Curious what COTH thinks… Specifically, arthritis/joint damage? Torn suspensories?
What are your upper limits/thresholds for jumping your horse (helpful if you include age/fitness/jumping height)?
By over jumping do you mean overfscing him with jumps that are too high for him, or too high for his current level of training or fitness?
Or do you mean jumping too often like a jump lesson every day?
Really an upper limit is going to depend on the innate athleticism of the horse. Some are maxed out at 2 foot 9, others are perfectly fine at 5 feet.
Assuming your talking about jumping too frequently the greatest risk is going to be soft tissue injury. The lower leg of the horse (below knee and hock) are comprised of only bone, tendons, and ligaments. It creates a spring like action that allows the horse to run for long periods of time without tiring as quickly. As the horse starts to fatigue, the muscles in the upper half of the leg and the rest of the body begin to struggle to keep up and as a result the tendons and ligaments take more of the effort. If you repeatedly work a horse past the point of their physical ability, jumping or not, the extra strain on the tendons and ligaments can cause small chronic tears to occur. These tiny tears can heal on their own without ever knowing they are there with appropriate rest but if not will continue to get bigger until there is obvious lameness at which point your left with a rather significant soft tissue injury.
I overjumped my last horse being a teenager and not knowing any better. It was only for a couple summers that he spent at our house in canada and it resulted in a career ending suspensory tear at 12 years old.
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Depends
If you mean jumping too much in one day, it is soft tissue
If you mean jumping when the horse is tired, it is soft tissue
If you mean jumping in deep footing, it is soft tissue.
But if you mean jumping too many days (with the horse not being tired on any one day) it is bones and joints
If you mean jumping in hard footing, it is bones and joints.
If you mean jumping too high, it could be either.
But a lot of it depends on the conditioning (long slow distance, as well as interval training) independent of the jumping.
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What I intended was jumping a horse too frequently.
We are all young and dumb once until we learn better… Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
This is an excellent break down. Thank you! When you say bones, do you mean they are more fragile and prone to fracture or something else?
Of course fitness levels of horses vary-- but I have long heard that twice a week of jumping is enough, outside of a show where a horse may be jumping more frequently-- and that at a show, a horse should not be doing more than two courses per day. Very rough guides. I have seen people who jump nearly daily at home, and show 4-5 classes at a weekend show each day, and then wonder why the horse goes lame in several months, usually with suspensory issues.Career ending, riding horse ending, lameness.
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Preach. I mostly have heard this general guidance as well (2x a week).
We used to have a trainer when I didn’t know any better that would really pound the horses over fences (multiple times a week and multiple divisions at shows). I wish as a preteen I would have questioned her more.
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It’s really tough to say, this is how much you should jump or this is the injury your horse will get because it depends on so many factors. There really is no “recipe” for how much you can jump a horse before you risk career-ending lameness. It depends on the individual horse, any pre-existing issues they may have (whether you know about them or not), the rest of your horse’s management program, etc. The injury your horse is most likely to get depends on the same things.
Some horses are machines and stay sound forever, others don’t even if you think you’re doing everything right. I jumped my horse no more than twice a week, showed minimally (1 show a month for four months out of the year) for four years, and she’s had to retire from jumping at age 11. You just never know what’s going happen with horses.
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Don’t neglect the mental side of over jumping or overdrilling anything. They get to hate it. No doubt helped along by increasing aches and pains from overuse of specific muscles and joints even if the horse never appears “lame”.
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cavaletti and poles are great to avoid the injuries–trains lots of the jumping parts (distances, pace etc) without the strain.
Repetitive stress injuries due to concussion.
Every horse is different and a horse must strengthen his jumping muscles by jumping in order to prevent an injury due to unfitness. So, less isn’t always the answer. As other posters have mentioned, rails and cavaletti are great ways to practice jumping-related skills without the concussion of actually jumping, but they don’t necessarily maintain the muscle development and coordination for liftoff over different types of obstacles.
I have a 23-year-old who’s had an active career and now is semi-retired to lope over 2’6". He has two old suspensory lesions and the arthritis you would expect of a horse his age. We might do 5 2’ jumps in a week. But while that “saves him” it doesn’t build his fitness, so if I want to take him to a horse show and do 3 warm up jumps and a class, I’m asking him to do in a day more than I’ve practiced in a week. While 2’6" is of minimal effort and the work he does on his whole body fitness is largely transferable, it’s not a direct correlation, and I don’t think I serve him by under-practicing. I would risk those old suspensories by producing a situation at a show where they are asked to go beyond their fitness and practice more than I risk them by judicious practice on good footing when in a building fitness phase, and resting and icing in a recovery phase. You have to think about the individual and the whole picture of health and fitness.
Great point. Those scars sometimes never heal.
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I event and have always subscribed to the theory that each horse has only so many jumps in them (but that number isn’t known!) before they “breakdown” - most likely due to soft tissue injury. So I try to be pretty judicious with how much we jump and the height. I typically jump once a week in a lesson, but will extend that for a weekend clinic (but I’ll skip my jumping lesson that week). I generally don’t jump outside of a lesson, but will do cavaletti or poles. We will jump mostly below our competition height until a week or two before the competition when we will jump just a little over our competition height to be sure the actual competition course looks “easy.” My area typically runs events over 3 days, so each day isn’t terribly physically taxing, but I also do the occasional one-day event and there I make sure my warm up is as minimal as possible. I typically only show 3-4 events per year, spread over 5-6 months with some dressage shows interspersed. I generally avoid consecutive weekends for jump shows.
