Friday, February 21, 2014

Sort of Something New

Well, I guess I won't be switching straight to dressage. At least not any time soon, which I'm kind of disappointed about actually. What we are going to do is keep jumping, but when the other lady I ride with can't make the lesson we will do dressage. But I want to do real dressage, not just English equitation. 

Yesterday's lesson was jumping and it went pretty good, we didn't do as much flat work as we had on Tuesday. Although the course went better. This week we were practicing a hunter equitation style course. 

For flat work on Tuesday we did some no stirrups flat work, including posting trot, which I've been working on lease rides and there has been significant improvement in how long I can post without stirrups for! Finally, progress in something! Eventually we will get to two point without stirrups...eventually. We also cantered over a small cavalletti with no stirrups, again something Wolf and I have worked on before, so it went quite well. Go us! The worst part by far was doing flat work with only the left stirrup. Going in the straight edges was fine, but corners and circles, not so much. I have to work on my core... Luckily we didn't have to jump like that. 

The hunter course was pretty good, we picked up the canter from the sitting trot well, got the tight inside turn and even got the slice to the oxer a couple times. Other times I chickened out and followed a bending line. It would be ridden as a bending in a regular hunter course but you get more points for doing more difficult lines in equitation, so riding a bending straight would be what you'd probably want to do. As for leads, sometimes we'd get them and sometimes we wouldn't which was frustrating but mostly my fault for not looking in the air. 
My eq was not so great either, I've shortened my stirrups so maybe that will help, but holy crap, my lower leg just will not stay still, it's ridiculous!! I hate watching videos of myself riding because that's all I see. No one else I ride with seems to have that problem, it's also frustrating that dispit all my no stirrup work, that hasn't improved. 
I don't know what else to do to help fix it though. I ride with my heels down well on the flat but not so much over jumps :(

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