help needed on assinment, bout schooling jumpers HELP PLEASE

[liz--y]

hi,

i really need help on one of the tasks on my assinment,
task- to ensure success in the ring a jumping horse must be gymnastic and balanced at all time, choose three different problems you may encounter when jump training and suggest a possible jumping exercise that may combat each problem

i know theres a few people that aare affilated on here can anyone help, any ideas please

[janet hakeney]

I'll give you one Liz. I have trained and jumped affilliated horses.

For a horse that does not lift its shoulders and round up thus tends to have rails off with trailing front legs and does not use it's back well, or one that jumps to one side or crooked.

train over a single fence built as an ascending parrallel which I will try to describe. Suggest you draw it on a piece of paper to make it understandable.

Two sets of wings. on the front pair you have two top rails close to one another and big gap to the floor. on the back pair of wings you have a single rail one or two holes heigher than the top one on the front wings. There is a ground rail on the floor 9 feet out from the first set of wings and another ground rail one foot in front of the first set of wings. place two poles each with one end on the floor near the outside end of the 9 foot ground rail (one to left one to right) and the other end resting on the top pole of the first set of wings so that these two poles touch in the middle of the fence forming a 'v'.

This is the fence you build up to jumping in the exercise.

The sequence of training/building goes- start height easy according to level of training,but back rail removed,'v' rails moved out so that instead of making a point in the centre of the fence they are resting on the outside of the top rail. Approach is in trot.
The space between the ground rail and the fence is called the box. jump this two or three times till horse confinent. let it make mistakes and dont help it too much, he has to work it out for himself.

next. gradually move the 'v' rails in untill they form a point in the centre of the fence but the ends on the floor are wide apart. The horse must realise that he has to take off from inside the box so it helps to start in trot...so no wild rushing and trying to take off before the ground rail and fly it.

next...add back rail to make it ascending parrallel and repeat

next.... If all going well approach in canter. The horse must jump into the box and out over the fence so no rushing, and controlled approach necessary. repeat on both leads as horses use themselves differently on each lead. The visual of the 'v' rail makes them straight and focus on the double top rails on the first wings. It also encourages them to round up and use their back and shoulders better.

next....more advanced....narrow in the ground ends of the 'v' rail so that with a 12 foot pole they are about six feet apart and the top end of the 'v' rails are together in a point but that point is over the top of the top jump rail towards the back rail by about 6 inches. move the ground rail that is one foot in front of the first wings to underneath them. change to a true parrallel.

obviously you can do this exercise at 2 foot or at 5 foot depending on level of training of horse and rider, and a you go through it you can put the fence up and widen the spread depending on the success you are having with it.

when satisfied horse has learnt the lesson remove 'v' rails then remove 9 foot ground rail and jump as normal fence to see if a change to his way of going has resulted.

This can also be a good exercise for horses that stand off their fences and need to be taught to 'get to the bottom of the fence or 'get deeper' into their fences....but word of warning...unless done by experienced trianer for these horses the danger is that they take off before the 9 foot rail and fly it....that's their problem....they don't want to get into the box

hope this helps

Janet