Learning to ride over jumps

It is often said that jumping is dressage over jumps. One canter stride is somewhat bigger as the horse goes over the jump. When you jump over a single fence you can do it perhaps any which way you like as long as you get to the other side and hopefully stay on the horse as well.

When you ride a jumping course it becomes much more dressage over jumps. Going over a jump consists of five phases: The approach, the take-off, the flight, the landing and finally the departure. It is easy to talk about this as if it takes a long time for these 5 phases to happen. It all happens in a few seconds.

The approach is important because you need to have the correct dressage skills to place the horse in the middle of the jump and ride the canter stride so that the horse is in the best position for take-off. The best take-off point is determined by the size of the jump and the type, is it a spread fence or an upright. Also the speed of the horse influences the correct take-off point.

In the flight the horse is obviously off the ground with all four legs and it is important that we have the correct position to least interfere with the balance of the horse. If we are too far forward the horse could hit the jump with the front legs or even collapse when he reached the ground for the landing. If we stay too far back in the saddle the horse could hit the rails with the hind legs.

If we were in balance with the horse in the flight over the jump we allow the horse to make a balanced landing which is followed with the departure which is mostly in canter.

When we jump a single fence this is all we have to worry about and of course in the beginning of learning to ride over jumps that is all we do. However, when we start riding a course the departure of one jump becomes the approach of the following jump. The following jump is most likely not straight behind the one we just took, well have to turn right or left. It is clear that we now need to have control over the horse to be able to get to the next jump and to the best take-off point.

As you progress in jumping you will find that some of the single jumps become combination of two or three jumps, they are called combinations. They are harder to jump as there are often only one or two canter strides in between. Sometimes combinations consist of an upright and a spread fence which have different take-off point. With an upright fence the take-off point is closer than with the spread.

When riding courses not all fences are set at ideal distances. With this I mean that all you have to do is just canter to the next jump and you will arrive at the perfect take-off point. Course builders often put in difficulties such as some long strides or a number of short strides between the jumps. This is to test the dressage skill of the rider and that makes riding jumping courses exciting and challenging and fun to watch for spectators.

You will learn how to set up trotting poles, different grids for trot and canter approach, combinations and related fences and lastly how to build a simple jumping course.

Once the preparation is done we explain the methods of safely loading and unloading a horse. In our example we always use two people when loading and unloading, because this is by far the safest way of doing this.