consciously work on pulling back the appropriate shoulder when I want to turn. While sitting, I need to loosen up my legs and drop them down; my coach recommended a butterfly stretch (Google Images has many pics of it) for 10 min a day to help but almost more important was that we were practicing it without stirrups — something I hadn’t done in too long. I was really scared of Future taking off and I could constantly feel my left leg creeping up, threatening to dump me off to the right hand side. When did I develop this fear? (Ans: Sometime between being thrown off in the summer and having my head cracked a month ago.)
The gymnastic line should have been easy but for some reason neither of us were jumping properly. I seem to have fuzzy memories of being able to jump really well and whether that’s just bad memory or was a really long time ago, I need to work on my form. First off, I need to suck it up and ride that horse. Why am I getting scared over a 2′ jump? It’s rather ridiculous. (See above paragraph.) Second, I need to RIDE my horse. We had a nice long lecture about how dangerous it is for the horse when riders ask them to do things and don’t support them. Over one line, I screwed up the first jump and just threw the line away. I got in shit (well-deserved) for that too about how one of the most important things you can learn is how to recover.
So I need to work on jumping. Making it natural. Steering my horse better. Sitting after jumps and collecting him. Collecting him in general. But that lesson was what I think all lessons should be like — where me, my coach and my fellow riders are all working on similar goals and just drill, drill, drill. I’m old-school like that. Here’s looking forward to Tuesday.
