Welcome to Gaia! ::

Is this you riding?

Your horse looks very willing, and he's a neat little jumper. The video makes it hard to critique too much... but your position needs some work over fences. They're common errors, especially for people who don't regularly work with a trainer, as well as for a lot of people who do. You appear to be jumping "in your knees" rather than allowing your body to fold at the hips over the fence. You're jumping a little ahead and landing on you're knees, rather than staying in balance throughout the jump, your knee angle opening over the fence rather than closing as it should. Think of waiting for the fence. You don't really jump yourself, you set the horse up for the fence, and then you allow them to jump underneath you. Keep your joints loose, and allow your knees and hips to fold over the fence, closing the angle between your chest and the horse. The over-exaggerated look of this is the "ducking" look that is really popular in the hunter ring right now. You don't want to go that far, but you want to allow your horse to come up to you, rather than bringing your upper body down to meet them, like you see in a lot of people trying to emulate the higher level hunters and jumpers. Granted, with the GP jumpers, their angles just close that much because their horses have that much bascule from that big of a jump. But I digress.

The video quality makes some things hard to see... but I'm guessing from your body position that you're also jumping on your toes, rather than keeping yourself sunken into your heels and balanced over him during the jump. You also don't appear to be giving him much, if any release. I'm not one of those people who insist on a giant crest release every fence, but if you're going to do an automatic release, you need to make sure that you have the balance for it in your body and the suppleness in your arms. From this video, I don't think your position is secure enough to be able to correctly perform an automatic release, so I'd suggest a crest release or a short release until you solidify your position.

On the positive side, you seem to a quiet and sensitive rider. Considering you've had no training, you're doing rather well, but you need refinement, and if you are planning on going any higher, you will need to correct your positional errors. You can get away with stuff like that up until about 3 or 3'3, but then it gets a lot hairier. Your horse needs to have you in perfect balance with him and to have you set him up for a successful jump in order to negotiate the larger fences.

Your horse also obviously adores you. He tries very hard for you and you can see that you have a very strong bond. That speaks well of your horsemanship skills.

Did you want comments on the little bit of flat work you did as well, or only the jumping? Dressage is my specialty, but I used to event and I've taught a lot of jumping lessons as well, so I know what I'm talking about, I'm just not very good at it myself, lol. Those who can't do, teach, right? razz

I agree with what Aria said too, try and get some lessons if you can, it's amazing what consistant lessons can do.

The little bit of flat in the video showed a horse that was hollow, and above the bridle.

Your horse has a super cute jump (dispite being an arab/arab type, who often have a very flat and hollow jump), nice front end. As for you, at this level you aren't hindering him too much with your position, but you have a very loose position, where your leg and whole base of support slide around a lot. You want your leg and lower body to be solid. But other than that, you look like a decent rider especially for being self taught, but to progress lessons really are nessesary. Your mistakes are very common beginner mistakes, and are fixable.

I loved the video in general, the angle and music and editing. The shots where the camera was on his butt are cute. xd