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Link: Previous Articles from Sally
From Sally:
It is important to have a plan for a jump school before you get on to ride. It may involve moving jumps before you start and arranging to have someone there to set jumps. Most of my horses jump at least once a week. It keeps them from being silly when I do jump them. The babies will usually jump twice a week since they need more education. I also try to keep the number of jumps per school to a minimum.
Whenever we jump it is important to be focused on the technique of both the horse and rider, but there are some schools where the focus is mostly educational for the horse. For example, when I am first teaching youngsters to jump through a combination, they might get a little rushed or flat because they are worried about the question. It is important to recognize when the green horse is mentally tired because that may happen long before it is physically tired. The first school when I introduce something new often will not produce the horse’s best efforts. Over time, and with additional schooling, it will get better. I will often do a second school just to confirm what the horse was taught the last time, but the next school would be about getting the horse to jump round and relaxed over his fences. If you constantly just teach the horse new things without giving it time to relax in some schools, it can cause the horse to be tense and worried in its work. Rarely does that produce good jumping form.
In some schools I would work on angling jumps, bending lines, or related distances. The last school before an event should be about technique. If the last phase your horse did at his last event was cross country, chances are you will need to have a quieter school to get the horse round and settled again. Sometimes, if I have had a problem at the event, the next school would be to work on fixing the problem. If the horse had stopped cross country or struggled trough the triple in show jumping I would hope to school that within the week following the event. That would give me an idea how big a problem I had and an idea of how long it will take to fix it. I would still try to go to an event off a quieter school. Having said that, I have had horses that competed best off an aggressive school so they carried that discipline into the event. I have also had horses that did a water school right before the event to keep it fresh in their minds. You need to know your horse and train it in the way that will produce the best result at the event.
Except for cross country schooling, I have two different types of schools that I do: one focuses on the horse’s technique the other focuses on exercises designed to help with the horse’s education.
A typical technique school for me would involve working with placing poles before after a fence to encourage the horse to jump rounder. Some horses that land too shallow after a fence would work on wider oxers or long combinations. I will often canter a grid with raised placing poles to help the horse be more deliberate in regulating it’s stride. If I have a horse that is a little slower with one forearm, I may practice jumping on a circle to get him quicker with his front end on that side. I also work on how I ride the horse to experiment with different aids or a different way of using my position to help the horse jump better. A different release or maybe sitting taller in the approach or maybe using a lighter seat.
A typical educational school would be working on any problems that came up at my last event or introducing something new. I will often set up exercises that focus on related distances and turning questions. I think working on related distances is a great way to get feedback on your use of your aids and the horse’s response to them–when jumping a related distance you either used the correct degree of aid or you didn’t, you either read the jump into the line and judged what you needed to do next or you didn’t. Sometimes the degree of aid was correct and the timing of the aid was off–we get immediate feedback. Additionally, it is a great way to find out the different ride you might need off of each lead. I will also work on turning exercises that will give riders an idea of the degree of aid needed to get a certain type of turn done. Again, it is important to work evenly off of both leads as the aid needed may be different on the other lead. Angled jumping exercises will give us an idea which way we are vulnerable to a run out and what combination of aids we need to use to keep the horse straight.
Unless you get to jump a lot or compete regularly, most schools will be a combination of both educational and technique schools. If I have introduced something new, I will try to finish the school on something that the horse finds relatively easy so he goes back to the barn in a good frame of mind. The younger horses will need more educational type work, and the upper-level experienced horses may just need light schools to keep them sharp. Each horse is different, and our jobs as riders and trainers is to find what works best for our horse!
