Joe Stockdale shared this simple two-fence jumping exercise with H&H. He often uses it as a warm-up because it helps builds connection between horse and rider, checking all the buttons are working and your horse is listening to your aids.
The two fences – while built on a related line – are jumped on an angle as single obstacles, which gives multiple options for different lines, angles and patterns.
The angled approach focus here is more demanding than the usual straight lines. This requires your horse to be more engaged and connected, listening to your instructions rather than jumping on autopilot and going through the motions with a lacklustre canter.
With just two fences, you can take four different routes
(Image credit: Future)
You need three sets of jump wings and poles for an upright and oxer. You can do this in an arena or field.
Set up a one-stride double, with an upright and square oxer, across the diagonal to give you maximum space around the fences. Both fences can be jumped from either direction.
This jumping exercise is suitable for all levels, so build the fences at the height at which you are comfortable. Joe demonstrated this with his 1.60m jumper Cacharel, over fences at about 90cm-1m, and says he “rarely jumps more than 1.10m at home”.
How to ride this exercise
Warm up in walk, trot and canter on both reins. Make sure your horse is listening to the aids, with plenty of transitions.
You may want to jump a warm-up fence before starting the exercise, such as a cross-pole – whatever you usually do at the start of a jumping session.
For the exercise, both the upright and oxer should be approached on an angle and jumped as single fences, not as part of a double. You can play around with the lines.
Always approach the fence you want to jump as the second part of the double. This is so that you are not asking your horse to run past a fence it has already locked on to, which would be more likely if isolating the first fence, with the second fence in their vision. This means you always have to come in on an angle.
Try circles, turn-back and figure-of-eights, dictating which lead you land on, as shown in the diagram.
At the end, jump straight through the double a couple of times to reset.
Tips and troubleshooting
1. Back to basics
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For young or green horses, you can set the double on two strides to make it less demanding. This makes the angle of approach less sharp, and gives horses more time to see where they are going.
2. Work on the weak spots
Each horse will naturally have a favoured lead on which to land. You can play around with approaching and landing on different leads. Avoid leaning, but look in the direction you want to go and open the inside rein slightly, which should influence your horse’s landing lead.
Martha is an experienced journalist who is mad-keen on horses and dogs. Her reporting CV includes the Paris Olympics, European championships, Aachen World Equestrian Festival and World Cup finals. After growing up with assorted liver and white springer spaniels, she enjoyed 14 years with two rescue dogs. Now, her constant companion is Fidget, an extremely energetic and habitually muddy black and white springer. Martha has written on topics as diverse as a top horse’s clone to the best GPS trackers for dogs, as well as equestrian and rural matters for Country Life, The Field, The Times, The Spectator and The Telegraph alongside Horse & Hound.
