Hi there! Curious to know how much different does it feel to jump 3.3ft vs 3.7 ft (talking about a whole course). Is there more technique to jumping just a few inches higher or as long as you have a strong foundation, it shouldn’t make any difference? I have been winning at 1.0meter courses, schooling 1.05m at home with occasional 1.20, 1.25m. Ready to compete at 1.10m but still very stressed about it. Any advice or similar experiences? I am just feeling some kind of mental block even though, the height change seems minimal.
I’m very curious to read replies to this from others.
For me, it really depends on what I’m mounted on but generally I find 1.10m to be the height that starts to be less forgiving of accuracy errors. I’ve shown horses that didn’t have the scope to be forgiving at 1.10m in the way they could be at 1.0m, and found that added pressure nerve wracking. So on some horses, yes - that height difference might be the difference between a jump coming up too deep/too long but ultimately being fine and a horse putting on the breaks because they can’t handle an imperfect distance at the height. On another, scopier/experienced mount, it really may make no difference in how the course rides and just be a purely mental block.
At shows, there could be more concrete different differences, such as more technical course design or going in a bigger ring. Some shows might use the same course between the 1.0 and 1.10 but remove one of the combinations (if there are multiple).
You mentioned you’re schooling 1.05m at home with occasional bigger fences - are you schooling 1.10m courses at home?
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Without knowing much about you or your horse, I’d say it will largely feel the same. On a horse with plenty of scope and experience who is jumping clear rounds in 1.0, 1.10 will ride largely the same save for a possible slight increase in course difficulty. I do find most horses become less forgiving past 1m regardless of scope, so a higher degree of accuracy is usually required.
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She has PLENTY of scope, when she is jumping over a 1.00m oxer, she is jumping it like it’s 1.20m. She absolutely loves to jump. I’m just really stuck on the mental part and worrying that being in my head too much might negatively affect my riding in a higher class. It’s the showing nerves 
She is a very honest horse and she looks up for direction.
I have not done a whole course of 1.10m at home but we also focus a lot on technical riding and not as much on heights. Hence we have a bigger fence here and there. I can comfortably do a 1.00 or 1.05meter course with adjusting the speed and distances.
I would school 1.10-1.15 at home and do double and triples before trying to show at that height. Things will come up faster in a horse show ring and you want to know that you and horse are capable of jumping in and out of combinations on a longer and shorter step.
Practice turning to them on a long approach and a shorter turn, since you will inevitably run into each in a course and some rings will be more forgiving than others.
The other big difference is that 1.10 and higher is when you start to see larger rings. So fitness also comes into play, as bigger rings means more ground they need to cover.
Hill work can help with that.
Lastly, gymnastics, for both of you. Practice sinking in your stirrups and staying with horse through the whole exercise. It will help if the jump gets lofty and horse has to make a bigger effort.
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Thanks! Fitness and endurance are there 
I had competed in the same ring they do Grand Prix in and it will be the same exact ring for 1.10m I’m familiar with it.
Great idea with the gymnastics and staying sinking in the seat. 
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Agree with what most are saying here: the feel is largely the same, but you will need to be more accurate. I think it’s best to move up divisions on a horse that’s already proven at that height or higher. If you’re both trying to move up at the same time, that’s where mistakes can be disheartening for a horse.
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Oh HI it’s me, fellow nervous nelly ammy!
I moved up from the meters to 1.10m and I personally think it’s a fairly big difference. At first. I was schooling 1.10/1.15 at home and doing great, but I will say that first course walk was 🫣
After a show, I was pretty confident and comfortable. I personally found distances easier to see in the 1.10m. Even when I felt like it wasn’t coming up and I didn’t see it, we just got there. My horse jumps very hard over oxers, very far into lines (probably more like 7’) and I found the 1.10 easier overall.
Of course this all depends on your horse. But this was the biggest my horse has competed in the US (did prelim eventing in Europe, though).
