excercises to encourage my horse to pick up his front legs whilst jumping?

lannerch

lannerch

Well-Known Member
Joined
19 July 2008
Messages
3,636
Location
Shropshire
Visit site
Help, my young chap (7yo ) has started sometimes being careless with his front feet when jumping, literally not picking them up enough whilst overwise making a very nice shape over the fence.

He has recently had an increase in work as the event season is looming and feeling flat so I will up his feed, I am not sure how much this is contributing to the problem, however does anyone have any suggestions of grids or excercises that my help to rectify the problem. thanks
 
Agree with the above V poles (aka a frames are great) as lots of works with grids using bounces which gets them a lot quicker. Another quite simple exercise is build quite a short double a good 3 feet shorter than normal use a x pole to go in and start to build up a decent parrelle coming out. With the fact it is quite short they have to be quite quick in front you can use v poles on this exercise. Be careful when schooling to get the horse to the fence correwctly with a good canter but let it jump the fence don't help.
 
If this is a recent thing esp as you have `upped` his work, it could be that it is a physical problem why he isnt able to fold as well as he did.
If you can get a video of you jumping him, you may be able to tell if he is uncomfortable/tight thro his shoulders etc.
I would get a chiro/muscle person out to look at him. But I can always tell with mine if they need treatment, and this is what I do first.
Otherwise if you`re sure there is nothing physically wrong, then gridwork esp using large x-poles and a spread using 2 x-poles close together.
 
Thanks you have all been very helpful, he always has been a little iratic with his front feet, usually snapping them right up occasionally not so, however certainly something to bear in mind, he did go on a very long hack wednesday was meant to be a lot shorter so I trotted him up all the hills, however was nearly home when the road was blocked by an accident so had to go on a massive detour up and down some very steep hills so prehaps there is some soreness there.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top