Another Good Lesson & Progress- with Video!

Ben and I had another good, fun lesson last night! A couple of friends took some short videos, and I am ever so grateful that they did. Watching videos of my riding is always interesting - on the one hand I am relieved because everything looks WAAAAY better than it feels. On the other hand its super embarrassing because we have so much to work on - mainly me. My left leg has a mind of its own. I have got to figure out a way to stretch and lengthen that sucker. It is so dang snatchy, and I cause the same set of problems on every horse I ride, Ben being no exception. I also sit much heavier on that side- goodness its amazing the horse can actually move somewhat decently.

I also can see in this video that I need to push him more with snappier aids, and then leave him alone. I get into this awful habit of not wanting to be "mean" and so I try to use these light, piddly requests. This is because I feel guilty asking him for more because I think I am doing it wrong, so therefore I should be nicer by asking with lighter aids. When I write it out, I know it makes no sense at all- but in the saddle the feeling is overwhelming!

After our normal warm up and trot work - Ben and I got to play with a fun little exercise: turn on the haunches and then step into canter. This was a new one for me, so I was trying to figure out the sequence timing of my aids, so its a little bobbly- but boy was it fun!

Here are a couple of videos. Progress has been made!

Trotting:

And then the fun  turn and canter exercise: