[Akyashaa]

I'd love to work with kimo, he jumps when i ride him but he doesnt really know alot, and its hard to get him to get the take off right, I think i should teach him the basics, he's a 16yr old AQHA , how would i go about teaching him from the ground first?

[dreamngold]

Well I don't know much about teaching to free jump, I have always lunged my horses over jumps, but it works too. Do you have barrels at your barn? If so then set a pole oer two barrels laying down and lunge him over them. Do you have a lot of experience with jumping horses? Need to know where you are at for jumping experience too.

[Akyashaa]

Well not a whole lot to be honest, i know the basics of jumping and most i did was like 2 1/2 feet, no expert by any means, never trained a horse to jump, always ridden and worked with horses who already knew it....

The thing is I tried lunging him over , and he freaked, then i walked with him over and next to his head, he did fine, then i ran with him over and he did great , when i jumped he jumped hehe, was kinda cute really, i got cavaletties, maybe 30 cm / 1 foot i can set it up for ....

so yeah any ideas?

[hanky rox]

umm i free jump hank sometimes. but to tell you the truth i never really taught him. i was with a friend the first time i tried it,(lil_loz_rox) and she does it a lot so yer. hank is a very good and experienced jumper though so he just worked it out for himself!

[Lindsayanne]

The idea of lunging over jumps is that they just figure it out themselves. You can't really teach them, just get off their back and lunge them over the jumps and let them figure out how to get themselves over without tripping or knocking a leg.

It's a lot easier for a horse to figure out where to take off, how to judge a jump, and recover from an awkward take off without the burden of a rider, so you just want to give them time on the lunge figuring all that out. Your job is to keep them moving, to keep them safe, to not under any circumstances let them cheat or refuse and get away with it, and not to do it for too long at a time.

I'm not a jumper person by any means, but my trainer's been having me do this with Regal on and off for the past few months and has explained that theory. We always, always use jumps that will fall if and when he hits them (that is, standard rails, not barrels or anything solid) and set the jumps at random intervals so he learns timing and how to adjust strides.

If you haven't started with poles or cavaletti that's the place to start. They learn to adjust their stride and pay attention to their feet over poles- somethign they need to know before pointing them at a circle of jumps.

[Friesiangirl]

i put a pole infront, about 3' so they know where to take off from

[Just_me]

I started with putting up jumps in the arena and turning my horse lose.He jumped a couple on his own(that`s what I wanted!)After that I used a lunge crop,which has to always be right behind him,and made him trot towards the jump.The hard part is to get the horse there because it could turn around,run out etc.
If the horse refuses swing the crop through the air,eventually it will jump.
To make sure it doesn`t run out you can put your friend or someone else beside the jump(be carefull tho!)the saver thing to do is probably a pole.
I`ve never done it with a lunge line just because I`m not handy enough to do it+I`m always afrait that the line will get stuck at the jump and my horse gets injured.