Overall I say you just have to do it! School bigger at home. The tracks are harder (think bending lines galore), but I do think it gets easier quickly! Good luck!!
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That might be part of your mental block. It is hard to feel comfortable with the idea of showing over a 1.10m course when you haven’t yet jumped a 1.10m course.
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To ME, 1m to 1.10m was actually a pretty big difference in feel. 1m my horse still kinda cantered the jump and I could still ride with floppy reins, let him poke his nose out, go like a hunter. 1.10m was where he actually truly jumped, as in an even push-off with both hind feet and a true arc with a moment of suspension at the top, and I had to learn to support that with a more advanced connection/contact. And this was a horse with lots of extra scope—he did up to 1.60m before I bought him—so not a question of athletic ability, just a reality of the height of the fence vs the length of his legs lol.
I really struggled with the move-up early on, especially getting the type of canter that produced a good course. Once I got the feel down though (probably ~6mo into schooling 1.10-15 at home and showing in the 10s consistently), I honestly stopped being able to tell the difference between 1.10m and 1.20m or even the occasional 1.30m fence (on an athletic horse, anyway).
Personally, I found it much more productive to focus on the quality of the canter I needed for the 10s and up versus worrying about needing to be more accurate. Focusing on accuracy usually took away from my canter and I ended up with more bad jumps, rails, missed turns, runouts, etc. Once I got what the right canter needed to feel like, all of those issues went away. Well, maybe not the missed inside turns lol, I was still a wimp at heart, but with the right canter I could ride whatever came my way and my horse started to jump about a million times better.
And yes, I too find it easier to “see” a distance to a 1.10m+ fence lol. Closer to my eyeline!
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Agree with this. For me as well, especially with show nerves, 1m to 1.10m was a huge difference. I also felt the difference at different shows. Sometimes it didn’t seem like a large difference, but sometimes the courses were set much less friendly.
I think the difference between 1m and 1.10m isn’t very different for the average athletic horse but for sure I see a difference in how people view it. You walk those courses and for sure those oxers just look a lot more stout.
1.10m is often where you’ll start to see a triple on classic day, related distances that don’t walk dead on stride, longer bending lines, and blind corners. The last three are mentally hard on more novice pairs and I’m often surprised people aren’t practicing these types of questions as much at home.
The other thing I see is that oftentimes, riders at 1.10m are a little more undone mentally by a big mistake like a chip. People who have gotten to the 1.20m tend to buckle down if they make a mistake and ride more forcefully, while less confident folks in the 1.10m often start to shrink back. And I think that’s why that ring can have more carnage, the mistakes snowball a bit more and the jump is big enough that it really doesn’t feel good when you mess up twice or more.
My advice is two things. You mentally are struggling with height so you need to course around 1.10-1.15 before showing that level. It’s great that you’re mastering more technical tracks at home over lower jumps. You can go back to that once you’re confident jumping bigger. You need the feeling of not panicking or circling when you’re too deep to a square oxer and manage it. It will be so much easier to stay calm at the show when (it’s when and not if) that happens.
The other thing you can do if possible is when you’re at the show, walk every single course you can for classes jumping much bigger than you do. First you’ll get more confident walking courses (it is a skill) and you can check your work watching other riders and see how closely they matched what you thought the course would ride like.
You also adjust what starts to look like a big fence. It can happen as quickly as in a week, suddenly the 1.10 looks a lot more inviting after you walked the 1.40 with lines set on a half stride. You want to get to the point where when you walk your ring, you’re almost a little disappointed the jumps aren’t bigger.
Lastly, I know this sounds silly, but if I’m flatting at home alone, I raise all the jumps to 1.50m. Just trotting around a really big jump sort of picks up your eyeline and acclimates you to that sensation from the saddle. Later in the week when I lower them to my usual 1.20-1.30, they look super reasonable. I honestly hate how much this influences my confidence, it feel so dumb. But it’s easy and cheap, so maybe try it.
