I had another lesson on Bally today! Such an awesome little pony. There were only three of us in the group so we only had a 45 minute lesson. (I was knackered by the end anyway!)
Simon didn't give us a cantering lesson today, which I thought was fair enough. If the whole group was there we probably would have done some, but we squeezed in loads of jumping instead!
Simon set up three poles at the beginning of the lesson. I don't think I've ever done a triple before! We did some flat work for 15 minutes and some work without stirrups. He had us put our knees up as high as they could go like a jockey, then open out the knee and stretch the leg back and down to get it in the right position. Shoulder - hip - heel. I can always get that position fine without stirrups, but as soon as the stirrups come back my feet go forward a touch. (I've realised as well that I've developed an annoying habit of thrusting my feet forward when doing a sitting trot with stirrups, ugh, it's going to be so hard to unlearn!) We did some changes of rein, but no circles or shallow loops today. After a while we got our stirrups back and he put up three 1 foot cross poles. Diddy little things! Bally sometimes treated them like raised trot poles, and other times she'd jump them properly. (I much prefer her jumping them properly, what's the point of going into a jumping position for a trot pole?!) Then he asked myself and Lauren to come into the middle so Charlotte could go round a few more times on the smaller jumps. She is really getting better, I think Simon should have let her carry on with us! Maybe it was because she was on Harold, I don't think I've ever seen him put in a proper jump!
He popped the jumps up to 2 foot cross poles and me and Lauren went round loads! The first time was a bit of a disaster though! We came up to the first jump in a forward trot, to the second jump Bally's trot had gotten considerably faster, and we tripped over it. She still didn't think to canter to the next jump and had an ever faster trot, and we pretty much ploughed straight into it! Oops! Totally my fault, I should have either controlled her trot more with half halts, or pushed her into a canter with my seat.
After our little mishap, Bally was going like a dream! She got into the most beautiful contact (I kept checking it out in the mirror), we always got to the first jump steadily, and almost always cantered the line of jumps! I think we worked out the striding distance together, I just felt so in sync with her, it was amazing! I was sad when he said it was time to turn in to the middle for a rest!
For the last 5 minutes Simon had us walking around doing different stretches. He came over to each of us to show us the leg stretch from earlier, I was a bit nervous when Charlotte yelped in front of me when he pulled her leg down! It wasn't so bad though, a little painful because he did them one at a time, and my back has been hurting for a few days so I'm a bit tender anyway! We also did some shoulder stretches to open out our chests more. (Tits and teeth, ha!)
At the very end of the lesson we named the parts of the bridle and saddle. I had a Hermione Granger moment again, I recited the parts of the saddle as though I'd swallowed the list!
xx
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