Adjustability

Butterball and I had a very good, educational lesson on Wednesday. The overall focus was that speed doesn't equal power, and we need to be adjustable and able to add or open up. Initially I was not really understanding the goal. Hadn't we just worked on getting him to leave the ground at the correct spot of his own volition? Why would we encourage shortening at the base. The DUH answer that I realized even as a semi-whined that question was we're not asking him to chip at the base, we're asking him to compress his stride and still be able to jump powerfully and correctly from a shorter stride. I think some of my confusion came from the description of the canter as a "relaxed and soft canter" that made me think I was to pull him down to something that almost caused a break to the trot. Derp. I also spent a lot of the lesson focusing on PRESSING MY DAMN HANDS into his neck. And mostly I succeeded in releasing when I should and staying released. Way to mostly accomplish something they teach kids trotting crossrails! Anyways, back to the interesting part...

I don't even know if it needs saying, but we started by trotting our placing pole exercise back and forth a couple of times. Then we got to work on the meat of the lesson: 

Left a few jumps off of here, but the main exercise is pictured. The bounces were just cavaletti. 

First we did the bounce cavaletti alone. I did smile when I saw them because it was a more aggressive, but shorter version of the bounces I had set up at home a few weeks ago. 

During those I had also learned you need to push and guide, NOT pull your way through them. 

Once we had done the cavaletti on their own twice, we started the exercise (following the dashed blue line in my drawing). Vertical - 5 strides to vertical - right hand 15m circle to cavaletti - back to vertical - 5 strides to oxer. Get turned around, repeat in reverse with a left hand turn through the cavaletti. 

The first few times through I was incapable of getting an even five strides in the line. I either got four smoothly, four with a gap, or five with the last two being dinky little strides. I was simply not half-halting enough early enough. I also did not look soon enough at the cavaletti and had a really rough go the first time, propelled only by the sainthood of my pony. At one point JT looked at me and said "what about this exercise is making you anxious?" which was when I shared by confusion about what we were trying to do. And which is when she explained the goal. And shared the obvious, but apparently needed to be stated fact that "you should be able to do 4 strides or 6 strides in this line and he should still leave the ground nicely." 

Then I had a similar AHA moment to our XC lesson where we discussed that it's not enough to just give lip service to a half halt and kinda sorta make the motions and then go "done half halting now." Nope, you gotta actually half halt enough that something happens. And the something also needs to involve his back coming more up and staying up. THEN we can add and jump nicely still. ooookay. So around the fifth run through I finally got it and we had lovely soft jumps through the exercise.

After that go through we put a course together that we did twice. It started with a long approach to a vertical then bending line to an oxer. I got a short distance to the oxer both times, but it was slightly more even on the second go. It was also the correct short distance for where we were, leaving long would've been leaving looooooooong. Then it was a right hand turn to the three stride line that had an oxer to a swedish oxer. A few lessons ago JT asked if I knew how to jump a swedish oxer. Since I didn't know what she meant I said no. 

Ben sorting it out anyways for me. Can't miss an opportunity to share one of my fave pictures of him

She said to take them slightly on the low side so that it becomes a normal ascending oxer vs. dead in the middle which would be square or to the high side so it is a backwards oxer. Butterball seemed to sort that out on his own without my input a few weeks ago. This time he took it a bit far to a drift left the first time through, but we fixed that on the second go. 

Then it was a left hand curve back around to the two to the one. Pictured is the pink rolltop of death. I very nearly leaned at the roll top the first time through (you would think I would've learned my lesson) but caught myself (I guess I sort of learned the lesson). It made for a kind of awkward trip through, but we smoothed it out the second time. 

If it doesn't make you carsick, here's some windy glasses cam footage of the best go of the exercise and then of the course. I almost took the sound out, but sometimes you can actually hear JT's comments, but mostly it is a lot of wind.