I just moved to a new barn and they currently only have about 10 standards, 15 poles and a few barrels. My SO is working on making me a full set with fill and everything but not sure how long that will take to complete. Does anyone have any fun/complicated exercises that don’t require a lot of fences?
Gymnastics and anything that involves tight turns and trot fences are always fun. 5 jump should be plenty to make little courses for now, and you can use branches and tarps to make the jumps more interesting. If you can build so the jumps go both ways, it shouldn’t be too hard to make a course. Something like one single outside, a diagonal line, and an outside line, or a combination etc. You can also stick in barrels to jump or logs, or you can make pole courses. You can also make the jumps and use tarps or blankets as filler and then use the extra poles as part of the course.
Cross rail, 18ft to a vertical, 21ft to an oxer… trot in.
A line set at 60ft can be jumped from the trot in five strides and from canter in four.
The circle of death
More evil, make two 60ft lines with the circle of death at one end using the end jumps of one and the first jump of the other… so ride the line, right into the circle, ride a round the circle and down the other line.
OMG love the two lines + circle of death idea! That would be great for the horse that assumes he knows what’s next.
Put your 5 jumps in an X pattern. One at each corner of the X and one in the center. You will have 4 lines (two outside lines of two jumps and 2 diagonals of three jumps) plus all kinds of rollback options (can go from the outside to the opposite outside or rollback from the jump in the center to an outside, etc). The options are endless. Joe Fargis used this set up in the clinic I did with him and it was amazing all the options available from those five jumps.
Single jump in the center of the ring. Jump on a figure eight. First time count, “one, jump”, second time “one, two, jump”, third time, “one, two, three, jump”. Y ou are not allowed to make a huge adjustment to add a stride if you are wrong. Small adjustments to fix a bad spot ate o.k. See how high you can go without messing up
Set four jumps up on the center line like a W. You can jump 1 turn left to 2, turn right to 3 turn left to 4. Or you can jump 1 the other way, turn left around the point, jump 2, turn right around the point, jump 3 turn left around the point and jump four, Or you can jump 1 turn right to 3, turn left coming back over 4 and turning back to 2. Or you can jump 1 - 4 on a bend, or 4 - 1 going the other way… or any combination or those exercises.
[QUOTE=RugBug;7173178]
Put your 5 jumps in an X pattern. One at each corner of the X and one in the center. You will have 4 lines (two outside lines of two jumps and 2 diagonals of three jumps) plus all kinds of rollback options (can go from the outside to the opposite outside or rollback from the jump in the center to an outside, etc). The options are endless. Joe Fargis used this set up in the clinic I did with him and it was amazing all the options available from those five jumps.[/QUOTE]
This is one of my favorites. It is in the “101 Jumping Exercises for Horse and Rider” book. Highly suggest getting a copy, OP! It is full of fun ideas for pole work (trot and canter), gymnastics, and course work, and combinations of all 3.
Love RugBug and fourmares’ setups, used them all the time in a small indoor or when I had to be my own jump crew before polo practice.
The gymnastic I did tonight was bounce-bounce-bounce-two strides-oxer. Other favorites are vertical-oxer-vertical with either one or two strides inbetween. You can also jump those on a figure 8.
Another favorite involves four jumps set in a star with a barrel as the inside standard for all of them. Barrel can be jumped as a skinny.
I have a book called “Celebrity Jumping Exercises” that’s geared more toward eventers but has some really fun setups in it.
Jump Ideas…
I know you were looking for jumping exercises, but you can always make jumps out of old pallets… they are practically free and you can paint them however and do so much with them 
