Lesson 17 - 8/18/06

Today I had a vigorous jumping lesson. First, the good points: I feel really balanced, secure, and grounded. I feel like my legs are hardly moving, and the big leg concern is when on the left lead, my right knee opens and my toe points out, but I'm getting better at correcting it. I really improved my trot - canter transition from last week by leaning back and sitting up, and I am sitting more solid in the saddle in the canter (less air under my butt).
Now for the bad news: the jump lesson was humiliating. We started with a cross rail, with the worst jump ever. Here's the things I started out needing to work on:
1) Hands forward - I bring them back while we're in the air. I don't sit up, but just bring my hands back, so I'm jerking on his mouth while we're flying.
2) Head up - head up doesn't mean looking between his ears, but really up - chin up. I could feel it when it was right - which meant staring at the wall on the other end of the arena, but couldn't feel it wrong.
3) Don't swing legs - while my seat felt secure and solid, my lower leg would swing way back when I pinched with my knee.
Bob gave me a couple ideas that seemed to work:
On the way to the jump, think dressage seat, half halt, half halt, half halt. Then go over.
Count out loud: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4, 1 - 2 - 3 - 4. This made me ride instead of think. I ride better when I'm not thinking.
Think head up, hands forward, heels down as I approach the jump. Don't worry about where he is taking off from or asking him to go from a spot. Looking at a spot makes you look down.
I am leaping forward - like standing up, instead of bending forward and just riding him over. I am "charging" the jump.
So then we worked on a vertical, and then an oxer, and I got a teensy bit better, but started having problems on the "courses" to get him from a canter back to a trot.
Then we worked a line of three, which was a disaster. So then we did two teeny jumps with a trot pole (24' apart) and it was still pretty bad. After a while, we moved up to 5 trot poles, each 24' apart. Bob said to work on this every other day.
The problem is that I can't feel when I need more leg and when I need more hand, and I let him coast through instead of riding dressage in between. What needs to happen is pole - half halt half halt - pole - half halt half halt - pole, etc. But when he gets tired, a leg goes with the half halt to keep him moving.
Anyway - Mercury was fantastic. He loves to jump, and he is consistent. Bob says he jumps nice and round, but sometimes he takes off from too close (a lot) and sometimes too far. Bob does not recommend my old training styles - riding a lunge line over a fence or riding with my eyes shut.
Other misc from Kevin's watching lesson:
1) Stay seated - especially after the jump (it was easier to not overjump if I sat a few trot steps out, and Bob said that was ok to do)
2) Approach jump straight
3) Don't let him track his back legs on a separate track - use inside leg behind the girth to put him straight

Bob also tested if I could feel what was wrong over each jump - making me say out loud what I felt wrong to make sure we could keep working. It was a great learning lesson, but a lousy me showing that I was a good rider lesson.