Starting A Show Jumping Career with Anthony Murray & Ellie Pajovic
Part II: Flat Work and Ground Work For Show Jumping To optimise your horses chances of becoming a good, confident show jumper, it is essential that the horse has some decent basic flat work installed. We would begin by working on the horses balance, straightness and rhythm on the flat before even thinking about asking it to jump. We would want a horse that is going to start its jumping career to at least have achieved low level dressage training. As the horse continues to further its jumping education, we would expect to see a mirror image of it furthering its ability (gymnastic) on the flat to improve its jump and the way it travels between the fences. As the horse progresses to jump bigger and more technical courses it will be required to improve its athleticism and responsiveness to the riders aids. Therefore, we would work on the showjumping horses flat work to continue to increase strength, improve its gait, teach it to fly-change and so on. Today’s technical courses require a great degree of adjustability. At home we train our show jumpers on an approximate ratio of 60:40 flat work to jumping. This ratio will vary depending on the where the horse is in its career - a horse just starting to jump will do a little more jumping to improve and build its experience. Remember, a horse that is well trained on the flat is more able to make tight, quick, smooth and more balanced turns and change the length of its stride at the riders command - this can shave seconds off the clock in the jump off! As discussed in the last issue, jumping is an essential natural movement of the horse to survive and escape in the wild, therefore most horses can jump .... BUT once a rider is added to the equation there are many new factors for the horse to deal with outside his own body. For example, the horse has to adjust to the movement of the rider on its back, the extra weight of the rider, the riders weight distribution and balance, the aids and ability of the rider to name but a few. Younger horses are often less balanced, particularly if they have not quite finished growing. For example, if they are at a "bum high" stage they maybe inclined to fall more on the forehand. This may result in the horse not being able to move the shoulder up and out the way as quickly and therefore may have a tendency to knock the fence with its front legs. Ensure your horse learns to listen and understand the half-halt to help it to engage. Remember the half-halt is not so much a stopping aid as a re balancing aid and engaging tool - the horse still needs to move forwards. It is important to work on different shapes in varying places and use your working space. If you send your horse round and round the edge of the arena, or continue to travel on the same tracks, the horse will rely on these rather than using its own balance. For example, it may then feel wobbly and unbalanced when away from home in an unfamiliar environment. The horse must be able to travel straight no matter where it is. Rhythm comes hand in hand with balance. A horse that is unbalanced will generally loose rhythm and a loss of rhythm and balance will contribute to an unbalanced and weak jump. Therefore we must encourage our horse to find a straight, balanced, rhythmical stride to jump from. Once you have found a good tempo (speed) try counting the rhythm in your head, e.g. "one, two, one, two," for trot and "one, two, three" for canter. Using your rise and fall in the trot and the balance of your body in both paces try to maintain this tempo and rhythm by continuing to count the rhythm in your head. Try this count-
ing exercise on the straight and on 15-20m circles and even up and down gentle slopes. This counting exercise can also be used once we introduce poles on the ground and jumps. It stops the rider trying to break the horses rhythm in the last few steps to take off - a habit often sub-consciously made by the rider. It helps the rider keep an even rhythm all the way to the fence. Precision is also very high on our priority list. If the horse is not able to follow our aids to stay in a straight line, or to move on to the shape and size of a curve we ask for, how can we expect to it to make a good approach to the centre of the fence. We may end up jumping the wing or missing it out altogether! The horse must learn to move "off our leg", not just forward but sideways too. For example, if we are approaching a fence on the right rein and the horse starts to drift to the left, it is important that we get a positive response by applying our left leg to put the horse back on track. Otherwise, if we only pull on the right rein to correct it, it would continue to swing its quarters to the left and approach the jump on an angle or drift away from the fence altogether. Lots of circles getting your horse to bend around your inside leg and teaching lateral movements such as leg yield will help this. You could also put out sets of cones representing jump wings and practice riding accurately between them. Ensure you ride straight through the centre of the cones and include changes of rein as you would in a course of jumps. The horse must also learn to lengthen and shorten the stride within the pace, whilst maintaining a consistent rhythm. Sometimes on course we may find we have a line to ride that doesn't suit the natural stride of our horse. In this situation we need to ask our horse to cover more or less ground to meet a good take off point. For example, you may be riding a pony with a naturally smaller stride that it is happy jumping from, but in the course there may be a related distance between two jumps that you know your pony is going to find hard. Therefore, you may have to ask it for a longer stride between these jumps to cover more ground to make the distance. Once you have established some balance and rhythm with your horse try lengthening and shortening the stride. It is often good to try to shorten the stride on the short end of the arena and lengthen across the diagonal. Using two poles on the ground spaced approximately 6 horse strides apart, try adjusting your horses stride whilst maintaining its rhythm to fit in more (seven) or less (five) equal strides. In a typical lesson situation with us you may hear the phrase "line, length and rhythm". These are the key points to approach the fence. "Line" being the line you would be riding on if you were to draw a perfect approach to the centre of the fence, "length" being the length of the stride you are coming in on (for example not too long or flat and not too short or dead), and "rhythm" being able to find and keep a good rhythm and tempo from which to jump. In short if you cannot get your horse to the base of the fence straight, balanced and in a decent rhythm it is unlikely to achieve a decent jump. We would expect our horses to have developed a degree of balance and rhythm (preferably in all three paces but obviously the canter is eventually the most important pace to perfect for this discipline), respond to the half-halt, be able to move a little more forward and come back a little within the pace, and be able to keep straight and balanced on a line and a curve.
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