Advancing my bareback riding

Had an very great lesson with Kime today. I decided I wanted to focus on improving my bareback riding so we spent 3 hours with Zarah. First we worked on the ground (of course) and I realized I've somehow broken my "allow". Hmmm, when did I do that? We fixed that and then we worked on squeezing over jumps. I told Kime that I want to get my bareback jumping more solid so she wanted to make sure Z was going over jumps in a "rideable" manner. We worked on lots of jumping and making sure Z was efficient and smooth over the them.

We improved the falling leaf by me asking for a partial disengagement sooner than I'm used to. That allowed Z to keep the forward motion and turn on the fore with less of a struggle. We also squeezed over 2 cavalettis at w/t/c. We played circle game among the obstacles and the barrel jumps on the circle at all gaits. We were looking for Z to make the decision to go over versus me asking her to go over (maintaining gait on the circle). Her attitude was much more compliant at the end of the ground work. I've been lazy with her ground work as I've been training for endurance and spending more time groundworking others.

Then, I showed her how I'm doing with my bareback riding and we decided the best place to start was improving my ability to ride the extended/fast trot fluidly. The fast trot is the hardest gait to ride bareback because there is so much motion in the horses back. She wanted to do a "lunge line" lesson, so we put Z on the 22' and got started. She focused on transitions so that I could improve my fluidity between the up and down transitions (walk, trot, canter, fast trot, halt). It was my first time doing that bareback and it was quite a challenge! I never knew what would come next and I had to really stay balanced to ride the transitions that quickly. It was a blast and I was actually quite exerted. A couple times, I asked her to stop so I could catch my breath.

A few friends came to watch and had good things to say about how intense the lesson was. I wish I would have had one of them video the session.

Afterwards, Chrissy took a lesson with her (her first lesson with anyone besides me). I've been pushing her to do this. I know I benefit greatly from hearing and learning from as many instructors as I can. They may mean the same thing, but they say it differently and I might hear it in just the perfect way from a particular instructor. I also think they focus on different things and it helps me be more rounded. I commit to myself to take lessons as long as I'm able.

Chrissy had a good time and was glad she did it. So was I.

Before closing the day out, I trimmed Cowboys fronts.