Lesson #152: 20m 'Ugh'

J was teaching our lesson Sunday and we worked on jumping. I knew, that going in, I was tight in the hips and off kilter on the (surprise) right side. We started with a brief warm up and then got into a large canter. No trouble from Ariel and we went round and round at her pace *sigh* Sitting up was having some effect and she did slow down when I used my weight but then she would slow too much so I leaned off some and she sped up but sped up a little too much... finding that balance was really tricky. At one point, Ariel did a series of Tempi changes along the long side and I had no clue. After J pointed it out, I did realize that it seemed like her canter was a little more 'lofty' than usual but I didn't intentionally ask for it so that's... bad. Then again, since she's a sensitive mare and I'm physically a dud, it's possible that my hips were shifting just enough to ask her for the lead changes and since I've never done it before, I wouldn't have known. But more than likely, it was because I was unbalanced and she was just trying to sort out balance for both of us. *le sigh*

Seriously. What is Deb doing up there???

Since I complained about being tight, we did some non-stirrup work with leg stretches. I was laughing a storm when G had said that a few times stuff was cracking and things felt like they were out of the socket! HAHAHA! It was her birthday the day before so we made the joke that she's just gettin' old. Oh the jokes with this bunch of people.

We started simple courses on a figure 8 with 4 jumps at either horizontal or cross poles at the rising trot. There were two jumps on the long side and 2 more on an angle with 2 corners of the arena. With a lower level, jumping over things wasn't TOO bad. I made it over with a 50/50 success rate of good position. Then he added in an extra jump... a horizontal jump on a 20m circle. I figured it should be fine but O-M-G, it was as if it was all too much for my puny little brain to sort out! Coming in was fine but upon the approach, things just went to poop. My eyes would drop or I'd look to the outside of the circle. My body would also seize up because I was clearly freaking out about what I should be doing and with Ariel, she's been known to run straight into a wall if asked (fearless, this girl). Even at the trot that was hella scary for me to do and the more we drilled it, the worse it got. I have no idea what went wrong but I couldn't seemingly look far enough into the circle and get through the jump. Ariel isn't the problem, I am.

I finished the remainder of the course just fine but that 20m circle one just sent me reeling back into a prior state. I'm okay at 20m circles at canter or trot on the flat but the addition of obstacles clearly is a problem at this time. I wonder what I could do, to address that seemingly unreasonable problem. Maybe I'll need to do ground poles on the 20m circle like we did last time where they were put at a "cross" pattern...