Please help! I have ridden all types of horses and ponies in the 12 years I’ve been riding. Showing for 10 years. I have a very green horse with incredible scope. He’s supposed to be my future 3’6 horse. He’s been showing 2’6, when I watch videos of us showing he looks ridiculous stepping over 2’6 like it’s nothing. I know he’s ready to show higher but for some reason the bigger jumps are scary and intimidating to me. Does anyone have tips to get over this?
What height are you jumping now?
2 foot 6 is really beginners, but 3 foot 6 is starting to get big.
Don’t worry about 3 foot 6 for now. Just focus on 2 foot 9.
Get lessons on school master jumper and school your green horse on the flat. Work on your seat.
Riding for 12 years, I am guessing you are a teen and counting early childhood pony rides in here.
How long have you been jumping?
How high a course can you ride?
How high are you competing?
Where is your trainer in the mix?
Is this your first horse or first “serious” horse?
If you are just jumping 2 foot 6 and getting scared thinking about 3 foot 6 in future, that’s a different scenario than if you are already competing at 3 feet and suddenly losing your nerve.
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You don’t put the jumps up until you feel boredom at jumping the height you are now.
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Stay at your current height until you get bored. Then raise the fences. Jump that height until you are bored and so on.
There’s a Jack LeGoff quote that goes something to the effect of: boldness comes from confidence and confidence comes from success. You have to put yourself in a position to be successful- which won’t happen if you are riding at a level that makes you uncomfortable. Trying to move things faster than you’re comfortable just gets you to the wrong place faster.
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No. You don’t need to get over this. This is your self-preservation instinct speaking. Don’t ignore it.
Like other folks have already said, you jump the height you’re comfortable jumping until raising the jumps another 3 inches isn’t scary. Then you jump that height until raising the jumps another 3 inches isn’t scary.
Nobody goes straight from jumping 2’6" to jumping 3’6". Its a long, gradual process of learning, improving, and expanding your comfort zone 3 inches at a time.
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I’m going to second everything that everyone has said here, and will also add this:
I was comfortably jumping 2’9" courses when I was a preteen. I had a bad riding accident (unrelated to jumping, it was a freak accident in every sense of the term) and had to take a few years off as a teenager for physical and financial reasons. When I came back to riding, I had (understandably) lost a lot of fitness, lost my eye for distances, and was just generally unprepared to come back to jumping at the height I had been, or to move up.
The trainer I was with when I started riding again (a different trainer than the one who had gotten me to 2’9" comfortably) pushed me more quickly than I was ready for and it absolutely destroyed my confidence over fences to the point where it’s taken me roughly six months of riding on my own, away from that trainer, to feel comfortable even jumping cross-rails. Fortunately, getting to do it on my terms has reminded of how much I really do love jumping and I’m in a place where I’m comfortable continuing to move up, but things like this aren’t places where you want to push yourself too much.
As everyone else has said, do it til you get bored, and then pop the jumps up a hole. Don’t add six or nine inches at a time. Don’t push yourself to do things that you aren’t comfortable with. That’s how you wreck your confidence and it’s an easy way to get yourself into a bad spot while you’re jumping. Don’t listen to people who make you feel like you “have” to do it faster. Your horse doesn’t care whether you’re jumping 2’6" or 3’6", no matter how athletically gifted he may be, and you’ll do yourself more favors in the long run if you go at a pace you’re comfortable with. You’ll know when it’s time to add a little height. Don’t rush yourself. It’s a process and you’ll get there. Just take your time.
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I agree with everyone else that you shouldn’t jump bigger than what you are confident doing as it can wreck your nerves but there are some additional tools you can use to deal with your confidence issues. One of the big ones would be to talk with a sports psychologist to see if there is a reason why jumping bigger makes you nervous. Maybe there is some underlying reason that won’t resolve on its own that you need to deal with. I know plenty of people who have gotten help from a psychologist for riding nerves and it can make a huge difference.
I agree with everyone that there is nothing wrong with this fear. I have been jumping for 20+ years and still feel that way.
My question is is anxiety away or at home? Is it because you are excited or because something happened in your past that could cause the larger fences to become scary? Could it be because your greeny and you haven’t developed a relationship?
With my last lease horse we were jumping 3’6" to 4’ at home and schooling 3’3" on cross country but showing at max height 2’11". It didn’t mater the height for me some days I would get on for my lesson or show and recognize I was having an anxiety day. I could be super excited to jump and the excurise could be my favorite but I would be sitting there having a small panic attack. I found communicating that to my trainer meant she was able to coach me through those feelings and keep the height to a safe level. She has never pushed me to jump big away from home and would only shoot up the jump heights when I was clearly having a good day.
Slowly over the years I started having more good days than bad in lessons, my off site schooling got better and my showing got more fun. I love jumping big, I love that feeling of weightlessness when everything goes right but I have learned to not be afraid to say, “Hey, can we work on the little stuff today?”
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Just want to add, some awesome answers here. I agree, raise them only when you’re bored with your current height. If you do feel you hit a wall in terms of height and want to go higher but just don’t feel you can do it. increase the technicality of your current height. Put in more related distances, bending lines, offset jumps, etc so you know you can do whatever is put in front of you in your sleep.
