Rose in May Part 3: I'm a Dressage Trainer Folks

After Flounder had a super confidence boosting ride with his kid on Saturday morning, I hopped on! I was so grateful that I'd had the ability to do that and that she'd ridden him so tactfully. 

Kate had me jump one fence in warm up without much trotting or cantering. I think I was in there for maybe 2 minutes at most. That was the other great thing about this plan: I eliminated the warm up and went in cold. 

I loved these standards so much, I decided to get
really close to one of them

Good thing we did that because I proceeded to have the best round of my show so far. We dropped a couple of rails because my riding still wasn't quite where I wanted it to be, but I didn't lose my head at all. I only had a little bit of tunnel vision and I came out really pleased with even more information. 

There were some confounding variables, sure. I definitely felt more comfortable in the jumper ring just because we don't have changes and it's tough to make horse distances in the hunters (there were no combinations in the jumper classes for this show/level). I also liked how the courses were more complicated, as much as I was concerned I'd panic and not remember the course, it ended up being easy to remember and there weren't so many long lines that made me second guess myself. 

But I think the lack of warm up was huge: I had absolutely nothing to trigger that visceral fear in me before going into the ring. Warm ups... apparently I'm totally fine with being mowed down in the dressage warm up, but someone gets a little close to me in the jumping warm up and I'm not okay. I mean... come to think of it, TC has always been the most enthusiastic horse in the warm up ring soooo maybe we're the ones terrorizing other people rather than being terrorized ourselves. Oh no. Oh noooo. 

He is the cutest

That wasn't my last class on Saturday though! I participated in the Hack and Splash later that afternoon. The class was a hunter hack class to benefit a charity, the catch was that we had to carry around a cup of water with us while we were in the class. Flounder had done it before and the fences were small, so I was game. 

I got my cup of water and went into the arena with 8 or so? other horses. There were 19 total in the class and we'd been split into two groups. Water was measured based on how much we lost out of our cup and the least amount lost won. 

As a dressage rider, the idea of riding one handed in a jump saddle, including over jumps, was concerning. Although in my last jumping lesson, I mysteriously started pulling on the right rein instead of the left, so I did jump some fences with my right hand behind my back. So you could say I was prepared. 

I don't have pictures of the fun class just yet, but
I'll use it for a WW when I do get them!

Shockingly, we did very well! After cantering the second direction, I realized that I'd actually not lost any water. How insane would it be to get through the whole thing without losing ANY water? Well, that almost happened as I took the first jump and no water spilled out. Holy shit. Buuuut I saw a short one for the second fence and got a little concerned about the water, causing Flounder to chip rather than just quietly shorten his step. I lost what ended up being 0.1 centimeters of water out of my cup.

We went to stand in the crowd and everyone told us how impressed they were that we hadn't lost any water over the first jump! I was like well, Flounder gives an amazing feeling over the fence. But it also felt REALLY good to be able to do this, clearly I had a lot of stability in the tack on the flat and over fences, and as someone who has, no joke, absolutely complained about how short my stirrups are in the jump tack EVERY SINGLE TIME I RIDE, I was pretty proud. 

The 0.1 centimeters lost was enough to win the class!! I got a very cute tumbler with the horse park's logo on it for my efforts and Flounder got a lot of carrots and cookies (I mean, he got lots of them all weekend). 

Such a fast fish! Note: we were not fast

Kate and I discussed and decided to end the weekend with just one jumper class the next morning. I was kind of torn because I was like... if the first course goes badly I would want to go in again, but if it goes well, I could always scratch. Kate said she'd rather us wish we'd done more, which was the right decision, so we just signed me up for the one class. 

This time I'd be warming Flounder up myself, so that would bring the warm up back into the picture, more information. It was a different warm up though, much larger than the hunter warm up. 

We didn't do a ton in warm up, just three jumps and then Kate asked if I felt okay to go over. I said yes, I feel as good as I'm going to feel. Kate asked what else we could do in warm up to make me feel better and I said that I could use like 40 Advil. She said that it was long past that time, which was correct. But seriously jumping that many days in a row completely destroyed my body! 

Such a good fish

The last course was amazing. I could not have asked for anything better. 

The course started out with a hilarious moment that made me laugh as I cantered to the first fence, that might have made the difference. Basically, I heard the buzzer and then glanced to the board to see if my name was up there, but it wasn't. I thought it had been the day before, it didn't matter since I wasn't competing for real, but I then second guessed if that was my buzzer. I really didn't want to be rude and start jumping if it wasn't my turn just yet. 

I yelled for Kate because again, it didn't matter, "is that my buzzer?" and she yelled back that it was. The announcer then said "yes, Megan, that's your buzzer" and I said "sorry, it's been a long week!" and he said "it's okay, she's a dressage trainer folks" which he'd found out when asking me why my number was upside down as I walked in. And probably assumed when I was complaining about my stirrups being short at the gate earlier. 

I laughed the entire way down to the first fence and then potentially put in the best round of my life. It wasn't perfect but I was able to ride just like I did at home and not lose my head. As I landed off the last jump, I was grinning, it was SO MUCH FUN! I can't remember the last time I had fun DURING a round. 

What an amazing way to end my first show! And more importantly, what a great information gathering weekend it was. 

