How to Train a Horse to Jump

Training a horse to jump requires mastering ground jumps at a trot and a canter, gaining excellent control over the horse, and then moving to more advanced single fence jumps. Avoid skipping steps when training a horse to jump with tips from an equestrian team head coach in this video on horse training.

When training a horse to jump, it's important that you don't skip any steps. So, to start off with, we're going to trot this ground pole, just on the ground, and we'll canter it. From there we'll move on to single fences, and then we'll put two jumps together on a line. Before you even think about teaching your horse how to jump, it's important you have good quality flat work, that you have great control over your horse at the walk, trot, and canter. So once you've trotted the jump and you're comfortable with it, we'll canter it. Once you're comfortable cantering the ground pole we'll move on to jumping a single fence. We're going to start by trotting a fence, and you want to make it small and inviting. We'll then move on to cantering the single jump, and then finally cantering a line of jumps.