Let's Bounce!

Yesterday was a pleasantly chilly day, in that I wore three layers of clothes and did not take them off to ride. It was gratefully sunny all day so I didn't have to worry about riding in the rain, since Rush has taken a disliking to the indoor ring and every time I ride in there it turns out.. interesting.. to say the least.

I was really pleased with how our ride went; I feel like we made some good progress and worked through some things. I have a tendency of avoiding problems and ignoring them instead of working through them because working through them is boring and takes patience, but I've gotten better at making myself slow things down and focus on getting her to respond well regardless of what we're actually doing. In this case she got a little hyped up cantering and was very tense trying to anticipate my canter cues, so we slowed things down and worked on her waiting for my actual cues at the walk and trot, then worked back up to the canter.

I did some no-stirrup work at the beginning of the ride, as per No Stirrup November, and my legs are still pretty pathetic but I think I'm getting better. Usually I do posting trot without stirrups to warm her up without asking anything demanding so I can focus on myself. This time I interspersed it with sitting trot whenever I thought I couldn't post anymore, and really focused on staying centered. I don't usually take the time to catalog where my body weight is shifting but noting all my imbalances and trying to fix them was a super cool feeling and I'm definitely going to start coaching myself more through my rides.

I didn't want to do too much jumping because I didn't have much time to cool her down, so we went through a little gymnastic set up at the bottom of the ring. It was a bounce of a pole to an xrail to a low vertical. The first few times we went through she was a speed demon and it took her a long time to settle after running through but she progressively slowed down and came back faster until I was really satisfied with how she was going through it. We ran through a couple times after that so I could focus on me; I really aimed for staying soft and upright up to the first jump, then staying up and out of her way over the bounce, and gathering myself and her back quickly afterwards. All in all I'm really proud her and I think we're figuring out the whole bounce thing!