For me personally, I always keep one fence a little higher and work it in whenever the spirit moves me.
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I will be the voice of dissent here. If I waited to move up until I was bored at the height I was jumping I never would have moved up to the 3’6". Ever. I’ve been doing that height for 4 years now on my same horse and it still looks big to me. Every, single, horse show. And my horse has 4’6" hunter scope, easy, so it’s not like he can’t get us out of any stupid distance I put us in.
Now I’m not saying you go straight from 2’6" to 3’6", that’s ridiculous. But if your trainer thinks you and your horse are ready, start with 2’9". When that is going well, up the outs of the lines go to 3’. Then the entire course at 3’. And so on.
My favorite quote is this: “Sometimes the fear won’t go away, so you’ll have to do it afraid”.
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I 100% agree with this. I suppose I should amend my earlier statement to say that it would be wrong to say that I haven’t been nervous to do things that would count as moving up - that ball in the pit of my stomach was still there the first time I pointed myself at a cross-rail after the destruction of my confidence, it was just tempered by the part of me that was sitting up there going “I miss jumping, I love jumping, I want to jump, it’s just a cross-rail.”
You might always be a little bit scared, OP, and that’s okay too, but you can definitely get to a point where the urge to jump bigger outweighs the nervousness. You just have to learn where that tipping point is and go from there.
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This may sound silly, but it works for my clients: Have the jumps set big when you go in the arena (say, 3’6"), and hack around those bigger jumps, and then drop them 9 inches for your ride. Even doing this just on your flat days helps: Your brain will get used to seeing the bigger jumps, and suddenly 2’9" won’t look so big. Another brain trick is to jump 2’6" with shorter rails and standards, and then have a 2’9" or 3’0" jump with wider rails and taller standards. They will look about the same height to your brain. Our jumps at home are mostly shorter rails (8’ - 10’) so when we get to shows with 12-14’ rails, they look tiny.
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“You have got to want to”. If you don’t want to jump that jump, you won’t jump it because your horse feels your hesitation and caution. If you don’t want to, don’t. You don’t have to. You may be a person who will stay within their comfort zone, whatever that might be, and be OK with that. Not everyone is going to jump at the Olympics. But when/if you want to try jumping something bigger, if you have a horse who has the talent, has the courage, has the power and wants to do it with you, it’s a great feeling, and one you will never forget. If you are sitting on the “right” horse, it’s easy, the jumps look smaller. And @CHT 's plan works well, ride around the big jumps for a while, then drop them down to your size, makes things look way smaller.
First things first, don’t rush yourself. Just because your horse may be “ready” for bigger jumps doesn’t mean you have to jump bigger. You can jump around at 2’6" your whole life if you want, that’s perfectly fine. You’re not “wasting talent” or “holding your horse back” or anything else along those lines if you don’t pursue jumping higher. And absolutely do not let anyone ever convince that you are.
That being said, if you do want to jump higher, then you work on it slowly. You don’t just pop the fence up to 3’6", you move the rail up a hole or two at a time and build your confidence over gradually larger jumps and gradually more complicated combinations. It’ll take time, and be willing to let it take time. Rushing - either literally at the jump or mentally - will only put you in a bad place with no chance to fix it.
And you may not ever fully get rid of the fear. That’s okay too. It’s still possible to do things while being afraid to do them, you just have to learn to work with your fear. Which is easier said than done, but possible.
I’m an adult who has ridden for the better part of 35 years. The last 10 have been sporadic due to having kids and dealing with an autoimmune disease. I now have a half lease on a very nice horse and access to a good trainer. Things are looking up. The biggest problem I have is that while I’m objectively quite fit, I feel that I’ve lost fitness. And I don’t trust my body to do what it needs to do if an issue arises.
The strength is coming back slowly but steadily. Knock on wood, I’ve never had a serious fall. For the past 20 years, I’ve safely diffused every occasion that a horse has thrown something crazy at me. The lease horse is no longer a professional only horse like he was when he was young. He never does anything dangerous and takes a joke in the sense that he rolls his eyes at me if I don’t ask for something correctly. But he was a $200k import as a 5yo and supposed to be a CCI**** competitor. He still has tremendous fire and sensitivity that I’m not used to. After a winter in the indoor arena, the outdoor is very exciting to him. Cantering outside has been freaking me out. I’be avoided it the past few lessons. And then I was sick last week and didn’t get to work through it on my own as I had intended.
We did a clinic today with a German master rider. It started out rough - ride time got pushed back and the rest of the barn was loudly expressing their joy about dinner and the wind gusted. I warmed him up on the drive but ended up getting off and walking down to the arena because he was dancing a jig. The clinician was lovely and very calm and supportive. He asked us to canter tracking right. The horse’s stiff direction and the side I have my weird hip issue. I almost declined. Then, I got mad at myself. I was selling myself short. There was a time I could jump 4’. I could canter a 20 meter circle. The odds of dying with 3 highly trained professionals 10 feet away were low. So, we cantered. And i surely looked terrible (the horse is always a perfect 10!) But I didn’t die. Lol.
