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Best exercise to encourage a careful jumper,

4 replies

LurkyMcLurcker · 29/01/2018 06:27

Pony is 11.2 and ridden by my DD7 who is confident and keen up to about 2’3 but no real eye for a stride yet. I working on encouraging her to use her legs on the approach as she tends to “freeze” in her jump position about two strides out.

Pony is an ex driving pony and very fast. She’s honest enough but tends to flatted and either skim the jump or get in too deep and drop her hind legs.

Because of her driving history she doesn’t have much mouth and can set her neck so is ridden in a jointed Pelham with rounding. More than I like to put in a kids pony mouth but after considerable experimentation, it does the trick. However, because of this, I don’t want to ask DD to keep her reins too short otherwise she risks catching her over the fence and putting the pony off.

And top tips for jumping exercise to help pony learn to pick her feet up and round a bit more over the jump? I run a riding school so have plenty of jockeys/jumps/arena but all my experience is in producing safe, quiet jumping ponies for teaching, not wizzy little competition types!

OP posts:

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Fosterdog123 · 29/01/2018 06:32

V poles.

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Fueledwithfairydustandgin · 29/01/2018 11:20

Grids to sit her back and round her.

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FlippingFoal · 29/01/2018 11:41

As above - grids and V poles. Also loose jumping over larger jumps can be reallg helpful to get them to work it out for themselves without a rider interfering

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LurkyMcLurcker · 29/01/2018 12:33

Thanks all, V poles is a great idea as the older kids will love it as a lesson!

We do a lot of grid work but it can be tricky as she’s so tiny that I have to put them really close for her to properly round and sit back... then they are too close for the bigger ponies lol. So she sometimes ends up jumping off bigger distances to fit in with the rest of the lesson, which I think probably makes her worse.
But I can do a special 1-2-1 grid session for her and my daughter in half term.

I don’t generally overly encourage my ponies to make huge accurate shapes over fences as this tends to put beginners on the floor! So this is going to be really fun and interesting. THANKS!