Poll: How many times per week do you jump your horse?

I never jump my horse. She’s 16.2 hands and I would have difficulty jumping over a small pony, let alone my horse!!!

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Our schedule during eventing season is:

Monday: Off
Tuesday: Flatwork
Wednesday: Flatwork
Thursday: Flatwork w/ cavaletti or poles on show week or jumping on non show week
Friday: Flawork
Saturday: Show on show weeks or trot/canter sets on non show week
Sunday: Show on show weeks or jumping on non show weeks

Obviously we mix it up from time to time, maybe going off property for a trail ride or XC schooling, but this is more or less what my eventing schedule looks like.

You need to try pole vaulting, trust me, it’s much easier than high-jumping them :lol:

My horse usually jumps in lessons just once a week, though I often go over something small (as in less than 2ft) after warm up to perk up the mare a bit even when we are mostly doing flatwork, and we some poles and cavaletti during most rides. Though recently we’ve been in flatwork bootcamp! I think we probably have another few weeks of that this spring before it is back to jumps for us.
The dressage riders at the barn shipped out the jumper to ride at an indoor this winter, and I think they aren’t ready to give up their uncluttered arena just yet :cool:

My childhood (and hopefully future) trainer always told me that a good rule of thumb was that no more than one out of every three rides should be a legitimate jump school. It wasn’t so much about ~horses only have so many jumps in them~ as it was about the fact that we’re both eventers and we did a lot of dressage work (for very good reason).

I half-leased when I was riding with her so my schedule was usually Tuesdays - flat ride, Thursdays - jump or dressage lesson (we usually alternated week-to-week), and Sundays were pretty much always a free-for-all (flat or jump depending on what I did in my lesson, or five-hour trail rides when the weather was nice). On days when I flatted I’d usually pop over a jump or two at the end, just for my own amusement, but for the most part I stuck to the guideline that 1/3 rides should be a proper jump school.

Admittedly, I was schooling 2’3-2’9 at that point, so it wasn’t like I was asking him to jump a Grand Prix course every time we had a jump school or anything, but still. Dressage work was a big focus for us and I like it that way, with a jump thrown in here and there to keep things interesting.

Generally once a week, but like someone else mentioned, sometimes popping over an x during flatwork just to measure that the flatwork is coming into jumping and to do something fun for my horse.

Once a week at 3’. Couple of lower singles or just the flower boxes in some kind of interesting exercise worked into flatwork or a log or little gully hacking out just to keep things interesting several times a week. In show season, usually didn’t school mid week and we mostly did 2 over fences Fri and Sat plus a hack, possibly a Classic round and earlier in the season or if we hadn’t shown for awhile, one Low, preferably Thursday.

The trick with the older Show Hunters, as I had, is keeping them sharp mentally so we avoided related courses and just worked on the pieces and parts over as many different looking things as we could find. My barn moved most of the fences daily and everything weekly to avoid complacency and focus on quality, not quantity. Not everybody does this but I found a nice gallop outside did more to sharpen my rounds then more jumps and since we were at KHP often, finding room for that wasn’t a problem.

One longer jump school once a week or two shorter ones twice a week.

2x a week. Lower in the winter and at height for showing once a week as we get closer to show season. If a new course is set that’s spooky or really difficult the trainers will take them over the jumps before my lesson day.

Depends. My horse who is retired now the last few years I was competing with her I hardly ever jumped, just kept her really fit with a lot of walking, flatwork, and turnout. She was awesome though she really knew and loved her job and you could pull her out of a field after not having jumped in a long time and she’d jump 1.20 fast and clean like a million bucks. You could make a lot of mistakes too and she never ever cared. My young horse I feel like I pop her over a little crossrail a few times almost every time I ride lol she’s a little lazy it wakes her up and gets her a little jumping experience with low impact and I can make mistakes without scaring her. I also haven’t decided if I want to keep her long term so I like my young horses to learn to chip and miss and take long spots without a problem so that if I sell them to someone inexperienced the horse can help them. Maybe like for real jump her once a week with courses and maximum height for her skill level. Other horses just depends on experience and rider.

Typically twice a week but on show weeks she ends up jumping a lot :(. 1-2 divisions (this summer 3’6-4’), and a schooling day. If she does a lot for a few weeks she gets at least a week off. Month off at the end of show season. In the winter we keep the jumps small though and do a lot of exercises so it isn’t a whole lot of actual jumping. We pretty much never jump division height at home or during schooling at shows. A ton of lessons we literally just do tiny 2’ jumps. She has great technique it’s the in between so I don’t think theres a point to stressing her joints.