Adventures at Trainer's - pt 2

Continuing the conversation from the previous week's lesson, we worked with Tango on a little four stride line. That I consistently rode in five. And every so often stuffed a sixth stride into.
 

I hold hold hold and ride right past my distance with Tango (which is 100% the opposite issue with Kat, where I see a long spot and think 'YES THIS IS MY SPOT YES') and then he panics a little bit about having to get all his legs out of the way because of how deep I take him to the jumps.

So we talked about getting me to release and just ride the pace forward (a key word for me was to allow him to move up) for the first three strides, then holding for the last strides. Then she changed the wording to, "take a feel of him in the last strides" because I started stuffing a sixth stride in out of nowhere.

We also talked extensively about how fast I get with my body... I don't really ride the tempo, I just get ahead and ahead of myself, thinking jump jump jump rather than keeping my attention solely on the flatwork between the jumps.

You can see this in the video below, it's like I do this weird combination of drive and hold that's entirely outside of my conscious planning.

Then we had an hour of downtime because N couldn't teach us back to back as it wasn't our normal day. Tango and Kat flirted extensively.

Kat is clearly the boss here

And Tango is upset that his hay has been usurped.

I think the video mostly tells about my lesson with Kat -  I apparently forgot how to ride ENTIRELY and everything is a mess. But Kat takes it all in stride. I promise sweetheart, I'm working so hard to get better at this for both our sakes!

And I don't intend to undercut myself too much -- everyone has things to work on and I have to be patient with myself, too. As we'll see in tomorrow's post: Kat has come a very long way.