I had an early jumping lesson this morning before work. I hadn’t taken Neuf out since our super, fun, Fisher-Price “My first XC school” on the 4th of July.
After Neuf’s lovely ride on Saturday, Sunday was a decent ride, but not amazing like the day before. For a variety of reasons, including heat, bugs & humidity, I decided to not react to laziness with the level of intensity that would create kicking out and bucking, but give me forward, and just left it as an “okay” ride, which is actually pretty awesome in the grand scheme of things.
But, I knew the laziness would need to be addressed today, and had I been riding alone, at home, I would have done it on the lunge, but in a lesson, I felt ok with it. He did get a bit stuck, but there was no where near as much warm up as on Saturday, but I stayed in two point for a long time, off his back, until he was really motoring forward.
The exercises were simple. 3 cavaletti, one stride apart, with the middle one offset. The cavaletti are 8′ long, so offsetting the middle one allowed for a very-straight, 3 stride line of 2, or a very-straight, line of 3 one strides.
The next exercise was 3 fences set at 2 strides apart, steep crossrail, to a vertical, to an oxer (eventually). After doing all those, we then played around with angles, as if in a jump off. So did figure 8 like figures across the oxer, loop back on the other lead to the vertical, back to the other lead to the steep crossrail, back and forth.
On getting my right to left lead change, I need to really get his haunches in. He swings them out, and then isn’t straight, so can’t change. I wasn’t focused enough on the haunches, but too much on the shoulders. So I’ll work on that.
An excellent way to start a Monday.
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