Rose in May Part 2: My Mental Game

The next day, I was in the same division with a hunter class and then a hunter undersaddle class. I decided to braid Flounder on Thursday night and he looked AMAZING for Friday. I mean, as amazing as one can look when one decides to rub out half one's mane reaching through the fence for grass sprigs. 

LOOK how adorable he is, please note the butt
wrinkles, the nose, and the sweet ears!

I took Flounder over to warm up and once again, he was THRILLED to be at the horse show. But this time, the warm up was busy. It was set up in such a way that we didn't have a ton of space, they really had no choice in how to set it up as it was definitely the smallest warm up on the property. There were three fences with almost no room to go between them and then the rail had one and a half tracks between the edge of the standard and the rail. 

That would have been fine and was the day before, but I ended up having a few incidents that triggered some deep fears in me, apparently. Flounder was FINE, but we got pinned on the rail once, had to slam on the brakes to let someone pass, and had some trouble figuring out how to get to the jumps with people in the way. I wasn't actually, logically afraid because it's Flounder, but my body slowly pumped full of adrenaline. 

It came to a head when I was passing a jump at the canter and someone cantered up behind me and jumped the jump at the same time. I suddenly broke him to trot and felt panic flow through me. I wanted OUT of the arena. I went to Kate and she helped me remember that I was on FLOUNDER and not any of my green, spooky training client horses from years ago... It was okay. 

I don't KNOW why I'm like this lol

But it was not okay. I got into the arena and I had a similar round to the ones I had in 2010 when I was taking the young stallion around his first events while simultaneously working with a LOT of naughty/green horses over fences. I used to tell people that show jumping was my weakest phase and it was... but I didn't actually realize WHY it was my weakest phase. 

Turns out I was having panic attacks in the show ring. And, now that I know what they are (thank you to the worst year of my life, 2018), I could correctly identify that I had another one on Friday at this show on Flounder. I can only describe it as feeling TERRIFIED despite there being absolutely no threat. Like I knew there was no threat, Flounder didn't do anything wrong, he jumped all the jumps and didn't stop or even shake his head... 

But again I can't emphasize how terrified I was for absolutely no reason whatsoever. I had horrible tunnel vision and couldn't take any real breaths. I was shaking and basically only able to steer around the course, which felt completely out of control. Flounder is the best and he took care of me to the best of his abilities. Just like before, I made it around without forgetting my course or really doing anything *too* badly. 

Watching the video I was just thinking "eh, maybe don't put him to nothing so much, Megan" but there was nothing shocking about the way I looked from the outside. And that's when it all came together for me, the realization that no one knew I was having panic attacks in the show ring because I genuinely just look kind of normal, or maybe a bit shitty but not unreasonably shitty. 

Jumping around with Flounder wondering wtf
is going on up there

I come out of the ring shaking and honestly have almost no memory of what exactly happened between entering the ring and getting back to the barns maybe? I know based on the messages I sent to my friends and what I wrote in my journal that I resisted feeling what I was feeling and instead tried to deflect. Kate made me feel my feelings and walked me through some breathing exercises and helped me get myself grounded. 

Pausing here I just want to say how much I appreciate Kate. It would have been easy for her, like my former trainers, to say something like "hey that wasn't so bad, don't worry about it! Try not to put him to nothing and keep your leg on, cool, have fun in your flat class and I'll catch up with you later." That would have been acceptable and it was what happened for a VERY long time with many different trainers. I didn't have words to describe what was happening to me and I had an ego like most young horse trainers did, so even if I did have words, I probably wouldn't have admitted it. This time though, my trainer is my best friend and even if she wasn't, she has an amazing ability to see through all the bullshit. I love that about her and this is why I'm choosing to come back into jumping now, because I can do it with her. 

Once I'd calmed down, I opted out of my flat class, went back to the barn, and wrote down as much as I could about it. As much as it was very un fun to have a panic attack in the show ring, I had achieved my goal: I had information. 

The only real difference day to day was the warm up and I had definitely felt it starting in warm up. With that realization in mind, I remembered that my last 3+ shows over fences (12 years ago) had insane warmups. Whether because my trainer put a fence up 6+ inches above where we were showing to "get him to jump the shit out of them" without telling me and instead we crashed through it, or because I was dodging other horses due to being on a stallion, or because I was being stretched in every direction with clients while my horse's owner watching from the sidelines. 

The most adorable braided fish

We opted to put me into a ticketed round later that day at the same height. I warmed up much better but was still full of adrenaline from earlier. I had a much better round with only a small amount of panic, but Flounder had lost a bit of faith in me and we ended up having a stop. I felt it coming from a mile away but that panicky feeling led to me not being quick enough to make sure he made it over. We finished the course just fine though!

Despite having a mental breakdown, I remained in pretty good spirits the rest of the day. I tried really hard to stay in the moment, not make any big decisions at the show. The purpose of the show was to gather information. If I crashed and burned the rest of the show, that was information. If I was able to bounce back, that was information. There was no reason to dissect the show until it was over. The only thing I had to think about was what to do for the rest of the weekend to gather the most information.

As we sat and watched the derby, I told Kate what I wanted to do: I wanted one of her kids to take Flounder around a jumper class in the morning and then I'd do the second jumper class. 

Downtown Paso Robles is really cute!

