Jumping Without Stirrups

Hey!
Well today I schooled Jazz over fences by myself which is kind of unusual for me but really fun. I don't particularly like jumping over 3' without a trainer but I wanted to work on some stuff before Pony Club Camp. My goals for this lesson was the school giving to the bridle/flexing (mostly on the flat but working to carry that over fences) and to confidently school 3'6" oxers (ramped and square).

Our flat work was pretty ok. Jazz was not really wanting to work, especially if it was working at the trot on dressage so I just made him do what I wanted before moving onto the canter. We did some flexing exercises at the canter to both sides (the right side is the stiffer one) before doing some more basic work with our counter canter. Jazz will canter a nice bouncy (not on the bit but we're working) 30-40 meter circle on the right lead tracking left. He's correctly bend into the circle but loses it and tries to swap leads if the circle gets any smaller. To the right (bent right on left lead) he cannot maintain a circle so we are just doing nice canters up and down the fence counter flexing to the right then straight then counter flexing to the right then straight. We've only schooled it a few times and he is already a lot better about giving in the jaw and poll but not quiet flexible and balanced enough to canter the large circles. We're a work in progress. : )

Anyway, after that I went into the jumping arena and began with some 2', 2'6" and 3' warm-up jumps. I then started jumping a 3' parallel oxer with a halt at the end. There was a just little more than 20 meters on each side of the oxer to work with so everything had to coordinate to keep from having a bad stop/run into the fence. So after jumping that for a bit we started a figure-8 over the jump just playing around and working on waiting for spots, going to spots and balanced turns. Then I decided to drop my stirrups. We schooled to 3' a couple times without stirrups before tying the reins in a knot and coming up to the jumps on a loose rein before dropping them a couple strides out. We did some jump exercises (no hands, playing with deep spots, ect). I ended up mostly scraping the requirement of completely balanced turns when I was giving up my reins to jump. He just had to stay well enough balanced (not totally on the forehand, not dropping his shoulder, ect) to get to the jump correctly. Eventually we worked our way up to 3'6" doing the same exercises. By the way, on a 15.2 thoroughbred that is super narrow, 3'6" is pretty big. We've done up to 4' but its big. My trainer came out at one point and checked my riding/Eq. before we moved up to 3'6" by the way.

So after one of our breaks we wen't back up to the fence (no reins, no stirrups, been riding for over an hour) and I let Jazz back off the jump when I didn't see a spot. Big oops. So he kind of jumped, kind refused and kind of landed on top of it. Sort of. He was fine and I checked him nose to tail and besides a small scrape on his nose he was just fine. For whatever reason, I had put on our thick neoprene XC boots instead of our leather jump boots so Jazz had a fair amount of leg protection. I reset the jump and we went at it again. This time when I didn't see a spot I foze in the saddle and Jazz made to correct decision to not go over the fence unbalanced with a non-functioning rider. So he refused/stepped out of it and we circled back to take it again. This time I put my leg on and went to the fence when I didn't see a spot. And we cleared it without a problem. We then jumped is 2-3 more times to make sure it was a good exeperience before quiting for the day.

I was pretty proud of him and am looking forward to camp next week! I also got some videos of the ride and put them together in a video. Here it is::