2020 Goal Review and 2021 Goals

 2020 Goals:

1. Improve rider position. Let's be real, I'm never going to be the glowing example of dressage equitation, but I was able to be more cognizant of what my body was doing as both Opie and I got stronger as the year went on. Still room for improvement, but improvement was made.
2. Once a week stretch day. I scrapped setting aside one day a week specifically for stretching because without shows my riding/training schedule was pretty sporadic. But I made sure to incorporate lots of stretching throughout every single ride anyway, and there were plenty of rides where stretching was all we did. Gonna call it mission accomplished.
3. Be a bigger cheerleader for myself. Meh. Privatizing the blog was good because I was able to be more honest with how I felt for each ride, but I'm still pretty close lipped to anyone about the good things both my horse and myself do. 
4. Find a balance between pushing Opie forward and making sure he stays happy in his work. All well and good until we really started hitting the changes. And then no. Of course, looking back, how much of it was maybe some sort of lingering soreness in the groin/stifle/hamstring area since that L-R change was never much of an issue. He certainly felt confident with the added collection and cleaning up the lateral work, but the changes nullified this goal for us.
5. Do more jumping. Bish, yes, so much jumping. The 'rona opened up all sorts of fun cross country activities we probably wouldn't have done otherwise. 
6. Ride each movement in our tests. What tests? What show season?
7. Figure out how to score well in the turn on the haunches. What tests? What show season? I do think I broke this down in my head though, and will be able to ride it well next year. 

Well, at least the fundamentals got crossed off? Like a lot of people, this year was kind of a blessing in disguise with being able to step away from focusing on a show season and test riding and just kind of do the thing instead. 

2021 Goals:

1. Have an acceptable, clean flying change each way. They can be a little wild and wooly still, but I want them on regardless. 
2. Ride the lateral work forward.
3. Canter half pass.
4. Carry my hands. As in, in the air. Not with my lap.