Jumping Greener

In yesterday's lesson I got to ride the greenest horse in the lesson program. He's actually 6 years old and has been worked on extensively by my instructor and ridden by other lesson students, so I can hardly pretend it was a huge challenge.

There were a couple things he would do that emphasized I needed to be gentler with him:
He would start cantering if I asked too strongly for a trot.

He would bulge his shoulder out if he didn't want to move away from his friends (I am still learning to deal with that better).

And he would make this horrible grinding sound on the bit if I was putting too much pressure - it was like the audible manifestation of his building anxiety. When we were watching others take their turn at the jump, I would let the reins go down to the buckle to chill him out (unless he'd try to eat giant splinters of the indoor - why do they DO that?!)

We worked on jumping 2' jumps, including an oxer and an imitation of a rolltop (the things you can do with polls and cavalleti blocks!) and I really just focused on keeping control until the end and then not getting in his way. I'm sure a more advanced rider could figure out how to keep their leg on without overdoing it with him, but for a first time jumping a somewhat-green horse, that was my method and it worked fairly well.

I'm excited to ride him again in the future. Because our lesson program is small, I can keep track of how everyone is progressing and I don't want to fall behind everyone else! Of course, when everyone else gets to ride 3+ times as much as you do per week, there's only so much you can do!

Figure eights for jumper turns

We've been working a lot on turning, which (I know, this is obvious) gets harder when you are 1. Going faster 2. Turning more sharply 3. Turning sooner before a jump.

When I first started riding, I was at a hunter barn and there was no discussion about tight turns. It probably would have come up in more advanced lessons, but the side pass and making sure we "used our corners" on the rail was about it. Before and after every jump, we had time to get back on the rail and take a nice, wide turn. In fact, I was more likely to turn too early than have trouble turning at all.

My instructor uses ground poles in different formations to get us to turn correctly. By setting them up parallel and spread a horse width apart, we have to do very tight snake by walking between the poles.

She also sets them up in the shape of a box and has us think up different ways to do a figure-eights and clovers with them - here are some examples:

Sourc: HorseJournals

After, she had us go to the other side of the ring and do a figure eight. The cool part was we found ourselves naturally imagining the box, and this made our figure eights retain their shape even without the poles.

We've also been working on using ground poles as a guide to get us to turn before a jump, so maybe a ground pole just off the rail that then requires an immediate sharp turn to be straight in time to go over a jump.

I've been having lots of fun and learning a lot about control in general. I'm still working on steering in the canter - it's hard for me to do endless perfect 20m circles (let alone one), but we're getting there...slowly. I just don't have much time in my weekly group lesson to really work on it.

And in other progress, my position over jumps is improving. It's not very hight, but I can keep control and position over 2 feet under varying circumstances. I'd like to think that being really sound at this will help me when we start to string together higher jumps.

Finally, spring is coming! I'm hoping to do at least 1 show this year. Maybe a 2-phase, but at least another jumper show!