Maybe it’s less a case of doing something until you get bored of it and more of doing it until you get to a point where you get mad at yourself?
Slow and steady. Living in the south, I’ve always joked that instead of big hair, I jump horses to get closer to God and is he really going to care about six inches? :lol:
What I mean by that is that I’ve seen countless riders ruined by crappy trainers telling them that they need to be jumping 3’6’’ to be good. Frankly, that’s baloney. A rider who can consistently take any type of horse into the 2’3’’ ring or the 2’6’’ ring and win with the right strides and quiet equitation is probably a better rider than one who can manage to get around with the jumps set at 3’6’’.
If you want to make a personal goal to jump 3’6’’ and you have the horse to do it, I love the suggestions above of raising the outs and/or starting during hacking with jumps higher. I’m bringing my ex jumper mare back into work currently - I retired her in 2012 after winning a world title and I haven’t had another over fences horse since. She’s 21 this year, and our goal is the baby jumpers on the local circuit. #bigdreams I’ve spent six months riding school horses to get my body and eye back after basically six years off and last week I set up my jumps at home – cavalettis, ground poles, and 18’’ gates. :winkgrin: I have a couple of 2’ boxes and I set one jump up at 2’6’’ just to get some rails off the ground and jesus it looks big sitting out there. BUT - I’m on the mare that I used to jump huge courses on and I know it’s just having half a decade off from doing it. I started this week on ground poles and cavalettis and I’ll probably pick a day this weekend to bring in the 18’’ lines. During lessons, I’ve been jumping 2’6’’ - 2’9’’… and it still is mentally helpful to have a smaller in with the bigger jumps as the outs or a larger single towards the end of a course, once you already have successfully navigated 6-7 other jumps.
However, if you only want to jump 3’6’’ because someone told you that was the goal then maybe reevaluate what you’re doing. And I say that to anyone reading, not just the OP. Our lives are meant to bring us joy. If you spend your life trying to validate your worth based on someone else’s opinions of your abilities, you will constantly be disappointed. Your worth, your ability as a rider, your competency with a horse is not wrapped up in how high some colored wooden sticks are placed in the air – I promise. Ride horses because it brings you joy and you love the animal; don’t do it to prove your worth to someone. I’m as competitive as they come, so that’s been a hard lesson for me to learn over the years - but the horse doesn’t care if you’re jumping 18’’ or 6’. They do care if you’re upset, or nervous, or scared and asking them to be brave on your behalf to “prove” you’re a good rider to someone they don’t know.
GL OP!
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Agreeing with everyone else here. If you truly intend to eventually move on to the 3’6" division, just jump what you are comfortable with now on your greenie. However, I would seek out a schoolmaster type if you want to jump a little bigger, something that is reliable and safe. I struggled for years with a mare I bought when she was 4. She was fine up to 2’6", but I found her scary at much bigger. She was not as talented as it sound like your horse is… My instructor put me up on a been there/done that horse* and he gave me LOTS of confidence. If you greenie is talented and scopey, you don’t want your current, quite reasonable, fears to confuse him. Learn on a schoolmaster, and just gradually inch those jumps up with your youngster.
*I ended up selling my mare to a breeder and buying the schoolmaster, whom I then, over the course of three years, evented from Novice up to Preliminary.
Do NOT go any faster/higher than you are comfortable with!
I promise your horse does not go home at night and lament how you are holding him back…frankly, as long as he is getting food and exercise, he’d be just as happy plopping down the trail as competing a 3’6 course.
If your trainer/parents are pushing you to go faster than you feel is safe, tell them! People often get caught up in their own heads and dreams without considering how this is effecting the rider. Sometimes you have to be brutally honest and vocal to cut through their head fog.
If your friends are making you feel like you need to go faster to be successful, tell them you are more concerned with doing it right than doing it quickly. If you are pushing yourself to keep up with your friends, remind yourself that you are MORE than just your riding. There are so many other things that make you special, and how high you jump is just one piece of you. Look at all the other amazing pieces of your life and celebrate being a well rounded human being. Be kind to yourself!!!
Finally-you will know when you are ready! The fear will still be there, but it will be excited fear, not a feeling of dread in the pit of your stomach. I promise you WILL get there, but only if you give yourself the time and grace to do it on your terms. I know 1,000,000 kids who quit in their mid/late teens because the pressure got to be too much and it stopped being fun (okay-that’s an exaggeration but you get my point).
I also really liked going through a gymnastic with the third jump as the highest jump - almost like a jumping chute. Generally two cross-rails to an oxer. The cross rails feel inviting, and then the oxer just sort of happens. The horse thinks about it and you’re just responsible for you. I would start it off at something you’re comfortable with, and then just have someone raise it gradually. That got me to 3’9" and from then on in it was easier. It also helped me to realize that generally speaking, the horse “got this” and so it was only on me to set a good pace to the jump, I didn’t have to worry about the jump quite so much.
I don’t jump now other than piddly stuff, but if I wanted to get myself to that point again I’d work my way back up with those types of exercise 
