Lessons learned in pain

In writing the post about my last lesson, I realized that I wasn't going to be able to talk about the actual lesson in addition to my current frustrations because the post would have been an even longer novel than it turned out to be. So, here we are.

Definitely going to milk these photos for a while lol

As I said before, the warmup started very nice with minimal arguments. He was fiery but manageable. Frankly, my type of horse. It felt good to have him come off my leg and be alert but still willing to trust my aids and channel that energy into a high quality trot with good self carriage. Whenever a horse is like this, I tend to soften my corners and turn the short sides of the arena into a semi circle. I've noticed that if I push too hard into a corner, they tend to compress on the turn then shoot out on the straight away. The bigger arc helps to keep the pace consistent and gives me more room to push with the inside leg, correct with the outside leg, and slowly fill the outside rein. And man, did he give me some fantastic movement on those curves. I wish I had it on video because he really, truly felt amazing.

I'm still on a seemingly never ending journey of trying to control the front and back end separately. He was a little wiggly, which makes sense considering the circumstances. I ended up purchasing spurs when I was loading up on new show clothing. They definitely help, but . . . . . . . I do wish that I could get the same reaction without them. As with martingales, spurs are another thing that I'm a little iffy about just because of how I've been taught in the past. That being said, I'm not against using them at all, and I'm trying to be mindful of when and how I use them. This is my first pair ever, so it'll be a learning curve for sure!

Yes, I am still rolling my stirrups. It is what it is.

The canter was mainly where I started to second guess things. Because of his long body, the canter is where he struggles the most to stay elevated up front. On top of that, the circumstances surrounding the ride left him very heavy on his forehand and heavy on my hands. I didn't automatically get defensive, which is a change for me. I pulled my shoulders back and did my best to sink into the saddle, close my thigh, and not stiffen. Trainer G noted that I tend to shorten my reins a lot and move my hands up when I go to canter. I can't say where this habit started, but it's something that I've done for a long time. I always pick up and anticipate that I'll need more control in the canter. She didn't think it was necessarily a bad thing, but with Blackjack, it was better to keep the reins long and bring my hands/elbows back to prevent him from feeling like we were doing anything more serious than hacking around. The shorter I am, the more likely he is to think we're jumping something, and then his own anticipation impacts the quality of the stride.

Oddly enough, the same principal applied to the jumping as well on this particular day. There were actually several parts of our jumping that needed to be worked on. Again, these are things that, to be quite honest, are non-issues when I jump Liberty. Something as simple as the track coming in needed to be fixed, which makes me want to rip my hair out again. A little outside leg fixed that. At the base and over the fence, Trainer G noted that I tend to push my hands forward and drop contact maybe a stride and a half before the fence. I have also noted this, but thought I simply needed to sit up more on my approach. Knowing that it's actually my hands pulling everything forward really helped. Once I maintained the bend in my elbow, it completely changed my posture. It even shifted a little bit more weight into my feet and helped me feel significantly more secure in the saddle.

Whew, are we done? Yeah, that's about it, and I still left out some parts. As much as the ride absolutely sucked, there were definitely some important takeaways. I have just one more post related to this ride that's more discussion based. Stay tuned!