This week in lessons

It seems that the biggest difficulty people had with the leg yield exercise last week was the turn down centerline. Unless you are walking, or on a really well collected horse, it is easiest to think of it as a 10 meter half circle. For most horses, if you wait and try to do a tight 90 degree turn, they end up either falling out through their shoulder and go past center, or fall in on their shoulder...either way, you end up with a crooked horse. This made it take longer to prepare for the leg yield, although the leg yields themselves were quite good.

So this week we are going to turn down centerline, and then loop back to the track, like a sideways figure eight. This will give riders more practice for the turn down centerline, and the turn back to the track will help riders feel the balance and turn needed with the wall for help. Preparing and looking sooner for the turn, and remembering that the turn should start from the long side and flow to the center line should help.

For jumping we are going to do a course similar to last week, but add some more jumps to work not only on horse and rider jumping fitness, but also to work on rider's ability to ride more jumps in a row while still paying attention to the details (aka corners).

Karen