The reasons for this were:  

1. I wanted Flounder to be guaranteed to have a confidence boosting ride and I knew I was going to be hit or miss depending on my warm up. If he stopped a bunch with me, who is to say it was me riding him to the stops or him saying "hey she was real shit yesterday and I don't want to play with her anymore" 

2. I wanted to experiment with almost no warm up for myself, have him warmed up for me

3. I wanted to eliminate any issues we might have switching rings with Flounder sometimes being a little spookier in the jumper ring

I was VERY glad to do this because Flounder got a confidence boosting ride the next morning that set him right back where he was before I let him down. I'm so grateful that Kate's student was there, she is an INCREDIBLE rider.

As much as it was no fun to realize that I couldn't give him what he needed that morning, it was great to be able to confidently put the horse first with no concern for my once fragile ego. I have no goals in this sport except to have fun and while I have a lot of strengths, clearly I have this weakness that needs to be addressed. I'm putting my future horse first by working through it before I bring him into my life and I'm putting Flounder first by happily stepping aside to let him rebuild confidence with someone who can help him with that. 

Tomorrow, I'll reveal how my last rounds at the show went!

Rose in May Part 1: Returning to the Hunters

Last weekend was a BLAST! I got to show over fences at a rated show for the first time in TWELVE YEARS and compete in a hunter class for the first time in TWENTY YEARS. 

Actually, um, I'm going to stop doing the math. This is getting depressing. 

The point is, Kate's barn goes to two really cute B rated hunter/jumper shows every year and I finally got one on my calendar! 

Omg look at this fish

My goal coming into this show was to gather as much information as I could. I didn't need to win any ribbons (given that I'm a professional, I couldn't even compete for ribbons over the weekend anyway because of the bizarre way hunter jumper shows are run) or even go around clear or even all that well for me to consider it a success. I wanted to keep my long term goal of returning to eventing very much at the forefront of my mind rather than get bogged down in being disappointed about not returning with an armful of ribbons (I mean, I could just throw TC back into the dressage ring if ribbons were what I wanted). 

The greater goal is to get my show jumping to a point where I am confident and capable. Show jumping has always been my weakest part of eventing. What better way to do so than at a hunter/jumper show where I can show 6 over fences classes in a whole weekend? Rather than spending the equivalent amount on an event and only get one show jump round and one cross country round? Especially if I was concerned that the show jump round may be bad enough where I can't move on to cross country...

And that really was a risk. You'll hear more about that tomorrow. 

The show grounds were beautiful!

We arrived too late to school Wednesday, but that was okay because Flounder has been to these shows before and we chose to keep me at a comfortably low level all weekend. I also worked clear through the week (felt very guilty asking for more time off during my first five months, they let me go to Kentucky after all... although my manager knew I was at the show and asked if he could take some stuff off my plate! I said no lol), so I left after my meetings were over on Wednesday and arrived with the last two horses around 7:30pm. 

After everyone was settled, I went to get us dinner and then Kate and I got to our hotel room to relax before passing out. I had some work to do early the next morning, so I did that while also updating my safe sport (oops) and got to the barn without too much time to spare. 

The entire time at the show I only had ONE thing to do for work that had to be done at a specific time that was during the show or could conflict with classes: I had a training from 10am to noon on Thursday. When I heard that my class began at 9:15 I thought, oh well, I will scratch and just do the ticketed rounds later in the day maybe? Or just not show that day? School later? Try to find a dressage court so I could feel at home?

But everyone told me it'd be FINE, that I could be one of the first few in the ring and that I could hand Flounder off the moment I got off. I set several alarms on my phone (one labeled POINT OF NO RETURN) where I had to immediately get off the horse and RUN to my computer. 

Me, shortly before running to my computer

My two classes were running simultaneously, so I memorized both courses (and remembered that hunter courses are so easy, I legit just memorized the first fence and then followed the flowers) with the idea that I'd do both back to back without leaving the show ring and I got into warm up. Flounder was FEELING IT but we had the warm up to ourselves for the most part so we felt our feelings and jumped some fences. Right at the end, I started getting a bit nervous about making my meeting though. 

As I was cantering around to the next fence I started saying "I'm having the FULL AMATEUR EXPERIENCE! I need to get through these two rounds ASAP so I can go to a MEETING" which I and another professional in the ring thought was hilarious. I mean, honestly the entire weekend was a masterclass in amateur hour shenanigans brought to us by me, a professional. 

The jumper ring!

I did make my meeting after two very average rounds. I was a little nervous given that I'd never shown Flounder over fences like these before and didn't put in the best rounds, but they were all mistakes I typically make at home and I mostly kept my head, so I was happy! We missed one lead in each class and I found out that our left drift was kind of ridiculous in the lines. I also discovered that Flounder REALLY has to be moving to make the horse distances and decided that I didn't give two shits about trying to make the distances. Basically, a really good first day!

My meeting went well except for the fact that I took it in my truck and my truck died due to me being dump and not turning it on but having the air running with the key turned half way. Oops. But it did allow me to teach the children later about jumping a truck. 

It was fun to be at the show after that just watching and cheering everyone on while carrying my work around with me. I went shopping (found really nice breeches at 50% off!), placed a riding warehouse order that got delivered the next day, and watched a ton of classes. Honestly it was kind of a breath of fresh air to see no horses with their noses severely behind vertical... I know every horse sport has its issues but I was generally really impressed with the way most of the horses went at this show. 

