Regain your jumping mojo
Rediscover your horse’s powerful pop with international showjumper Holly Smith. Her training solutions will have you competition ready in no time
Top showjumper Holly Smith helps a Your Horse reader and her horse get their jumping back on track
SPRING IS IN the air and the competition season is swinging into action. After the winter, though, getting you and your horse back into top gear can seem something of a hard slog. Maybe your horse has lost his mojo and is getting behind your leg? If so, international showjumper Holly Smith has some schooling solutions to get you soaring again.
When you find your horse losing impulsion, it can be useful to take him back to basics. This starts by working on the canter — finding something with lift rather than length. Cavaletti are the perfect tool to help with this, and so the majority of the following exercises focus on using these little fences to obtain the perfect canter for jumping. We’ll also work on those all-important turns that can make or break the approach to a fence. First, get your horse warmed up and listening to you. Start by riding some transitions and a serpentine across the arena.
“Push your horse ‘up’ into transitions,” says Holly. “Make sure that your transitions are off the leg — you put your leg on and, bam, you get a reaction.”
This sharp reaction is essential when jumping a course of obstacles.