Question # 82: So over the last few months I've come to appreciate that we need to practice full SJ courses.
We're great over 3-5 fences in a row, but have very rarely gotten over 12 fences without a loss of balance/rhythm and a bad fence somewhere along the way. So yesterday I set up 18 or so fences across the two fields we have to ride in and tried to make up various courses, but the issue is that 3/4 of one of those fields has a fairly steep slope and it's in between the two flatter areas (so the flat portions on either end are quite small (e.g. 20x45 is about the max - so you can have maybe 3 to 4 fences in that area). The slope seems to be too steep for us to confidently canter down or across - across is actually worse than down, Henry almost always slips making the turn no matter how careful and balanced he is going into it. So it seems like we should be able to use this difficult terrain to our advantage somehow, but so far I have not found an exercise where it felt like we were mastering the hill - mostly it just feels like we "survive" it. Do you have any suggestions for exercises where we could use this as a training tool? and suggestions for how to practice courses with flow? (as opposed to just doing 4-5 jumps, cantering up/down to the other field and doing 4-5 fences)? Thanks! (Briana)
Hi Briana!
Since you will likely not ever have to show jump on a slope as steep as you are describing, I don't think I would try to use that hill as a training tool. At least not until you are able to keep your horse well balanced for entire courses without that added challenge. If you can only fit 4 fences in your small flat area, then I would set them all so that you can jump them both ways, and be creative with different approaches, making a full course in that small space if that's all you have available.
As for suggestions for how to improve your ability to do longer courses without the quality falling apart... (Click on Question Title above (in blue) to read full answer)
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