Look at that lip!

I went to sleep that night super excited for the next day! I had my list of things I wanted to improve about my rounds and no meetings to stress me out in the warm up. It was bound to be a good second day!

Jumping Update

I figure, given that a week from today I'll be showing over fences for the first time in a long time, I should probably provide a jumping update. 

I love his nose in this one, trying so hard

Flounder continues to be the coolest little horse. He's so much fun and gives such a good feeling over fences. For this first year or two that I'm coming back into jumping, he's provided such a nice safe space to do that in without just packing me around. 

Kate is obviously amazing for bringing Flounder into my life, but she's also an amazing instructor. I am having so much fun learning from someone so much more technical than the trainers I had in my youth. There's too much to post about, honestly, but some of the themes have been:

- using my slingshot to improve the way Flounder jumps through a grid

- timing the aid for a lead while in the air and not getting in the way of him responding

- timing my breathing to optimize the way he jumps

- dealing with my right hip and the myriad of issues it's been causing

- addressing my tendency to freeze a bit (and stop breathing) when coming up to a fence I can't see a distance too

- going over the specific mechanics of going from my neutral position into my jumping position without jamming my foot down in the stirrup

And most recently, trying to figure out my mental game as we prepare for this horse show next week!

Is he not the CUTEST

Unimpressed by this one

I'm really excited for the show, but my brain is a little apprehensive. I'd say for the 2 or so years before I quit jumping, show jumping became a problem that I never got to address. 

See, being an assistant trainer at an event barn meant that it was my job to ride babies who had never jumped before and also any horses who didn't jump safely for their owners. This meant that I rode a ton of stoppers, horses who bolted after they landed off of combinations, horses who bucked after jumps, and horses who wouldn't jump fill or spreads or banks or ditches. 

For some reason, this manifested in me being very anxious about showing over show jumps. Cross country? No problem. No idea why, those jumps don't come down!!! Should I not be more afraid out there? Somehow I am not afraid on cross country. And honestly I'm not even afraid over the show jumps, it's hard to explain. My brain just... stops working. 

So adorable

So while I am feeling pretty good in the schooling ring at home, I am wondering how the show will go. But luckily my goals for the show are primarily to gather information. See how deep the issues run, see what it feels like when they kick in, and see how I respond to it. This will allow Kate to dig into it at home and then we'll go to another show this fall to see how I've improved!

I love this plan because I don't really want to sign up for an event only to get to the second day (let's be real, I'll be doing BN or below so I'll be doing cross country last) and have my brain freeze up so I get eliminated. Once I'm an old pro in the arena over fences, THEN I can sign up for an event. 

Wish us luck at the show! We leave on Wednesday, but I'm not taking the days off of work so we'll see what I can do those first few days. But the weekend should be super fun! 

Kentucky 2022 - Cross Country

We woke up fairly early on cross country day so that we could spend the entire day at the horse park. The four star went in the morning and then the five star started just after lunch. 

The classic shot

After declining Jen’s tailgating invitations for years, we finally got to go! We spent the morning there watching the four star from the tailgating spot while we enjoyed Jen’s amazing food. Legitimately it was the best food we had all weekend (we did cook for ourselves a few times, which was also very good, so that’s my advice). 

It was blogger central, which was fun! I finally got to meet some new bloggers after so many years of not meeting anyone in person. As expected, everyone was super nice. My insomnia made it really difficult to interact normally with other humans, but I tried! 

After an amazing lunch, we decided to go to the start (and end) of the course to try to watch every jump. It was kind an out and back course, so we were able to see the first and last jumps and zig zag between the tracks before we ended up at the head of the lake. 

Watching the four star from Jen's tailgating spot,
which I neglected to get a picture of

The jumps are HUGE, obviously, these horses are so incredible. Seeing it in person is other worldly at times, like what even is this place where the grass is green and the jumps are as large as a small house? 

We were lucky to not see anything too scary. The worst we saw was a horse landing a little hard on the ditch and wall and the rider popping off. Horse and rider were totally fine, just an unfortunate moment.

There was a really long hold out on course and we had no idea why. This was the challenge all day. I bet if we had been better at paying attention, we could have figured it out, but it was really hard to hear/pay attention to the announcer. So we were sitting at the Normandy bank wondering what was going on and the longer the hold was, the more nervous we were. Without being afraid of what was happening, it was honestly nice to just sit down and relax, but we were on edge worrying. 

Later on we found out that a horse had fallen in the water and had to be sedated and taken off course. No one knew anything else around us though. Only that afternoon when the day had ended did we finally figure out which horse it was and that the horse was going to be fine (we knew the rider was fine from earlier in the day), so that was good! Still really scary to be out on course and I can’t imagine what it would have been like to see it happen.

All of my pictures were from videos on my phone
if you can't tell lol

I was so impressed when the hold stopped and the horse finally came through our jump, what a jump to be held in front of! But whoever came through was amazing and just popped right through. And then we continued our walk! 

The coffin complex was absolutely amazing to watch, as was the sunken road. We finally saw Boyd Martin and Michael Jung come through when we were at the edge of the course. Seeing both of them up close was pretty cool, different styles of riders but both rode so seamlessly over the fences we saw them at. 

