This week in lessons

This week in lessons:

- We are going to be focusing on hands; keeping the thumb on top, straight line elbow/wrist/bit, and keeping the reins short and riding into contact. I am going to research some good self check exercises for these as I need help with it too, but it is so hard to catch yourself letting your hand get flat for example.

Shorter reins means we are also going to have to work on riding with more leg so that the horses compress from back to front, rather than just getting pulled onto the forehand.

- In jumping, we are going to be riding some in and outs (one strides) as part of a course rather than as a grid as we did the last couple weeks.

We are also going to have a small end jump set up. End jumps help encourage riders to really balance their horse back and get them deep into the corner so that they can prepare and set up for the end jump. This may also help some horses get their lead changes...something I want to start working on as well.

Karen