Setting Up Lead Changes After Jumping a Line

Lead changes are important to organize when jumping a line to keep the horse on pace with the rest of the course. Practice setting up lead changes with advice from an experienced trainer in this video on riding and jumping horses.

So now we're going to work on an exercise or basically going through the steps of perfecting a flying lead change after a line. This lead change will apply whether you're on a bending line, a straight line. But what we're going to do is we're going to come up the outside line which is a four stride line. If the horse catches the right lead which would be the counter canter or wrong lead, I'm going to set the horse up to do a good flying change before we get to the turn and it's imperative that you do your flying lead changes before you get to the corner because if you don't have their hind lead set up before the turn, your odds are they're going to swap in front first and you're going to be playing catch up behind the rest of the time. So I'm going to take Woody out. We're going to off to that four stride and we're going to do our best to organize them and give you a good lead change. When you're riding a lead change coming off of a line compared to just practicing a lead change at home, is, it really depends how you jump in and out of your line affects your speed that you're coming off of the jump. For example if you chip into your line and have to move up and increase your speed on the way out then you're going to need to slow down for your lead change. If for example you jump in off of too big of a stride and have to slow down in your line, your horse may land a little slower and therefore you may need to increase your pace to do the lead change. The most important thing is that your lead change is done on an organized stride. You need to know what stride that is for you and your individual horse.