WHO the exercise is for:

Horses who always want to take off on a long stride, and horses who have a sloppy long flat jump (as opposed to a rounded active jump).

HOW to set it up:

Put 2 poles on the ground about 13m apart (you may need to make it a bit bigger as some horses find this a bit ‘tight’ to start with). In the middle put a 3 bar oxer with the middle pole highest – this is so that we can approach the exercise from either direction.

WHAT to do:

This is a canter exercise. Canter up to the grid (your horse should be using the first pole as a ‘placement’ pole for taking off, so you get the right spot) after jumping the middle element you want to land just in front of the final placement pole. Adjust the distances if you need to for your horses natural comfortable stride. When you are comfortable with that take the 2 lower poles from your oxer and move them out a little (making the oxer wider), do not adjust the placement poles. Do not make the oxer too wide, or your horse may confuse the placement pole with a groundline if it’s too close to the oxer!

WHY we do it:

This makes our horse jump a little bigger (the spread gets wider), at the same time it makes him collect his stride more – really start to use his neck and back and give us a more rounded jump. A ‘straight up and down’ style of jumping will be fine for most horses up to 1m, but once the jumps get larger (or in hunter/style-based classes) we need the horse to put more effort into the jumps and use the correct form to make the most of his power.

MORE tips:

You can also do this with 2 cavaletti or a square oxer as the middle element if you wish. A square oxer will require the horse to ‘snap’ his front legs up quicker, so is good for those who tend to have lazy legs.