A Riding Lesson

I was lucky this past weekend to squeak in a lesson with Kathy Playdon when she came up here to test our Pony Clubbers.  Something that was super cool is instead of taking the fee from me for the lesson, she said to make it a donation to the club instead!

I wasn't really planning on doing too much jumping in the lesson since both Koda and I have been taking it really easy lately.  I also managed to have the Fiance there with us to act as videographer (two in one, woot!).  We started off with plenty of flat work, focusing on fixing my lower back which actually ended up being a problem with my lower leg and saddle seat being a touch pommel high.  We tossed a pad under the cantle and my leg looked a LOT better, but now I need to work on getting used to my leg being back where it's supposed to be instead of pushed forward.  She gave me some exercises I can do to help correct myself and re-train those muscles.  They mostly involve going without stirrups then taking them back and keeping my leg back where it's supposed to be.

After working on the flat, we moved to doing some jumps.  Both Kathy and I agreed to keep it fairly simple since Koda was showing some struggle in the footing in the arena due to his fitness level right now.  It was kind of neat since after we warmed up she just kind of called out jumps to go too and we made a twisty course around.  It's kind of funny, she asked me to start counting down my strides and I did but apparently I count my strides down a bit differently since my "1" is the jump over the fence, so my last stride is 2.  Essentially my count down is "4... 3... 2...Jump!"

At the end, we went over some homework bits for both of us which consisted of working on quick simple changes progressing to flying changes over a raised pole and increasing complexity in our grid work, then for me its all about working on getting my leg back under me for our flat work and keeping a solid base when the jumps go up.