Winding Down February

February was a big month for us! We made really big progress in remaining relaxed and steady in a frame, mainly thanks to moving to a new facility. These are the goals I laid out for us at the beginning of February:

Ride without stirrups at least 2x a week
5 min of balancing trot + canter per ride
Begin teaching flying changes
Pole courses + low fences (while at SRS)

All in all I think we did pretty well with these! Some got kind of modified as our needs changed- for example, balancing, but the overall purpose for them was achieved.

Ride without stirrups at least 2x a week: This one is (unfortunately) the one that I think I stuck to the most. While at SRS it was more of doing several minutes of posting without stirrups, then once we moved to our new placce it was more like, oh look, my leg has improved x1000 on flat but not over fences so maybe idk, I should just take my stirrups off my saddle! So I did that and killed myself for a few days in a row and then took a breather and then killed myself some more and fun times were had by all.

5 min of balancing trot + canter per ride: This one was less adhered to, simply because it wasn't really necessary after the initial two weeks at SRS that I balanced a bunch. Those weeks were enough to get rid of my icky perching problem and remind my position that I was perfectly capable of stretching down into my legs and balancing myself.

Begin teaching flying changes: Well.. we made some progress here. Things I know: she can get flying changes. Things I don't know: how to make her get them consistently. We'll figure it out, I just need to discover which cues and approaches work for her and which don't.

Pole courses + low fences (while at SRS): This is the one that probably failed most in practice but worked best in theory. The point of working on this was to redevelop my eye and get me better at finding and supporting unusual spots. I didn't do much in the way of pole courses but I have been jumping consistently and my eye has gotten a lot better, to the point where I no longer see absolutely nothing.