In addition to what others have said, don’t fight too hard with your horse’s natural balance. Those HUS horses are not only trained, but also bred, to go long and low.
You are not going to be jumping very high for AQHA hunters, so you can learn to help him balance and to help yourself not interfere even if he feels low compared to other horses. LOTS of transitions, both between gaits and within the gait, i.e., shorten to lengthen to shorten. Also, be sure to distinguish between your jumping canter and your HUS canter. They are not the same; the HUS saddle canter is waaay to slow and on the forehand. Set poles about 52 feet apart and do four strides between them – that should be your jumping canter. I watched a little bit of the Congress, and IMO they go too slow in the corners and have to push down the lines. Instead, your course should be at the pace that gets you nicely down the lines. It is counter intuitive perhaps, but the better your canter, the less accurate you need to be at the jumps themselves.
Whatever you do, don’t try to “pull” him up. I ride a very low going App, and sometimes coming to a jump, I think uh oh he is too low. However, I work VERY hard on our jumping canter, so he does fine if I just chill and stay the same.
He does hunter/jumper shows, so no HUS for him, but I am familiar with the breed show HUS. Mine can be low but still able to jump nicely if I ride him like he likes. For him, in addition to LOTS of canter work, a placing pole 9’ in front of a low vertical is a very good exercise. Plus, some raised cavalleti, about 10’ apart, three or four in a row.
As far as the bit, I have a two ring elevator that I use on him sometimes, but honestly, it is better as a practice bit for flat work. It helps me feel like he is not so heavy. But honestly, what you need is lots of leg and what I call “physical therapy” for his balance, doing the above described flat work and pole exercises. The older I get, the more I realize that my day to day riding of all my horses is really finding a good physical therapy program for that particular horse. For example, for this particular horse, I do not do lot of trot-in grid work because he much prefers to jump off his left lead. So I do a lot with poles, coming in on and holding his right lead.