I think footing makes a huge different - good footing minimizes fatigue and the risk of injury. I’m more willing to do a bit more (on a given day or in a week) if the footing is good. I don’t mind hard footing too much (but won’t do a ton of galloping and will take injury preventative measures afterwards) but I am super cautious in deep footing (risk of soft tissue damage is just too high).
I also find my horse “learns” better with time off and the focus we put on our dressage between jumping schools really improves her jumping work.
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There is a fine line between overuse and proper conditioning though. Horse has to jump competition height and speed enough to condition the muscles and build strength, rider needs it too. That’s kind of an art.
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I’ve posted this many times here throughout the years and I’ll say it again now.
“A horse only has so many jumps in them” is as true as “a human only has so many breaths in them.” Yes, this is technically true, but that number can be MASSIVELY extended or shortened based on the conditioning work and appropriateness of the what you ask of them short and long term. I also think it suggests a far-too-weak conditioning program for an athlete. IOW, I hate that saying with a passion.
I have a mare who has jumped almost every day since I got her as a 5 year old and is still trucking around sound as a dime at the age of 21. She showed at 1.30m - 1.40m for 8 years and now packs my young daughter around at 3’ - 3’6". She was a tough one to keep conditioned, and so in her prime she got 2-a-day workouts during the show season and never got time off (as in “the winter off” or any variation of that). I’ve also subscribed to the theory that FOR HER (certainly not for many or maybe even most others) she stays her absolute most comfortable and best when she’s working as close to 7 days a week as possible. And so we’ve done that for the last 16 years. Now at the age of 21 she still jumps 4-5 times a week. BUT, the caveat there is that she jumps 6-8 fences on any given day. We NEVER school multiple courses on her or ask her to go over and over and over. I would guess that her total number of fences each week is probably less than a horse who was doing formal jumping lessons twice a week. And for her that evenly spread out jumping keeps her in better condition.
On the other hand, I have a my Thoroughbred who has shown at 1.40m - 1.50m for the last 8 years (and 1.0m - 1.30m for the 3-4 years before that). He’s naturally fit pretty much all of the time and I’m always chastising myself for not jumping him enough (he jumps once or twice a week). But that’s all he needs to maintain his fitness level. He’s 17yo this year and still going strong.
Most of my warmbloods require more jumping than my TB to stay as conditioned and fit as I want them to be to handle courses at shows easily. And also to maintain the stamina to show 3-5 days in a row.
But again, the key is APPROPRIATE work for their condition level and comfort level. As I mentioned about my mare, for the horses I jump multiple times a week, we’re talking about 10-15 fences at the most on any given day. I very very rarely course, and I don’t try to learn while riding them. In other words, it’s a very different program than it would be if I rode with a trainer and was trying to get things accomplished FOR ME (e.g. repeating exercises so I can get it right, etc.).
With all of that in mind, I believe that “over jumping a horse” is almost impossible to define. But it relates MUCH MORE to how much jumping you do relative to the horse’s condition and scope than any number at all. And within the category of “horse’s condition” are things like good farriery (something I see surprisingly little of), good footing, and riders/trainers who catch issues when they’re very minor and respond accordingly.
To that point, I’ve watched many friends try to go the “minimal schooling” route to “save” their horses and wind up with ligament and tendon strains as a result. Just like you would never train for a marathon by jogging a mile a day, you have to at least semi-regularly school exactly what you’re asking the horse to do in shows. For my mare, jumping a few 1.30m - 1.40m fences a day kept her in much much better shape than jumping a bunch of fences once or twice a week. For my gelding, we might jump a handful of 1.30m - 1.40m fences once or twice a week and he’s fine with that.
So all of that to say that any program has to take the individual horse into consideration. And horses differ so greatly, that I don’t believe you can set any sort of a blanket rule about “how much to jump,” let alone any definition of exactly what “over jumping” is. Or maybe it’s like the old saying, “it’s impossible to define, but I know it when I see it” 
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all the likes PNW!
Fitness has SO MUCH MORE to do with injuries than “how many jumps”. And this doesn’t just mean fit to WTC in a ring for 45 minutes, but fit to jump the question you are asking (eq, hunter class, jumpers, xc … they all ask different fitness questions of the horse that need to be answered correctly in order to improve your odds against an injury) … And fitness to me means controlled work on variable footing as well. Some roadwork, some work in grass, up and down at least moderate inclines, ring work and so on.
PNW, you know what overjumping is to me? When you have to carry your horse around the track on Sunday because he is so dead heavy on his forehand, when you find yourself struggling to get him to lengthen or shorten to make the distance work. If that happens at any point in a show without extenuating circumstances, you probably previously underfitted and are now overjumping your horse in the big scheme of things. You should do better the next time!
For the old timers out there, does it seem like horses are getting injured at a younger age today with less work?
Could it be a combination of lack of turnout and specialization? The horses of my childhood WORKED and showed multiple jumping classes at shows, for years. I had coaches who would hold 2 hour lessons with a great deal of jumping. Would I say their fitness was carefully planned? No. We rode and had fun. We took them outside the ring and jumped anything we came across, for miles. Logs, ditches, road gates (onto gravel, dumb kids)… Even in the ring footing was iffy and we didn’t set their legs after lessons or have anything injected. They were clean legged and jumping sound through their 20s. We’d give a little bute after the show and that was that. We didn’t think anything of it because pretty much everyone’s horse was like ours.
This was after their racing careers, of course.
Did I miss something as a kid or has the soundness world changed a little?
