Could you please judge my mare, Saskia or Kia for short and I. This was from last week at the Showpark Summer Classic in Del Mar, CA. This was an optimum round with 20 people, and I ended up winning it! I was soooo happy since optimum is soooo hard! I was about 0.9 seconds away from the time. 
I just wanted a clean, steady round, but the time was good. So, please judge. 
Low Child A/A Jumpers Showpark Summer Classic
August 28, 2012 By 7 Comments
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Great round! You two look fantastic
Back grass field at Showpark. Looks like you had to fight with Kia through parts of this course, with effected your ability to get her to the right distances. Even in that 1st line, it looked like you ended up on a 1/2 stride to fence 2. Still, I like you & Kia…..not sure if you have the right bit. NOw send me something with a jump off.
Thank you! and yeah, she’s a very strong horse, but I really didn’t want to get super long distances like I get a lot because she jumps flat with those. When I first got Kia, me and my trainer tried a ton of bits and a 2 ring gag was the best for her. I might switch to a hackamore though because she is just FANTASTIC in it.
A bit of advice coming from a rider whose horse could pull my butt out of the tack like yours: SHOULDERS are your friends! I noticed you tended to break over a lot over the jump and that means longer recovery time on the back side. Working on strengthening your lower back and your shoulders and controlling your upper body will give you so much better leverage. Watching you and Kia reminded me of how I looked going around on my jumper Slim and remembering shoulders, shoulders, shoulders helped me immensely.
That’s pretty much my exact problem area in riding my shoulders and break over. In jumpers, I always tend to give a really long release just because I’m going faster and stuff, but when I do do the eq classes it’s a little better. I’ve been trying to fix my break over ever since I started riding Kia. It’s just REALLY slowly getting better and better. Haha Thanks for the advice!
I think that the way that she jumps is REALLY cute! how she tucks her knees is SUPER tight and close together but spreads her hooves outover the rail, I really loved watching her jump because her style is so original to what I have seen