What should I work on between cutting lessons?

The work done between cutting lessons is where actual skill development consolidates — the lesson provides instruction, correction, and new concepts, but the repetition that builds muscle memory, timing, and feel happens in the independent riding sessions between lessons. The most productive between-lesson work is specific rather than general: rather than simply riding the horse and hoping skills improve, the student should have a clear list of specific things the instructor identified in the lesson that need development, and each between-lesson session should address those specific items deliberately. Reining foundation work that directly serves cutting — stops, lateral yields, hip and shoulder control, forward willingness transitions — should be a consistent component of every between-lesson session, because the foundational responses that the instructor will use as correction tools in cattle work must be maintained and developed through the between-lesson sessions rather than allowed to drift. If the lesson introduced a specific position correction — dropping the shoulder, gripping with the knee, tipping forward during the cattle work — the between-lesson sessions should include specific position exercises that address the identified problem rather than hoping it resolves on its own. When access to cattle is available between lessons, brief sessions focused on the specific skill being developed in the current lesson phase — following cattle quietly, developing position on a slow cow, or beginning the earliest concepts of independent work — are more valuable than attempting full cattle work sessions that exceed the student's current independent skill level. Ending each between-lesson session when you have produced a clear positive result on at least one of the homework items builds both the horse's and the rider's sense of progress and makes the next session's starting point consistently higher than the last.