Incredible horse, incredibly sore

In my group lesson on Saturday, I got to ride this rather stocky pinto who "does not respect the bit." That means he likes to ignore subtle pulling on his mouth so he can steamroll right through to rejoin his friends on the other side of the ring. He likes to spontaneously canter, can't stand still, and, relatedly, was trained in his early years to rush fences with all his heart and soul.

When I was more of a beginner this would have been sort of terrifying. But I was very secure on him because he has this lovely swayback that holds you in place no matter what (you just never know what unique gifts how a horse might offer). At one point, I got him framed up really nicely by doing a bunch of half halts and had the most glorious sitting trot of my life. I also got to practice sitting back when approaching fences (and generally sitting back all the time to get him to slow down).

It was true that he required serious pulling on the reins if you tried to slow him down that way , which is sort of unfortunate. Sometimes, if I did it right and the stars were aligned, I could literally sit back and tighten my abs and he would slow down. It just goes to show, they can be sensitive to your body language even if they "don't respect the bit"...Anyways, now I'm suffering from a soar neck and upper back because he would pull the reins out of my hands whenever we were standing still.

The Uneven Bars

Had my first real experience with gymnastics in my lesson on Saturday. It was a group lesson with varying skill sets, and the best rider in our small lesson program was in it with me so I kept an eye on what I could learn from her. Of course, we were all on different horses (and ponies) so it is hard to make an apples to apples comparison of yourself to another rider, but we all showed our varying strengths and weaknesses.


The first part of the lesson we worked on simple lead changes going down the center line. I'm still trying to learn which lead I'm on (I only guess that it's the one I asked for!), but I managed to get a a change in while feeling organized the whole time.

We then did a gymnastic with a mixture of cross rails and a couple jumps built up to 2'. It was my first time getting over multiple 2 foot jumps, and it definitely made jumping feel like less of a big deal. As my instructor pointed out, we need to focus more on what happens after the jump. I tend to lean as the horse is turning at the end of the arena, and if the horse make that turn sharply, it has caused me to actually fall off before.

I think I'm leaning to the side I apply leg pressure on - I'm not sure if other people do this, rather than keeping your body centered while adding leg? It was the sort of thing that I improved a lot just by thinking about staying centered. Love when that is the case!

Also, I added a vid to my last blog post - I was so excited when my instructor sent video of me jumping!