Exercises for the horse who jumps too hard

[hunterrider33]

I’m currently working with a young horse who jumps, well, too hard! I’m grateful he gives good effort but holy batman he’s so hard to stay with!
He’s overly lofty, jumps almost too high and then tries to land quickly behind (almost trying to land hind end first). He’s only jumping 2’6-2’9 right now and I can’t imagine jumping bigger - he’d be in the rafters in the indoor! He needs to slow down in the air and almost not put quite so much effort into it.
He’s got a lovely hunter canter but his jumping style almost takes away as it’s not slow and round more high and quick (good form with his head neck and knees though).

So any exercises you all suggest? He’s been doing a lot of gymnastics and landing rails but looking for other ideas as well

[IPEsq]

How young? Sounds like he needs hind end fitness. Aside from flatwork to build fitness, try some bounces. Start very low.

[beowulf]

Jumping “hard” seems to have many different meanings/nuances.

So, is he overjumping? Or landing too heavily? Cracking his back too much over fences? Or is he rough to sit over fences, the type that launches you out of the tack hard? Rushing hard?

From your description, I am guessing it is just overjumping and not jumping from a good distance.

Overjumping is an easy fix - almost all green horses overjump for a while - until they get 100% comfortable going over fences. It just takes time and patience. My favorite exercise for horses who overjump is to just jump the same two verticals, over and over: put them across the diagonal, pick up your canter, jump over it and change direction, jump over the other one (also on diagonal) - endless figure 8 loops: after the third or fourth pass they will start to settle and not throw as much effort into jumping it.

This will help train your eye and his, while delivering consistency - the jumps won’t change, the pattern doesn’t change - it allows them to settle into a pattern while you work on delivering a soft, amenable approach: since he is landing almost hind first after the fence my bet is that the approach is messy, rushed, or there is fighting: they’ll land hind feet first when they are unbalanced in the take off.

Part of it is them developing their style: some horses will just jump hard as in be hard to sit over fences; others are much softer - some will always land heavily, others will always crack their back. It’s important to inspect what you are doing moments leading up to the fence: green horses IME will definitely overjump worse if their rider is bracing, pitching forward, or fighting them to the fence.

So I would be working on balance and rhythm leading up to the fences. I set my verticals at 2’3". That’s big enough for a green horse to respect, but not so big that it requires tremendous effort to go over. Keeping the fence a little smaller will also help in terms of ‘going longer’ - the smaller the jump, the less effort required to go over it, the longer you can work on perfecting it in one sitting.

[Mac123]

I think a lot of the time it’s about simple, slow repetition until they stop jumping out of their skin. I spend a lot of time just trotting crossrails, or doing the figure eight pattern mentioned above, until they’re literally stepping over the jumps in a non-impressive manner.

At this point, it’s about relaxing their mind so the body will follow. Depending on the horse’s natural jumping style they still may jump more than another, and you don’t want to take their natural style or respect for the jump away. But you want to wait until they’re jumping soft and fluid and relaxed through the body before moving on to anything else.

In my experience, using any gymnastics or other trappy exercises only makes this problem work, where simple relaxation and repetition works the best.

[findeight]

If you are getting jumped loose, you could feed the vicious cycle of coming down too hard, getting him with a leg or stiffing him in the face, not on purpose, but because he’s jumping you out of position. Then he jumps higher and harder next time fearing the same actions. Younger, more sensitive horses HATE it when the rider gets jumped out of position, it’s uncomfortable and can scare them.

Might be going too slow to and jumping out of a dead pace which makes it much harder for the horse to get all the parts over, be sure to get a good forward canter and keep it after landing. Don’t be afraid to put a neck strap on either, I would.

And, yeah, correct flatwork to build the hindquarters and stay lower over a ton of little, single fences until he relaxes and you can hold your position. Gymnastics are an inappropriate choice until he learns not to heave over and lose any impulsion landing which sounds like what’s happening. Called “landing in a heap”.

Do you have a coach working with you? Is this your horse or are others riding and jumping it too?