Exercises that help a horse slow down before a jump can also help improve coordination, pace and foot placement both before and after the jump. Strategically place poles on the ground in front of and behind a jump with advice from an experienced trainer in this video on riding and jumping horses.
So one of the common ailments that affects us as riders is when we have a horse that wants to go a little too fast at a jump. So the exercise that I've set up here is both a trot and canter exercise that will hopefully help you slow your horse down to the jump. It's also a very beneficial exercise for all types of horses for many different reasons so I think you'll like trying it at home no matter whether or not your horse likes to go fast or go slow but it is definitely going to be a help to you if your horse wants to take you a little bit past your distance to the jump. The first exercise we're going to do is a cross rail with trot pulls. The trot pole in front and behind are set almost even. The trot pole in front is set at about seven feet from the base of the jump. So when you walk off the pole you're going to walk from the jump seven feet out and put your first pole down. On the back side of the jump you're going to put your pole about seven and a half to eight feet away because the horse is going to land a little bit father than where they take off. So we're going to do that exercise and the poles not only help your horse be more coordinated and teach them to know where their feet are before and after the jump. If a horse wants to rush at the fence the pole will give them something else to think about and teach them how to slow down and push off with both feet behind. So now we'll move on to a more advanced portion of this exercise where we do canter rails in front of a jump. This is definitely a more advanced version so you want to make sure that your horse masters the trot exercise before yo move on to the canter exercise. You may use either the natural or regular wooden type of poles that we have out or another popular option is a PVC pole. If you're worried about your horse landing on the pole on either side or if they seem nervous the best substitution is to use a plain PVC pole on the ground thus if your horse would step on it it wouldn't cause any injury to your horse. So we're going to go now. We're going to canter and exercise. It is nine to nine and a half feet in front, ten to ten and a half feet behind depending on the size of your horse's stride. I'll canter it off of a nice working twelve-foot stride canter rhythm. You don't want to get it too collected or they might jump up and not land well across the hind rail or you also don't want to get too long or they might jump the entire exercise and not do the proper striding in front of the jump.
