JUMPING!!!

Yay!!! After a month or so of not jumping - other than the tree at the beach! - we had a good jump lesson. It felt good to jump again and I think Fleck enjoyed it too. :) We weren't as bad as I thought we would be. Yay!

We started off with some pole grid work, focusing on the canter. Beth wanted shorter strided, bouncier canter. And he had to be supple! Soft in his jaw! It worked. We got some nice jumps with Fleck using his body well. Then we went from the grids and poles to poles to a jump and kept it. The trick was not letting him lengthen his frame prior to the jumps and not letting him brace at the base too. We managed to get it and had some lovely jumps. I also wanted to work on my leg. Beth said I was pinching with my knee and that was making the landing hard on me because it took me longer to recover. She had me focus on taking my knee off the saddle over the fences. It kind of worked, but apparently I did it better when my brain thought of kicking my leg forward. Go figure. ;) We finished with a figure 8 over an oxer. She wanted us straight before and straight after and working on the nice soft supple canter. And I worked on my leg. It was a lot, but we got some good jumps. I just need to remember to use my inside legs in the turns and help support Fleck with it. Especially going to the right where he has the tendency to lean  and motorcycle in. When I did that he was getting his leads too.

So yay!! It felt good to be back to jumping and Beth said that we looked good! Not even "we looked good for not having jumped in a month".. .just "we looked good". :) She said that!! So whoo hoo.

I'll have to keep working on my leg position though. And man... definitely need to get fitter. That was a bit more tiring than it should have been.

No pictures because it was COLD!!! Seriously cold. Not too bad while I was riding Fleck, but the wind picked up and was frigid for Dan's turn.