What is is about jumping??

[laura jeanne]

That makes you feel so good?

Even jumping one or two cross poles a few times makes me feel happy for days!

[lizzy]

Adrenalin!!!!

[shaka]

It is the sense of achievement, knowing you have done something right that at one point you never thought you could.

[laura jeanne]

Yes, both of those things and more. The horse I ride likes to jump and it's a good thing because I don't have to worry about much, just let her do it. When I look at lots of pictures of horses jumping, they seem to have such eager looks on their faces.

Someone posted ?? the other day that her horse would try to turn around and go back over the jumps and I have been chuckling about that ever since!

[PromiseMe]

Sense of acheivement....definitely.

And I dunno..Ive just ALWAYS wanted to jump...from the very beginnign its alwasy been my little dream ;) I guess Ive seen all those professionals jumps so amazingly with their horses it makes ME want to be like that!

And I agree wiht you LJ, even jumping a little bit makes me happy for days!

[Cochise]

The feeling I get from my horse. Normally I feel kinda out of sync with him in flatwork, but when over a jump we feel so together. I also love the joy that he has compared to his flatwork. :)

[canadianbeaver]

when you jump in perfect harmony and unism, *droooools!* also the adrenaline rush and your heart beating faster! so so so good... now I want to go and jump!

[laura jeanne]

PromiseMe

I actually NEVER wanted to jump. It looked way too scary and last year (when I started riding) I would always put my instructor off when she asked if I wanted to try.

I realize now that I just knew that my position and seat weren't stable at all and it just felt like the wrong thing to do.

With my new instructor, we worked on my position so it's 1.) not a chair seat, and 2.) I'm not standing on my toes and gripping with my knees, and then we just started trotting over poles and cantering over poles while counting strides, getting a decent 2 point position and things like that.

So when we actually jumped a cross pole (I posted about that!) it felt pretty great. Not scary at all but just so exhilerating. We are still at the cross pole level but did jump a bar straight across (not sure what you call that) once.

Lesson today, I hope we do some jumping because we don't every lesson.

[PromiseMe]

LJ,

it sounds like your instructor is really good :) Helping you improve your seat and position....very good!

Hey, some cross rail (or crosspoles, whatever you want to call them) can be quite high! Usually we jump high cross rails (like to the second highest cup/hole of the jump so its not too tiny) for warm up...and than jump the verticals (the straight bars you were talking about ;) theyre verticals)

We dont jump every lesson either...its not so good for the horses leg to be jumping so much anyways.

And I agree...its not scary at all...its sooo exhilarating! Sometimes before a slightly bigger jump or when i first started jumping, i got butterflies in my stomach before and than after its like WOW!

Have fun jumping ;) soon you'll be doing big courses! :eek: :D

(And its good that you put off your instructor at first about not jumping since you didnt feel ready and didnt want to...or else you mightve had a bad experience or just not like jumping. Good judgement on your part! :) )

[kedwards]

That's a good question. I love jumping. It definitely isn't merely an adrenaline thing, because I rarely jump anything these days with my horse that makes me remotely nervous.

I think for me, part of the fun is that the horse can really participate in the game. If during dressage (and during most of a course between fences), it's like a dance where the rider is leading, there are short periods just before, during, and after jumps where the horse leads and the rider follows. During those moments, we put complete trust in them to do there jobs and we do our best to make it as easy as possible for them to do so. Likewise, that the horse jumps at all (but especially when they jump fences where takeoff or landing is uncertain), demonstrates a huge amount of trust in the rider.

[Ruffiane]

I was high for days after I took my first little jump. It was sooner than I'd expected to be doing it, and the horse was just perfect that day. I could have done it again and again.

I'm not a fearless rider by any means, and rarely have challenged myself that way, so to conquer a fear and do something I never thought I'd do...well, it was amazing.

And I agree, that part of it was letting the horse do her job and she took care of me so beautfully. It only went poorly when I tried to over-control; then I'd give wrong cues and it wasn't as good.

When I got back into the stable, I told EVERYONE I jumped. I called my sister. I told everyone at work. I almost told the drive-through girl at McDonald's but stopped myself...lol.

[Elvengirl]

I love the feeling of flying you get when you jump on a horse. When I jump, any pain or unhappiness just disappears and it feels so perfect to just float over fences in harmony with such a fantastic animal! I am also addicted to the huuge adrenaline rush I get after negotiating a jumper course successfully (one time I almost fainted!:o). Oh yes, and I love to compete over fences and I love to win:D ;)

[carrimclaren]

I think the main thing for me is the fact that my mare loves it. Usually with flatwork she's very hard for me to try and collect up and you can tell she just gets on with the job at hand but is mainly concentrating on getting back to stuffing her face with haylage. But when she's jumping it's hard to call it a day as you can tell she's happy and eager to get going forward.

At the start when i first got her a lot of people down the yard were sniffing and moaning about the fact i'd got such a green horse yada yada yada and it took it out of me for a while. But whenever we do any jumping i come away thinking "pah put that in your pipe and smoke it you lot" because whatever other faults she has she's a steady jumper and gives me, as a novice, huge confidence to ride a fence properly and relax and enjoy my jumping instead of being shi* scared :D

[amandal]

When I started riding again after a long gap jumping was a mixture of fear and pleasure, even the tiniest x pole used to have me shaking. In lessons I had a few horses/ponies that really enjoyed it and I fell in love with jumping all over again. My share horse who I had last year loves jumping but needed a more experienced rider than me in the school as he used to hesitate before each jump and I, anticipating the stop got really nervous again. Very different story xc - he loves it.

I had my horse on trial for a week before I bought her, she was really nice and I did like her but when I jumped her, that was it, she was going to be mine. She loves it, jumps beautifully and I find it really easy to judge when she's going to take off and so can go with her well. She flies over, and the feeling of flight is great. She does get excited but is still controllable. It's obvious how much she loves it - I'm having such fun with her, she's really giving my confidence back. We jump I go around like an idiot with a big grin on my face.

[carrimclaren]

Originally posted by amandal
I had my horse on trial for a week before I bought her, she was really nice and I did like her but when I jumped her, that was it, she was going to be mine. She loves it, jumps beautifully and I find it really easy to judge when she's going to take off and so can go with her well. She flies over, and the feeling of flight is great. She does get excited but is still controllable. It's obvious how much she loves it - I'm having such fun with her, she's really giving my confidence back. We jump I go around like an idiot with a big grin on my face.

Now if i'd have been awake this morning instead of half dead then those would have been the words i was trying to find to describe how i feel :) My mare's the same as yours by the sound of it.