Improve Your
Jumping Position
with These
Four Steps

1 Lose your reins

Why? Jumping without reins helps to develop an independent seat, where you aren’t pulling on your reins to keep you balanced over the fences, so you’ll find yourself staying more over the horse’s centre of gravity and not overjumping. If your lower leg has a tendency to slip back, it could be because you throw your upper body over the horse as you jump, causing the momentum to slide your lower leg backwards.

Obviously, only drop your reins on a safe and established horse – it is not an exercise for young, fresh or difficult horses. You also only want to do this jumping down an easy grid which invites the horse to stay straight. For this exercise, you’ll need to keep the following in mind:

• Build a grid with and ground lines along the side to discourage the horse from running out or ideally, make a chute similar to a free jumping lane to jump down.
• Knot your reins. If you just leave them dangling, your horse could catch his leg and send both of you tumbling to the ground
• Trot in rather than canter – use three or four trotting placing poles before to make sure you take off at the correct spot
• Keep the grid on a straight line, no curves or dog-legs
• Stick to bounces, one-stride and two-stride efforts. Leaving space for three or more strides with no reins means your horse is more likely to get strung out and will mean you struggle to make the distances properly

2 Bounces, grids, more bounces and more grids

Bounces and grids are not just the ultimate cure-all for horses, but for their riders as well. Doing regular gymnastics and bounce exercises helps a horse to improve their style and form over a fence, and the same is true of the rider. You don’t have to worry about the approach, and the repetitive nature of the exercises also allow you to focus fully on yourself.

Generally, if you want to work solely on your own position it’s best to keep the fences low and in quick succession of one another.

The fact that the jumps come up quite quickly encourages riders to soften through the body, particularly the knees, ankles and upper thigh, the areas that often ‘grip’ and result in a jumping position which isn’t secure. Concentrating on your position over low, short grids helps the rider to develop a natural jumping position, one which is in balance and following the horse.

Having said that, grids are also a very easy way to gain confidence over bigger fences than usual, so if your position is ok over small jumps but falls apart at 1.20m, riding grids and gymnastics are also excellent at setting you up properly and giving you the freedom to work on your position without worrying about the canter and the approach over larger fences.

3 Spend more time in jumping position

Your two-point position doesn’t just have to be done over fences. Just spending more time in the correct jumping position will help you develop the right muscle memory and make you stronger and more balanced. If it sounds simple, that’s because it is!

Trot and canter around the school or on a hack in two-point – it’s harder in trot because your knees and ankles have to absorb the bouncing movement, but it will strengthen your calves and help you learn to stay in balance with the horse. You can even do it in walk!

The important thing is to make sure that you aren’t tipping forward or backwards, that you’re not pinching the saddle with your knee, and that your lower leg stays in contact with the horse – you can’t take your leg off on the approach or over the fence, and having your leg closed (not kicking, but draped) against the horse’s side gives you stability both on the flat and over fences.