This is a really useful exercise for getting your horse to land on the correct lead and to wait after a fence to know where you’re going next. I like to mix up what I do each time I land. It’s important to keep the fences small, as this is hard work and it’s not about jumping big, it’s about having control and precision. I tend not to go over about 80cm with it. It’s really useful if your horse has a tendency to rush after a fence. They might make a few mistakes to start with, but they quickly learn to sit back on their hocks and wait for you to tell them where to go next.
Setup: You put 4 upright fences out on the centre line. They all need to be jumpable from both directions.
You can then jump a whole lot of different ways, building up from jumping the yellow and the blue, to the yellow and the red and then the red and blue.
To jumping a serpentine down the arena
To using the fences for XC practice angling a fence, starting with the green and red on a simple figure of eight, and building up to the yellow and red (or green and blue). I like to mix these in as it allows me to open the horse up a bit more and get them to understand sometimes I want them to wait, and sometimes I want them to move on to a fence.
