An exercise to prepare for horse jumping shows.
The exercise you choose to prepare for horse jumping shows is pretty important. You want to practice all the things you’re likely to see at the show. it needs to be quite technical, but easy enough to build confidence as well. I used this exercise to prepare myself and a few riders I coach for a show, and we all did really well. So hopefully you do as well.
So this exercise consists of a little three-jump gymnastic, and 5 other jumps, so it won’t take you forever to set up. However, it rides as a nine jump track. It’s awesome to do just before a show, which is exactly what I did. It has all the turns and related distances you’ll need to practice, and the gymnastic rides a bit like a combination, so there’s that as well. It’s a really cool little exercise, even if you don’t have any shows coming up.
Watch the video below to get all the details.
How to set it up.
Ok so here’s the setup it is a little easier to follow on the video. And you can download the image of the course plan so you can set it up off your phone. There aren’t a lot of jumps but you jump a few of them twice and a lot of them are related so you need to get it right. The order I set them up is the easiest way to do it… so try to do it this way.
Jump 1
So let’s start off with the little gymnastic along the top long side of your arena. So it’s a vertical, one stride to an oxer and one stride to a vertical. With poles as tramlines to keep your horse traveling straight through it. These are the measurements. From the first vertical to the oxer it’s 7 paces and from the oxer to the second vertical it’s 7.5 paces. You then add the tramlines for both one strides. Remember to have them at least two meters apart. You don’t want your horse landing on them and hurting itself.
Jump 4 and 5
You then set up this line down the bottom side of your arena, oxer to vertical. It rides down on 5 strides, so it walks 24 paces.
Jump 6
You then set up a vertical at an angle like this. It’s related to the oxer in the line you just set up and also rides 5 strides. So it walks 24 paces on a curve to the oxer.
Jump 2
Followed by a vertical at an angle like this, quite close to this oxer because you still need to squeeze another jump in above it.
Jump 8
And finally an oxer at an angle like so. This oxer is related to this vertical on a curve. It’s a 6 stride related distance so it walks 28 paces.
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