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No but this is genius! Filing away for the future. Half the battle is just being impressed with the visuals.
On topic though, the 1.0-1.10 gap is HUGE… for a lot of humans. Unless your horse is maxed out, they’re just going to put real effort in sometimes vs cantering over things. Mentally though there’s some roadblock for myself and plenty I know. It is very much like the 3’3-3’6" transition - suddenly things get real and less forgiving.
Walking the big tracks is also a great idea! You start to appreciate the toned down version you get to do (or maybe that’s just lazy old me 
).
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I love all of your suggestions. I’m hoping to make this move at the end of the summer. We have a smaller indoor so in the winter we rarely jump up, but we could definitely practice riding around with some bigger jumps. I only did one rated show last summer but I tried to spend as much time at the Grand Prix ring as possible and I noticed by the end of my week the 1.0m jumps started looking small.
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FYI you can go walk any course at a horse show. Go walk some 1.10s and 1.20s. For us amateurs there is a lot of mental at play. I’ve walked GP courses for fun with my trainer (as an observer, I let her do her thing). I’ll also walk with my friends who do the 1.30s. But even if you don’t have anyone to walk with, as long as you’re not in the way, no one will notice you’re not in the class. Even in plain clothes.
I also watch a TON online. I watch the pros and amateurs to see a variety and I try to watch my division and a division above for scale.
And as my World Cup trainer would say as I go in the ring “have FUN”! (Nice to be reminded by even the “big deals” why we do this!)
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I’m the only one jumping my jumps, I am going to have to try this!! It is such a mental game for me currently. My confidence is low & totally see how this could make a difference. My last barn I was the only one jumping over 2’3", and I was jumping a good bit over 2’3". But then 2’6" started looking big. I always thought the jumps looked big because we never saw them bigger, but never thought to set them larger to trick my eye into making mine look smaller. Deff going to do this today!!
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My husband did this for me. We are currently jumping 1.20 but he has jumps set at 1.30 and 1.40 so I can get used to the look of them as we school. It definitely works!
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It works!!
Set the jumps 2-3 holes higher than the last time I jumped to flat around for the last week+.
Yesterday I jumped, lowered down to basically where we finished last time (after warming up slightly smaller) & it didn’t mess with my mind as much - I also felt much more confident and didn’t feel the need to build it up so slowly. So made sure to raise them back up until we jump again.
I will continue doing this, even though my BF thought I was crazy.
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Getting used to the look of bigger jumps totally works! My big horse was off for several years due to a complex injury- right before that we had moved up to the 1.20m and were doing fine and I was very used to those jumps, often doing a hole higher at home.
A few years later and we are back at it and 1.0m looked huge at first. The issue is that when I get worried (i.e. those jumps look big!) I abdicate responsibility, and my older guy isn’t the sort to do things on his own. He is a horse that will lose confidence if the rider isn’t doing her job, so even 1.0m can be a problem if I don’t set him up right. Go up to 1.10m without the proper balance and impulsion and he won’t jump- it is physically much harder for them to do if they aren’t balanced. Last week I was schooling 1.10m-1.15m and things were good, and then we showed at 1.05m and had great rounds. However, when we went back to do the 1.10m a couple of days later that single hole higher in the big GP ring looked super-daunting so I got nervous. I abandoned him in front of a big oxer, he went onto his forehand, we lost our nice distance, and he was all: Forget it, stupid! I’m not climbing over this fence for your dumb butt! We had to go back down a level the next day so I could redeem myself and give him a better ride, and now he thinks I’m not an idiot again (he is a forgiving boy), so we can make our way back to 1.10m.
So, it’s a combination of a mental game and a physical one–if I do my job he is set up to do his, and he will jump whatever without any worries. If I get all ammy on him, things go south. Getting to the show and not thinking things look big so I don’t ride like a dingbat is an important part of this, for me.
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