Some big ass oxers in a lesson with Christa

John started the lesson by talking about what happened at Aspen.  The easy explanation:  when I think a fence is big, my childhood lesson ("don't catch him in the mouth!") kicks in, and I throw my hands forward to save Duke's sweet face.  John says we can retrain my hands, but it is the idea of a big fence and that seminal lesson.
For Aspen, I was partly right - the two right hand turns I was probably still making the turn instead of squaring him up to the fence - still using my inside leg to move him instead of getting him perpendicular.  John said I should have used counterbend (I thought I was, but maybe I wasn't, or maybe Duke was ignoring me).  For the left hand turn (the stall), he probably felt forward, but really needed to be pushed forward and then a half halt, and he just didn't have enough go to get through the fences.
Then he showed us how Duke goes over a fence - if he's balanced and not stiff, he touches the pole on top of the cups; if he's stiff, he drags his hind legs over and rolls the rail out of the cups.
It is me - in the sense that I'm nervous at a competition, so I'm riding him stiff, so he gets stiff.
He said for cross country, the fact that I could think about the fences going wrong (seeing it was another long distance coming), then think about warm up, then apply it, was good.  He said on cross country a lot of people can't even think, they're just reacting.  (On the other hand, it might be nice if I could just feel and react, instead of having to think it through.)

So he had us start over a little vertical, that he raised, and my job was to go to it with looped, loose reins.  It was ... hard to do.  Duke jumped it like a steady eddy, but as it got bigger, it got harder and harder for me to leave his face alone and just let him jump it.  John said to warm up like that, let him figure it out for a few fences, then when I pick him up and I ask him to do something in front of the fence, he's going to listen.

From there, we did the vertical, left hand turn to plank and rail, right hand turn to huge oxer, and then eventually the long four stride vertical to monster oxer from last week.
The big lesson for me was to have him forward enough - when we hit a rail it was because he stalled out in the turn and I didn't push him forward again, and to keep him soft.  If he got stiff on the way to the fence, he was more likely to rub it.  I kept him soft by riding him forward and with a bit of counterbend on the turn on the way to the fence.

It was a great lesson, and Duke's a great horse, but I feel like we've moved to the next stage of learning - the part where it makes sense when he says it, but is just slightly over my head so I can't repeat it at home (or here) - and somehow we skipped the part where I get to feel cocky and confident for a month or two.