I had a show jumping lesson with Ruth today. To begin with we worked on getting Shadow to listen to my leg, by doing circles round a pole. Ruth told me thet when I go to turn the horse I'm leaning and she wanted me to turn her keeping the horse under me so that I didn't force her to fall on her inside shoulder, she explained all of this to me, and what I needed to do to get it right, I didn't even know I was doing it. We worked on me turning my body instead and keeping my leg on and it was corrected.
Ruth then had me going over a grid of poles on the floor, working on my striding. Ruth soon figured out that I was counting my stride from where I thought the striding was, asking the horse to jump from where I "thought" the horse was supposed to jump, when in actual fact, I'm so focused on the fence and not actually riding that I've actually got the horse in the wrong position, making Shadow mess up her striding to jump it.
By the end of the lesson, Ruth got me to look where I'm going, (instead of me just staring at the fence and jumping ahead of the horse) get my striding right AND got me to turn my body in the direction I want to go ( instead of leaning). I've uploaded a video to my youtube channel Alanna Clarke Equestrian. All in all, a really good lesson with the amazing instructor, Ruth Baxter.
Xoxo Showjumperchick
Ruth below explaining the finer points of NOT leaning!!!