We ended up at the head of the lake watching the last few riders. We moved around a bit to make sure we got to see it from different angles. During that time, a rider ended up causing a jump to collapse, so that was interesting to see! We’d seen one earlier on the 4* course that was being stored collapsed and it’s really amazing technology. Not like I’ll ever jump a jump with frangible tech, but I still love that they’re working hard to make the sport safer. 

These open ramp jumps are pretty scary, yikes

At the end of the day, I was feeling so inspired. I’ve had a rough time with the dressage for the last few years and jumping has been a fun thing to do to take my mind off of it. I wondered whether this weekend would make me want to event more or make me shift my gears toward another sport where the jumps fall down. But after that weekend, I am very confident that I want to make my return to eventing. I sat down that evening and did some calculations on where I needed to get to in my career and how much I needed to save to buy my next horse, who I want to be an eventer. 

I love dressage and I always will. I want to continue to learn and take TC up through the levels. But I want to be in a sport where I don’t have such a sour taste. And for that, eventing is perfect. 

It’ll take me a little while to get to the point where I can buy a horse (since I’m going to want a hefty budget so I can buy something very safe and who is my very specific ride over fences), but I do want to switch disciplines. Or at least, add another discipline! So, two to three years from now, I’ll be in the market for something very specific and hopefully will be gearing up to run my first BN in fifteen years. 

Tiny Jomps

So I've been continuing to ride little Sunny, my mom's 14.2h (or so) pony. We skipped our potential western dressage schooling show this last weekend because of the smoke. It probably would have been fine but when the entries were due, we had no idea what was going to happen. 

I broke down this spring when I was desperately saddle shopping and bought a brockamp bareback pad. When I first got it, I was not toooo impressed, it just felt like a regular bareback pad. But then after riding in it, I got in my saddle (well, the demo saddle I gave back) and it felt insanely slippery. Then I realized that it's not just the cushioniness that makes that bareback pad amazing, I don't think I could fall off using it even if I tried. 

Dear, Sunny, that is not a challenge. Oh, TC would never. 

Look how excited he was to jump tiny jumps, also
wow he has lost weight, he was very chonky when
I started riding him

Anyway, my niece came out to ride with me a week and a half ago and I put her on the bareback pad in front of me and it was super comfortable. After that, I just started using it on him more than the western saddle. 

All last week and this weekend I played with the cavallettis that I talked about last week. I went from the circle of death to two outside lines set a forward 5/short 6 apart. We practiced cantering them and adjusting his step. 

On Friday, I decided to raise them because both TC and Sunny kept shifting the lines by knocking poles. That made it way harder for me to adjust him since I had to remember who moved what pole where. I just raised the inside side of the pole because there are only six cavalletti blocks and also I got tired of moving things around in the heat. 

Those are tennis shoes, yes

Sunny had SO MUCH FUN cantering over the poles. I had my pivo on and this helped me realize that my problem on Sunny has been that he's kind of underpowered over fences. That means he has to lurch over the jumps and when he gets to the other side, he figures he'll just keep bronc bucking. He's just an adorable little pony, so he needs a bit of speed to make up for his little legs?

I called Kate and chatted with her about it. It's also my tendency to underpower Flounder to the fences so I had to tell her that I was going to practice racing at all the jumps on Sunny. I can't believe she still wants to teach me after all of the obnoxious things I say about my return to jumping. 

That... IS a western bridle, you are very astute

I put up a little jump on Saturday and decided to try it out. We started with the world's tiniest cross rail and ended up with the world's second most tiny cross rail, but he was actually really good! 

My goal was to ride the lines in five and then turn to the fence, keeping the same pace. I also wanted Sunny to take me a bit more to the fence like Flounder does, so teaching him to come out of the corners powerfully to get over the line (the arena is like... ten Sunny strides long) really helped him stay powerful through the corner to the single fence. 

Yes... that is a dressage whip, we are a very confused
pair, okay??

We only jumped it a few times and I called it quits. I think today (or whenever, I don't know when this post is going to go out), I'll put up two other jumps, (remember, limited cavallettis here) and try to ride more of a course. I need more than one jump to not teach a horse to stop after jumps because I will absolutely stop 2-3 strides after landing if I can, I have no idea where that habit came from. 

Then hopefully we can haul over to Kate's barn fairly soon! I think she's got a jumping saddle that I can borrow.

Jumping Lesson in San Diego!

When I decided to head down to San Diego, I told L that I wanted to do three things: eat lots of tacos, see lots of ponies, and take a jumping lesson from her trainer (if that was possible, and it was)! 

It was so fun!!

Definitely jumping ahead but that's... going to take
me a while I think lol

I had kind of been slacking on my jumping lately AND I realized that I’d only been jumping Flounder since my return to jumping. I love the fish but he’s obviously just one horse who has one type of jump and I was worried it’d take me a bit to figure out this new horse. I also worried that riding at a nice hunter barn in purple full seat breeches would be real awkward. 

Trainer DY is the NICEST person in the world and also so so good at what she does. She put me on the horse who actually attacked L, he can be a little snarky on the ground (not a surprise) but the moment I was on him, he was such a good boy. Not spooky, not lazy or hot, high enough tone to be super rideable but not so high tone that he felt tense. I immediately felt comfortable on him even though my stirrups were very short the correct length for jumping small fences. 

