XC School - Go forward!!!

Last night we had a flat lesson with Danny. Lesson learned there was to make sure Legacy is off my leg. I need to be quicker in getting the response off my leg. I need to start my workouts with leg yielding and forward and downward transitions...if I don't get the response I'm looking for (left, right, forward, back) then I need to spur him immediately until I get what I want. I can't give him an inch. Then we worked on getting him to give his right jaw. He's tricky because he appears that he's soft, but he locks his right poll and jaw against my hand...and I lock my hand against him. When going to the right I need to continually ask him to give and watch his jaw muscle to see if it is tense. He has also started to open his mouth and will stick his tongue out when he's mad. I rode without a flash noseband so that I can really identify whether he's soft or not. When on a circle I need him to give his jaw left and right and still remain on a straight line.

So today was the big xc school at Unicorn. He started off really sticky into a few jumps. Then Danny kicked our butts on the big hill bank complex. He brought a skinny chevron and we started by jumping up a bank, go over the hill and jumping the chevron at the bottom of the hill. And we started with a stop...then he started to drill into my head that I just need to make sure he goes forward...wherever he goes it needs to be forward. So we came around and I got after him a bit more and he took the chevron and almost popped me out of the tack!! Then he moved the chevron to the top of the hill and we jumped it both directions...again started with a stop...I continued to get ahead of his motion instead of staying behind him and driving him forward. We got through that as well and started to get into the swing of things. Then we tried to go over the big hill on the bank and drop off the bank...Legacy had a fit...and I let him for a while. I realized I don't know how to use my whip and I need to learn to bridge my reins so I can let go and hit him. I had a bit of trouble getting him to drop off this bank...then Danny had me send him across the field galloping....it seemed like that turned a switch. We got over the hill bank, 2 strides to the chevron a few times and he really started to get in a groove. I realized that I think I was trying to ride too perfectly and worry about getting a perfect stride to every jump, but I can't do that b/c sometimes it's going to be midstride and I still have to get him to move forward. We went through the sunken road and he was great!! It felt like my old horse...he took me right to the jump. I think I got too complacement and didn't ride him at all at Rubicon. I thought the course was going to be relatively easy until we got to the water, but I need to realize that I need to focus and ride aggressive from the warmup on now. Training level was easy for us and I was just a passenger...I need to relearn how to ride him and trust him and myself to make the decisions.