Busy Blogger - Jump School 5/7/14

Sorry it has taken me this long to write this post.  I have been really busy the last couple of days.

After my terrifying experience driving to my jump school, I slowly tacked up and got on.  I got to the ring and saw that a new course was set up outside.  How exciting! Liam felt great warming up.  Relaxed, soft, listening, all the good stuff. 

The new course was set up as followed:

We started out by circling the dark green vertical off the left, which was set probably at about 2':

 

We circled it about 3 times.  The first time to it, I came around the blue and kept my leg on and Liam and I was able to move up beautiful to it.  Usually the first time heading to a jump he likes to back off and find the conservative distance.  I like that he is feeling this confident right off the bat.  Next two times around he was great too!

Next we did a small exercise like so:

We started down over another dark green vertical off the left slicing the vertical on an angle.  Liam pulled me past the distance a little again, but it worked out.  Then doing a roll back up over the other dark green vertical off the right.  Slicing this vertical again and making another roll back down over the dark green oxer.  All was set at about 2'6" and the oxer was wide (eeek)!  Liam was great over the verticals and jumped the oxer very hard the first time over.  My position is definitely getting stronger.  A year ago he would of jumped me out of the tack, but I was able to stay with him land and close my leg and he just cantered away.  Good boy!

After that, we jumped the 18 ft one stride boxes to the blue vertical alternating directions (I tried to show you both ways in the two below diagrams, we kept cantering alternation directions):

Liam was looking at the boxes while warming up, so I knew he was going to be really peaky going to them.  Well he sure did "peak".  He stopped about two strides away.  I let him walk up to the box and sniff it.  Picked up my right lead canter and he jumped the first box, no problem, but stopped at the second box.  I let him sniff the second box.  Went back at it off the right and he jumped right through the one stride, no problem.  Cantered to the blue, turning left after, and went all the way around to the boxes off the left and Liam jumped them again without issue.  Good boy!  Cantered the blue off the left, he took me a little too much to the blue the first time and we got a little underneath the jump, but Liam baled us out.  Good boy AGAIN!  We did this a couple of times alternating the direction and he was being great!

Then, we decided to go back and jump the dark green line both directions which was set as a 3 to 3 true 12' stride line:

I wanted to do the add in 4 up the line, jumping the orange to change directions.  Then doing the 3 to 3 down the line.  I found a nice conservative jump in and the 4 to 4 worked out beautiful.  Reversed over the orange.  Wow, the dark green vertical comes up out of the corner fast, but I found a good medium distance in and was able to close my leg and get the 3 to 3 down the line.  Liam landed a little quick and I had to give him a sharp half halt before the corner, but he did come back and listened.

We decided to add onto that with the following course:



It started out with the same 7 jumps.  The 4 to 4 up the green line went great, nice and soft.  reversed over the orange.  I found a better jump into the dark green line for the 3 to 3.  I was ready for the vertical this time quick out of the corner.  Up the natural oxer in the middle.  This oxer has a natural wall on one side and a roll top on the other.  It is very wide.  Liam decided to jump the standards over this.  I am really proud of my position.  All this core training at the gym is really helping me, I am much stronger.  I was able to stay with him and get inside the dark green vertical like planned rolling back to the blue.   I need to work on continuing on to the blue.  I didn't see a distance rolling back to it and Liam just kept collecting up.  It worked out, but when the jumps get bigger I am going to run into trouble here.  I needed to close my leg and keep coming to the blue.  Around the dark grey oxer and up over the white oxer (light grey above), turning to the lime green oxer.  Both the white and lime green came up on the money beautiful.  I was pretty much done after this, Liam was being such a good boy, but my friend thought I should do one more different course.

It went as followed:

We did the first half of the dark green line in the add in 4 bending to the add in 8 to the lime green.  We wanted the add because the turn to jump 4 was TIGHT!!!  Liam was great.  Really listened for jump 1 and 2 in the add in 4 and came back nicely for the add in 8 to the lime green.   The tight turn worked out great.  I did swing a little wide, but not bad.  Then we were to do the dark green vertical in 6 strides (regular strides) to the natural oxer.  This worked out beautiful.  Around the end of the ring up over the dark grey line which was 5 strides.  I closed my leg out of the corner and the in oxer came up a tad long, but ok, sat up and the 5 was lovely.  Then we were to roll back to the orange in 7 strides to the white (light grey) oxer.  Again the roll back was tight.  I really concentrated on sitting up tall, but the orange came up a little sideways, about a stride away I wasn't sure if we were going to make it, but Liam locked on to the jump and said I got this.  Jumped the orange and the 7 strides to the white was beautiful.

We called it quits after that.  Liam was just plain old listening to me.  I am so proud of my boy, we really have come so far!!!!  Hopefully this continues...

The truck was fixed by the time we ready to head home!  Thank you hubby!