Dante's ears are so cute!

DY had us warm up with some forward and back, alternating between doing some work in sitting trot/full seat in canter and posting trot/jumping position in canter. I got my bearings but remembered that my short little jump stirrups took away the effectiveness of my leg aids and Mirlo slowly realized that I was not very effective even if my butt felt educated. I always wonder what the horses think when I get on them in jump tack. Like oh shoot this butt knows what it's doing... LOL the legs don't though *slows down*

We built up slowly through the lesson, first riding over a cross rail from the trot, then the canter, then stringing two cross rails together, eventually ending up with a little course! My little jumper horse (who has showed extensively in the meter jumpers and some hunters and equitation I think) definitely had a very different jump from Flounder’s and I tried to explain what I was feeling so DY could understand what to tell me. She said that this horse was more of an upright jumper, so he padded off the ground more aggressively than a horse with a flatter jump. Flounder doesn’t feel super flat, but he definitely doesn’t have this drop in front of the jump, he’s a bit softer off the ground I guess? I don't have the words to describe it at this point. 

I much preferred the longer spots even though they
made me want to jump ahead

Much of what DY had to tell me was what Kate tells me in our lessons, so it was great to hear the same things in different words. Mostly I needed to not jump ahead, keep my eyes up, and keep him upright through the turns and to the fences (he wanted to lean left). I worked really hard to make sure that my lines were well ridden given that I was at a really nice hunter barn and I caught myself leaning through the corners sometimes, woops. DY emphasized the flatwork between the jumps and that kind of woke me up a bit. I'm a dressage rider, I can ride flatwork. So I redoubled my efforts and things got better. 

By the end I felt like I kind of got the hang of his jump. It was so fun to jump a different horse (although I still adore Flounder and am probably too attached to him at this point lol) and especially fun to be in a group lesson with one of my very best friends!! I told L that I hoped that the next time I visit, she and Dante will be jumping so big that it wouldn't make sense to have a lesson together, but maybe DY can still make it work. I definitely want to take more lessons from her! 

Such a good packer horse for me!

Jumping remains so fun for me, it's such a breath of fresh air with how I've been feeling about dressage. Although my post tomorrow about my lesson with my local trainer should read a little more positive. Still, it's fun to have jumping to fall back on as my fun horse activity these days (and Sunny's western dressage training, which is still going, I just haven't had time to post about him!). Major thanks to L and DY for making my weekend in San Diego even more fun by letting me jump, yay!

Breathing

I had a jumping lesson last week that was pretty interesting. Without a dressage trainer, I've been trying to utilize my jumping lessons as a time to get some excellent eyeballs on my position and effectiveness and then also to, you know, enjoy jumping. 

Kate asked me what I'd been pondering for the last two weeks (we skipped last week because Flounder was off being an adorable hunter pony) and I told her my core! I'd worked out the day before and the trainer had asked me if I was doing a bunch of core work. I said absolutely not, I have been doing probably the least amount of core work that I've ever done. Not riding TC much, only sitting the trot occasionally on my client's horses, not doing nearly enough working out between sessions. But he said my core looked strong. 

I thought that was interesting because a few weeks ago, Kate pointed out that I don't use my core over fences, I tighten my lower back and let my abs dangle from my back. 

The one picture I took that day,
Flounder's mane was cute

She had me warm up over a small course of cross rails and I was to growl/make noise a la Mary Wanless to make sure that my core was engaged. I could NOT make my voice particularly loud, like I thought I was being loud enough but Kate couldn't hear me. That and me having to take giant breaths to recover after a short and easy course made Kate ask about my breathing. 

This immediately brought me back to TC. My new bodyworker lady says that TC rarely takes deep breaths and I have been noticing that I, too, do not take many deep breaths, just kind of throughout my life. I don't honestly know why. I get enough oxygen, obviously, I have not passed out yet, but I breathe really shallowly. I've been working hard on breathing more deeply around him and praising him when he takes deep breaths, but it's really hard for me to focus on breathing in a different way than I normally do. 

Back to Flounder, Kate wanted me to canter on a circle over a cross rail and do box breathing with the canter. I was to inhale for four strides, hold my breath for four strides, exhale for four strides, hold my breath for four strides, and rinse, repeat. I was fairly successful until I saw... nothing. Flounder is great and will always jump even if the distance is terrible, but I immediately lost my box breathing. 

We stopped and chatted about that. How when I see things that I don't like coming, I hold my breath, and what that means to the horse. We started talking about holding breath during riding in general, something I see my students do in the dressage during movements (and then they get sloppy between movements as they catch their breath). Why does one hold their breath though?

He was running away from birds and looked fancy

Well, I squatted the day before and I always take a deep breath at the top and hold it during the squat. That increases my internal pressure and therefore provides me with stability because holding ones' breath does to the fascial net the same thing that engaging one's core does. That's super helpful in weight training. 

Except that my barbell doesn't care if I'm breathing or not. It sits heavily on my traps and doesn't think too hard about why I'm holding my breath. Flounder, and TC, and horses in general, DO think about why I'm holding my breath. If a horse is out in a herd and one horse gets super tense and stops breathing, the other horses are going to notice and might look around like "what is he worrying about" so there I am on the back of TC, breathing shallowly, wondering why he won't just relax and take a deep breath. Wondering why Flounder loses confidence in me when I hold my breath when I don't see a distance. 

