Jumping motivation

[chaps89]

For a cob who tends to run on the fat side and is rather hairy, madam has quite the pop in her.
When I tried her (4 and a half years ago) I jumped her and loved it, despite being seriously green and wobbly she felt utterly safe, took me into the jumps and cleared them nicely.
We then had a good couple of years of her having everything wrong with her and have spent the last 18 months re-schooling from scratch.
But somewhere along the line the jumping has gone wrong.
I can't get enough impulsion and she 'climbs' the fence.
She has plenty of scope (has been jumping 5ft+ fences all summer and last night jumped her stable door - hence deciding it's time to do something about getting her jumping again.) She is also fine jumping on the lunge- she is nice and tidy in front and makes a good shape over the fence.
So the issue is clearly me. I'll jump my share horse no problem.
I just feel like I've lost my confidence on her a bit as she isn't forward enough (she's not a naturally forwards horse anyway) so I have to push on which I don't have enough jumping experience or confidence to do. So I'm either not committed enough or I end up over riding her, i need to be somewhere in the middle!
I do have a fab instructor but she is both too tall to jump her herself for me (she rides her on the flat but madam is quite compact so it won't work for jumping) and also out of the country for the foreseeable future.
So wise people of HHO, any ideas of exercises we can do please?

 

[be positive]

What exercises are you doing when you do jump? I find setting up small grids with short distances help to get them going, starting with canter poles on the ground, distances can be taken out once they understand what they are doing and are jumping smoothly and confidently through them but it is really important to keep them well within the horses comfort zone to start with, I would not jump an individual fence until she is taking you through grids showing ability to think, look and jump whatever is in front of her.

If you can find a trainer that thinks outside of the box, is prepared to make a real effort to build the fences, possibly constantly make small adjustments and knows how important it is to get both horse and rider confident by repetition without being boring then you will be able to get on track, you may manage without an instructor but you do need someone on the ground with a good eye who can move everything if required, sometimes just 6 inches can make a huge difference to how the horse jumps.

 

[chaps89]

Thankyou BP - Apologies for my tardy response.
Haven't done grids - just poles and individual fences in the school and the odd single fence out on the xc course. The focus was on me getting the speed and direction and letting horse do the rest.
My usual instructor is great (outside of the box is her speciality) she's unfortunately just tied up with family circumstances out of the country for now. I'm hoping she'll be back around the new year so we don't have too long to wait in theory. I'd just like to try and make some progress in her absence I do agree it's definitely helpful to have someone on the ground - for the practical adjusting of fences and feedback.
Do you have any simple set ups or suggestions for someone trying grid work for the first time at all please? We luckily have a range of jumps available and although getting on and off to adjust is fiddly and means the work doesn't flow so well, mare is good at obliging for this.

 

[be positive]

I would start with 3 or 5 canter poles, not trot, with a pair of wings by the first and last, canter through until they are comfortable then put one x pole at the end, continue to go through until ready to put up the second x pole which will be either 1 stride from the first, if using 3 poles, or 3 if using 5, this is the most simple starting point if you use 5 poles you can build up to a bounce to a fence 2 strides away or 3 small fences with a stride between them knowing the distances are correct for the horse and allowing the rider to just set up the approach, if you want to keep using a placing pole then use an extra one once you have built up the rest.

Getting the distances right is important at this stage and where the person on the ground is useful, I usually find if you put a row of trot poles then remove alternate ones it should be ideal for canter but may require tweaking, at this stage I don't use text book distances as I prefer to get them confident then gradually stretch them if they do not have the 12ft canter stride the course builders work to.

I love doing gridwork with horses as they learn so much and once you start there is so much variety to what you can do, ours rarely jump individual fences unless it is for a specific reason such as working on dog legs, tight turns or spooky fillers.

 

[chaps89]

Thankyou, that's really helpful, we will have a play and see how we get on.