Want to take your jumping to the next level? Whether you’re aiming for clear rounds in the jumper ring or just looking to improve your horse’s confidence over fences, good training exercises are key. We’ve put together three essential jumping drills— all from top riders and trainers— that will help sharpen your skills, improve your horse’s adjustability, and make your rides more effective.
Grid Work for Adjustability
Many courses, especially in equitation and showjumping ask questions that involve a short line to a more wide open line. This can trip up both horse and rider. Missy Clark of North Run gives us the perfect exercise for practicing adjustability:
You will need two oxers and two verticals for this exercise. We recommend using DJC aluminum picket and stick standards alongside round or square poles, like Clark uses.
The exercise is set as an oxer to a double of verticals to another oxer. The distance can vary a bit depending on your goals, but Missy sets it as 59’ to 20’ to 58.’ Clark sets the distances on a half stride, so you have to manufacture the stride yourself to get a short and compressed stride before moving forward.
Missy has her students add the extra stride into the double of verticles due to the shortness of that distance, then you can continue to do the extra stride out of the line or move forward for one less stride.
As you work through this exercise you can play with the distances. To start, Clark recommends having a bit more space than 20’ between the two verticals.
(Pro-trip: keep your jumps very low in the beginning or even just poles.)
The purpose of this jumping exercise is to enhance ridablity of your horse and practice the adjustment of their stride. You have to have the ability to shorten for the double verticles then react to lengthen to get out of the line.
Cavaletti Circle for Ridability and Consistency
One of the main goals of jumping exercises is to improve a horse’s ridability and make it consistent. If your horse can’t easily adjust strides and stay even through small jumping exercises, they are sure to have trouble over the bigger jumps in the show ring.
Irish Showjumper, Andrew Bourns uses a Cavaletti circle to perfect these skills:
To complete this jumping exercise, you will need four cavaletti. You can also set ground rails using round or square poles instead.
Bourns sets up this jumping exercise as a large circle, with the cavalettis on one side of the circle to form a semi-circle. It is set as one cavaletti that bends to a bounce and then bends to another cavaletti. Between the bounce and the cavalettis on each side the distance is 18 meters.
Start by doing a four stride to the bounce to a four. Then he will go through it again adding in a stride in each line before and after the bounce– five to bounce to five. Finally, he will do a four stride to the bounce to a six stride. Although this is the pattern he follows, you can change up the strides in each go to fit your personal goals.
If you want to make the cavaletti exercise simpler, take out the bounce in the middle and replace it with a single. You can also lengthen the distance between the cavaletti to simplify it further.
There are many ways to execute this exercise, but here he wants to ask his horse to do the same thing over and over again to practice consistency and build the trust between the horse and rider. Bourns says it also makes horses more ambidextrous so the horse can be the same off both leads.
Preparing for Spooky Show Jumps
You and your horse could feel as prepared as ever for the show ring— you have the ridability down, you can make those tight turns, etc.— but there is one thing that can always ruin an entire round: a spook. Every horse has that one obstacle that will always spook them, whether it be those spiral poles, the airy jumper wall, or a certain gate.
The key way of avoiding these spooks in the show ring is practicing over such obstacles at home and ensuring your horse is acclimated to those tricky jumps.
Schooling over spooky jumps at home isn’t as simple as pointing your horse to the jump until they go over it. Top Irish showjumper, Paul O’Shea introduces a spooky fence by approaching it at a 45 degree angle before jumping it. This makes it so the horses know they aren't going to jump it, therefore they get more comfortable getting up close to it. You can also do this in a jumper class before you go to the first jump!
Another Grand Prix rider, Schuyler Riley always makes sure to practice spooky walls at home before entering the show ring. When course designers started to introduce crazy walls at the horse show, she had DJC create a custom wall for her ring.
Want to try out any of these exercises at home? Contact DJC today to make sure you have all the right jumps!