We ended on a really great note with a short 2'6 course with me aiming to exhale as we took off from the fence and inhale upon landing. The best fences with the best stability in my position were the ones where I got my breathing to coordinate with what we were doing. Flounder felt amazing over the last fence in particular when I figured it out. 

We both need to breathe!

I then went to ride TC and found myself breathing shallowly through the first half of my ride. I stopped and did more box breathing, then went into the canter and did the same exercise I did with Kate. Upon coming back into trot, TC's stride opened up and I could feel his back swinging more and more. 

I must have looked absolutely absurd breathing so aggressively, but who cares, TC certainly didn't! And when we got back to the barn, he took several big deep breaths, one in the cross ties, one while getting hosed down, and one when I put him back into his stall. 

I'm definitely super interested in continuing to see how this affects TC. I've been clicking for deep breaths from him but I think I need to figure out how to get myself used to breathing deeply too! I think some yoga or meditation or something that forces you to think about breathing is in my future. And hopefully that encourages TC to find his breath too. Poor guy, I might have been low key telling him that the world is a scary place when I really was just trying to find stability in my position or trying to focus on something. 

Old Habits Die Hard

 So I took a couple weeks off from jumping (due to burn out for the most part) but then got back to it last week!

I was excited to ride Flounder because while I hadn’t practiced at all, I had been watching more jumping videos (there was an event last weekend so lots of my IG people were schooling the last few weeks) and felt like I was ready to really push myself a bit more. All the residual fear from the last few lessons was gone now that I was more secure in my position and I was ready for a good challenge. 

It’s like Kate could tell because she hiked up the fences on me last week! 

We began with working over some small fences, focusing on a few bad habits of mine. First, my inability to get my weight out of my stirrups and second, my inability to not arch my back if she asks me to do anything with my position. Both are previous patterns I was told to do over and over and over again as a kid. 

Such a good fish

The arched back is REALLY interesting to me because in the last three or so years, I've went from a hollow backed rider to a round backed rider in the dressage. TC requires a lot of front line activation and he's my primary horse so I have slowly let that influence me. But suddenly, even after strengthening that front line SO MUCH on him and letting my back line lengthen and weaken, you put me into a jumping position and I arch my back again. 

Every single thing that Kate says to me throughout the ride somehow makes my back more hollow except when she tells me to flatten it. She put me in my jumping position and asked me to lengthen my thigh (for the slingshot) and I arched my back. She asked me to close my armpit at the back and I arched my back. She asked me to push my hips back in the air and I arched my back. Everything that isn't telling me to not arch my back arches my back. So I'm doing a lot of exercises at home and on TC dealing with that.

Go Flounder! 

The weight in the stirrups thing is a bit more understandable. I've been told to get my heel down, my leg down, my knee off the saddle, and my toe out as long as I can remember jumping horses. It's amazing how insecure that position feels in comparison to the one Kate wants me to have, yet I still default to it like crazy! 

A lot of the time when the biomechanics work makes riders feel really secure, they have an easier time making that change in the long run. Kate's Mary inspired jumping position makes me feel like I'm NEVER coming off a horse, even if the horse were to stop in the dirtiest of manners, and yet I abandon it when I see a jump coming. 

Putting my weight into my thigh in jumping stirrups has been a mind trip, but wow I have so much influence over the horse over the fence. And Flounder is perfect for this. As the jumps went up (we topped out at 2'9 I think), I had complete control over how he jumped the fences. 

If I got my slingshot on, I could put him onto his haunches without touching his face and therefore it'd give him a bit more of a bascule and I could see my distances every time. If I kept my elbow loose and relaxed, he'd jump up through my hand better and have a neater front end (you can see this in those two pictures). If I kept my core engaged, I'd have a huge amount of influence on the back side and didn't feel like I needed to make crazy moves to get him to go straight afterward. All of this depended on me getting out of my stirrups because that raised my center of gravity, causing me to lock my elbow and drop my core. 

Don't worry, TC will always be my best friend and
dressage partner!

Jumping has been so fun! I'm excited to continue and am starting to make plans for what I want in the future because that's just who I am. I love Flounder, but he's one who can get around 3' without so much room to spare that you can ride like a monkey to the jumps (rude lol). He's perfect for now because he makes it so obvious when I make a mistake and I feel like by the time I can jump him around a 3' course without any mistakes, I'll be pretty much set for a variety of horses. But for my next horse, I want something that can take a lot of jokes at the meter level. 

Kate and I discussed that and she agreed that Flounder is perfect (in general) for this year and then next year we'll look for something a bit more talented (no offense to the most perfect Flounder!). Could I handle that horse now? Yes, I'd like the horse to be one that my niece can ride (or that would be an easy lease to a pony clubber) and that my mom can ride a bit on the trails with me. But Flounder is perfect for now and he's letting me get my sea legs back while I save all my dollars for the new horse and get myself situated (seeing as I need both horses at the same place and closer to me, so we'll have to go barn hunting sooner or later). 

Yay for jumping Flounder though! 

Jumping Lessons

For the last month-ish, I've been taking jumping lessons! 

On this fish

He is the best!

