Tips to win in jumpers.?

Question

i have a few horse shows coming up, and of course i'll be doing jumpers. but now i have a bigger / faster horse named rex AND ziggy! i really wanna win in jumpers, any tips as to what we can do to get around fastest with no faults?! anything we can practice in lessons or on the flat?

Answer 1

Practice courses, With jumpers its the speed and TURNs. work on your turns.

Answer 2

try doing hunter courses. make your horse go slow and balenced around turns and paying attention to you and not just blindly running around the jumper course. if you do that your horse will be balenced enough to make it over jumpers at faster speed and listen to you and wait for your cues and not just fall on the forhand and run around at full gallop smashing through jumps. try doing hunters on the flat make you horse streatch and relaxe and be slow on the flat so he'll pay attention when you go into a faster speed for jumpers. people think its all about galloping around as fast as you can over jumps. but really says George Morris: you should be able to do a nice slow not on the forhand hunter course before you do jumpers.

Answer 3

Build confidence from the start. Never test a young horse's courage over fences; give him a chance to learn how to be brave in the first place. For example, one famous Olympic-level event horse wouldn't jump into water as a youngster. He wasn't timid; he simply didn't understand what he was being asked to do.

Start any jumping session with a review of flatwork basics. Warm your horse up properly on the flat, and check that he moves promptly forward and back from your aids at all three gaits before you start jumping.

Always use an experienced lead horse when you're introducing a new jumping concept. Horses are herd animals. Let a youngster see his wise old buddy do it first, and he'll think it's OK, too.

Trot jumps first. Trotting will pay off in spades down the road. Trotting teaches your horse to remain calm on the approach to his fences and encourages him to rock back on his hocks and jump correctly.

Never give your horse the option of refusing. For the first several months of your horse's jumping training, keep the jumps so small that he can go over them from a standstill. If your horse questions a jump, never let him turn away and reapproach the fence. If you allow this, you're teaching your horse how to say no. Instead, quietly keep your leg on, for as long as it takes, until your horse can hop over the jump from a halt or walk.

Go with your horse, however green his effort. Green horses jump in all sorts of awkward ways. Make sure you reward your horse's endeavor by following him in the air with your upper body and arms, even if he jumps from a standstill. Be ready to grab mane or hang onto a neck strap, which you shouldn't be shy about using. If you catch your horse in the mouth as he attempts to jump, you'll quickly teach him that this game is not fun.

Train progressively. Let's say you progress to a three-element grid one day. Great. But the next time you do grid work, start again with one element and gradually build to three. Begin cantering jumps another day? Terrific. But trot jumps as a warm-up the next time you jump, then try cantering. Review the steps you've learned before you go on.

If you get into trouble, make it low and simple. If your horse loses confidence for any reason during a jump session, don't take a chance. Quickly lower the jump or simplify the question.

Find a ground person to help you. Just in case you need to lower jumps or change a grid, you need a helper on the ground. By the time you get off to change jumps and get back on, your horse will have had way too much time to think about whatever is worrying him.

Answer 4

your coach should be preparing you and telling you what to practice.

Answer 5

The key to shaving off time in the jumpers is to make the corners as tight as you can. Any stride that you can leave out will take about two seconds off your time. But, the bigger horses sometime have more trouble turning that the little horses so it can be harder for them to leave strides out. Also, the turns help your horse to balance so that you get to the jump with a good quality canter for a good jump.

The best thing to practice on the flat is to have a really variable canter stride - speed up and slow down your canter. If your horse can vary his stride length well and quickly, then you will never have a bad spot. The other thing to practice is your turns - lots of hard turns including rollbacks. Be sure to turn by pushing with the outside aids rather than by pulling with the inside aids which will unbalance him.

Have fun.

Answer 6

Learn to read a course and where you can cut time by cutting corners.  You have to have an incredible honest horse to do this. Bigger horses, unfortunately have a harder time cutting the really sharp corners, but do the best you can.  Learn to jump without stirrups, the same height you show at. I have seen many a rider lose their stirrup on course, and totally s***w up their trip trying to find the stirrup. They lose time, the horse can't figure out what the rider is doing.

Answer 7

Ummm duh...JUMPING! Just don't enter the show in a class that's the highest you can jump. Like, if you can jump 3', don't show 3', show 2'6" or 2'9". Good luck!