Jumping lesson- photo shoot

A couple of weeks ago, after a  7 week hiatus, I finally got back to do a jumping lesson. It was also the last chance I will get to ride the safe,  steady lesson horse , Jazzy,  before she goes back to her owner for the winter.  .

Jazzy is not a complicated ride. She gets me to the fence, albeit sometimes crooked, and over safely without me having to worry about too much other than myself.  She has been a great confidence builder. Her biggest flaw is she is  on the lazy side and takes a TON of leg. As a result, after only 20 minutes of riding her, I get pretty tired. The riding /jumping muscles long since gone in those 7 weeks.

"T" came along with a camera and took a few shots, which I am now obsessively critiquing. Butt too high, arms too straight, lower leg not far enough back,  and so on..

Try not to laugh too hard- I am still relearning this jumping thing and is anything but easy after 15 years of not doing it!



Positive-leg position good, (good hip, heel alignment), heels down, back straight and I am looking up.
Negative-need to close my hip angle more.

When Jazzy lands, she really drops her head down low. In my attempt to not catch her in the mouth, I try to keep a loose rein.

Uggghhh.. so I know exactly what happened here. Jazzy will add often add an extra half step right before the jump on a 5 stride combination.  This is what happens apparently to my position.. I ended up way too far out of the saddle .. again, a more closed hip angle would help to resolve this. And maybe trying to keep her from putting in that extra step..

Its really hard to see much of my position here, too bad it was a front on shot. I think she may have had a better landing here but I am a off to my right.. More than likely we came into the jump a bit crooked after the corner (see dust line from corned of picture).

So, I know what I need to do. I need to work on closing my hip angel, and get closer to the neck which requires having a stronger leg or as my trainer puts it, being able to "ride into my leg more" or get stronger on my leg to support  my position. On Jazzy it's hard to get too forward because she drops on her landings so its a fine line. Unfortunately, I can't ride Jazzy anymore because she has gone home to her rightful owner. My trainer has her Trakehner that I can use, but in all honesty, she is probably more horse than I need right now . So , now what??

Since the last lesson........................

A dear, generous friend of ours has given me some jumps to use. She used to event and no longer does. I now have some really nice jumps practice at home with. There is only one little problem. I have no  horse to jump. Maggie is not jumping material. She is ok to do a couple of cross rails but she gets way too excited too quickly. Cows and trail stuff is definitely her niche..

Just for fun, we free jumped Brego (T's Barb/Morgan gelding)  with the help of my trainer. For a 15.0 hand horse, he has the movement of a warmblood twice his size and is one very athletic horse. As it turned out, he seems to have some very natural talent over fences too. T has agreed to let me start training him over fences.

Stay tuned!