Equestrian Team Summer - Day 5

Today was SUCH an improvement. I felt so much better with my legs. But of course, since I got better with my legs, my top half fell apart!

I rode Tommy today again (yay!). I'm becoming quite attached. I'm glad she's letting me stick to one horse until I figure out what to do with the bottom, balance, and but the top half and bottom half together over fences.

I feel so great that I can finally see and correct my diagonals. I'm super happy that most of the time now I start posting on the correct one to start with!

One thing that really clicked for me this week was leg position. With the Pasos, you're usually really quiet with your leg because if you slightly kick them (unless you're in Brie's mule mode or Harry's backing up to rear mode), they'll be heading for the hills! Stacy really drilled it in my head today to open up my hips and keep my calves in contact with the sides of the horse all the time. I also learned a semi-obvious but neat little trick about head pulling and such that I can't wait to try on Harry -- instead of pulling back the reins to try to fight them to tuck their head back and stop pulling, give them a little squeeze and pinch your shoulder blades together so you're not really pulling, just kind of locking yourself in a firm upper body position for a minute while pushing them onwards with your leg.

Trotting was awesome. She had me really working on my two-point position today in a trot along the long walls of the arena which helped me balance over the fences WAY better.

But, since I managed to do something right with the bottom half, my upper half was lacking. I completely kept collapsing my ribcage over the fences instead of keeping a nice and helpful frame that I had before when I couldn't balance with my bottom half. So I have to think about that and remember it for next week!

Stacy also gave me some at home kind of exercises that would help me strengthen my two-point, which I think is fantastic and I'll be doing them alllll week.

I can't wait to get better. Since my first show with the team will be in November, I decided to ask her if she'll let me jump in it. She said if I keep improving like did today, she'll see if she can move me up to beginning jumping!! I can't wait!