Clip Of A Jumping Horse
Hi Ross :)
How is everything up there going?
Phantom is coming along well! We have been doing a lot of ground work with him and been taking it slowly. I can feel a massive change in him when i get him to focus on me and not distractions happening in the background.
Looking forward to our lessons! I'm always looking at other people riding and noticing if their horse is happy or not and thinking what i would to do change this if i was riding or doing ground work with their horse!
I have been looking at YouTube videos and a few of the girls from pony club were looking at this one, saying how good the horse looks and that the horse and rider must have an amazing bond to be able to reach this height.
Mum and i thought the horse looked so stressed coming into the jump when the rider finally let its head go, and we noticed at the start that it's head is tucked in when it's cantering around and the way the horse holds itself looks so unnatural. Also on landing the riders has to pull the horses head up so the horse doesn't flip over and the impact on landing would be terrible on the horses joints!
was wondering what you thought?
Regards
Kate
I'm glad you are doing well with Phantom. I look forward to seeing you in October and being impressed by your progress.
Thanks for the video clip.
You are right the horse is very tense and showing no softness to the reins. Notice the gaping mouth as well as the tension in the neck and hollow back. It's very common in showjumping for horses to be like this even more so than in dressage because showjumping is an adrenalin inducing sport. Horses and riders get worked up and their adrenal rush often overtakes their training. That's not to say it has to be that way - it just very often is that way.
The wall jump is huge and the reason the horse nearly lands on his nose is because of the steepness of the angle of landing. When a jump is very big and vertical (as opposed to a spread jump) the horse needs to take off very close to the base of the jump (show jumpers call this getting a horse in deep). Because he takes off so close to the jump the horse must climb very steeply with very little forward momentum. The result is that he then comes down from the jump very steeply too and lands close to the base of the jump. Therefore, there is a lot of downward force and very little forward, which causes the horse to come close to crashing nose first into the ground. I just thought I would clarify a little bit about the technique of jumping big fences.