5 Dressage Moves You Need to Teach Your Show Jumper

Many riders only choose to only train their show jumping horses to a basic schooling level. I think that a good show jumper must be schooled to a high level to achieve the horse's full potential. Here are some of the moves that I would teach your horse but remember to do lots of schooling as well.

*I am not a dressage trainer so please ask your trainer to teach you and your horse how to do these moves, I will not tell you how to do them*

1. Flying Change

Teaching a horse to do flying changes is important for several reasons. Firstly is if when you land over a jump and your horse lands on the wrong lead. It can happen to even trained horses so it is important to train them how to change that quickly. The other reason is to help the horse to land on the correct lead in the first place. This means as you are going over the jump you can give the aid for which lead you want and the horse will react in time.

2. Pirouette

The pirouette is a more advanced move in dressage which can be great to teach show jumpers for jump offs! Pirouette's in a jump-off will help with tighter corners. Is it important to note you will not do a pirouette in a jump off but the move with teaching your horse to stop and wait for you to guide him. Practise this at home and you will understand.

3. Walk to Canter, Canter to Halt

Walk to canter will help if you have a refusal to get going quickly again. Canter to halt is something I teach all of my horses for safety in a competition. This can be used as an emergency stop if you feel it will be dangerous to jump. Practise this in front of jumps at home.

4. Lengthening and shorten

This is important for making distances between fences. You need to train the horse first over poles than over two jumps. You can then implement it over a course to check he listens to you the whole way around. When you see a distance you will be able to length or shorten quickly to correct it.