I used to jump a lot, I'm closing in on the point where I've done dressage for longer than I've jumped, but I have actually still jumped for longer than I've done dressage. I grew up doing pony club (C3-TR and A-DR) and lots of local schooling shows. When I was sixteen, I leased Stretch (who we then bought) and did a year of "B" and "A" circuit shows on him. We did the hunters and the equitation, but also a few jumper classes. Nothing fancy, all in the 2'6 to 3' divisions. When Stretch needed some time to recover from a stifle injury, I leased a couple of event horses back to back and evented at Novice for a year. 

Rico and I jumped a bunch after I bought him. I taught him to jump and we did a combined test once, but mostly just jumped for fun. He could jump 4' like it was a cross rail and he and I jumped a single 4'6 oxer, which remains my biggest jump ever (I have no intention on trying to go for that again lol). I frequently schooled the 3'6-3'9 stuff on him when I was jumping him seriously. 

I then worked for an eventing trainer for a few years and in that barn, I was working over fences on lots of different horses, mostly Training but some Prelim too depending on the horse. I evented a young stallion from his first event through Novice and quit before his Training debut. After that, I took on a client's horse and schooled him to Novice, and even entered him in a horse trials before he had a freak accident and needed to rehab. 

This lesson was a tough one but it was fun!

Around 2013, I started to focus completely on dressage with no jumping in my schedule. That was when Rico was gearing up for the FEI levels and I was in graduate school so really had no time for two disciplines. Plus, I wasn't about to jump Rico while he was headed toward the Grand Prix. And afterwards, I started riding TC and never really missed jumping. 

I realized during those years of doing upper level dressage that I'd never found jumping all that fun. There was a certain point where the jumps just got bigger and scarier and my trainers just told me the same things and I got kind of bored. Lessons where the only thing I'd learn is that I shouldn't take my leg off when I didn't see a distance at an even larger fence than the week before were not intriguing. Dressage was super interesting though, as I learned canter pirouettes and piaffe and passage. The upper levels looked fun rather than scary and I really wanted to get to the top of a sport. I always figured I'd jump again eventually, but that always felt like a long while off. 

Flounder and I listening closely

But then I realized in the last few years that I'm getting older. I mean, you know this your whole life but it kind of hits differently in your 30s maybe? I dunno, I'm very much still young enough to do things like start jumping horses again after ten years but I probably don't have another ten years of being young enough to do things like start jumping horses again after twenty years. I'm not quite as stupid bold as I used to be but I'm still pretty bold. 

I had this moment of realizing that... if I wanted to jump again *one day* then I should probably start jumping again now. It really hasn't been that long since I started winding down so the muscle memory is still there theoretically. And I knew that if I could get my sea legs back early enough, I could jump for a lot longer than if I waited any longer. 

He is the actual cutest

Just a couple weeks earlier

I'm lucky to have a super quality jumping trainer as one of my best friends and for her to have the best possible jumping horse to knock the rust off on. You may remember Flounder as the horse I rode in that intro schooling HT that we won despite no preparation. And Kate is frequently featured in this blog. She listened to me talk to her at length about jumping again one day for a while and then offered to teach me on Flounder. 

Kate has blown me away in my few lessons back to jumping. She is such a good instructor (not that I didn't already know that), she and I do the Mary Wanless workshop together each year and her Mary skills are very present in her jumping instruction. She can take something I know how to do in the dressage and show me how to utilize it over fences. For example, using my slingshot to change the way Flounder jumps, distributing weight through my thigh to immediately make me feel more secure, and keeping my bear down on over fences (which my body finds confusing because my jumping pre-dates my bear down). 

She's also great at understanding what I'm going through and walking the line between helping me with some basic stuff without making me feel like I'm a beginner again. In some ways, my jumping skills are still rather well developed. It's like riding a bicycle to an extent. I still have a pretty decent eye, I still have a good leg, I can even kind of still do my auto release from back in the day when I remember to do it. But in other ways, a lot of my high level instruction came in dressage tack and the shorter stirrups make it tough for me to figure out how to do the same things in jumping tack. And I'm definitely rusty! My old bad habits are still present and probably a little stronger than they previously were but Kate is knocking those out one by one. 

These are all from the same lesson, Google Photos
is being weird so I have limited pictures right now!

I'm really excited to continue jumping. We skipped last week due to a clinic and my own insane burnout. But this week we will pick back up and I'm excited to see what Kate has in store for me! I told Kate that my main goals are to get secure enough to do a grid without hands and to school cross country at some point. Even with just a few lessons, I'm feeling like I'll need to make some new goals soon because those are coming up quickly. 

And just to clarify in case anyone thinks I have ideas for TC:

I will not be jumping TC in any kind of a serious way. This for a variety of reasons, but mostly because when I bought him, he had the beginnings of side bone and the vet told me that he was not suitable for jumping due to this, jumping will speed up the development of it. 

It doesn't mean that I haven't done lots of cavalletti with him or jumped him over small cross rails and small logs on cross country, but if I decide to jump for real again, it will be on another horse who is better built for the job. TC will remain my dressage and trail horse! I have no plans to switch over completely, but I am closing in on the ability to have two horses so one dressage/trail horse and one sporty eventing pony (with three good gaits so we can cross over to the dressage shows) sounds like a good time to me.