Flying High
A Beginner’s Guide to Riding Across Fences
By Nancy Hartney

So you want to learn to jump? You envision yourself and your horse cantering toward a fence, rounding in a perfect bascule arc over it, then on to a brick wall before making a sweeping turn and flying across a spread as the grandstand crowd roars admiration. Maybe you picture yourself galloping through the fields, vaulting over fallen trees, across a gully with you and your horse exerting in an adrenaline rush. Or you see yourself riding to the hounds, cantering over wooden panels over fences and into dark coverts behind the baying pack. Riding is in your blood. You love horses. You were a centaur in another life. Whatever! You just want to jump.
But there’s a problem. You’ve never jumped before. Maybe you’ve trotted over poles on the ground (known as cavaletti) or a fallen tree on the trail. Perhaps you rode as a kid and are returning to your lost passion. Well, take heart because the hunter/jumper scene is alive and well in Arkansas. Good instructors and trainers, who coach the beginning rider, the competitive rider or the recreational rider, are available around the state. Some instructors have show barns, others may be associated with a stable or certified program, while many provide training independently. How to choose?
First, set your goals — which should be realistic and flexible. If your primary interest is in hunter-seat competition and stadium jumping, you should expect to jump higher than 3 feet in hunt seat form while the horse’s way of going and your form will be judged. Jumper classes, also competitive and held over fences in an arena, are characterized by time limits, tight turns in the ring, increased number of fences and less emphasis on the horse’s jumping form or the rider’s seat.
Cross-country competition, on the other hand, requires progressively more complex jumps and increased height but does not emphasize equitation form. However, it is most often included in "eventing," a three-part competition that also features stadium jumping and dressage, which do require attention to form. Foxhunting, while highly social and traditional, is non-competitive and tends to have a rough-and-tumble attitude toward riding. Staying up with the hound action is more critical (and fun) than looking stylish over a coop. Trail riding over an outside course or jumping natural obstacles in the fields can be social, competitive or just pleasurable. Choose your riding interest and keep in mind that a rider out in the country uses the same aids as does the stadium competitor but with a different level of expertise and skill. The basic principles are the same. Of course, the more the rider attends to good riding technique for the job at hand, the better the horse moves and the more pleasurable for the rider. And the safer the ride for both.
Once goals are set, you need to consider issues such as physical fitness, size, flexibility and fear or concern about the horse and riding. These issues are highly individual yet similar among age groups. For example, a 7- to 10-year-old youngster may be much more flexible than an adult rider but is limited by physical strength and size. On the other hand, a youngster may be fearless and exuberant and have youthful athleticism yet have a short attention span and lack focus for the lessons. Adults usually have a great awareness of their bodies — and their limitations.
Body size and shape, for youngsters and adults, influences what type of horse to ride and what riding discipline may be optimal. For example, long legs allow a rider to control a large horse easier. Body weight may limit a rider to jumping cross-rails and bars less than 2 1/2 feet. A beginning adult rider, with a longer attention span and acute body awareness, usually progresses rapidly to the intermediate level. Young riders, with a short attention span, progress slower but often overtake their elders and continue advancing while the adult rider may plateau.
However, as young riders and adults log saddle time, they’ll continue to improve their skills and confidence, albeit at different rates. For children, parents must determine if the child is serious about riding or engaging in a passing whim. Parents, with an instructor, should consider goals and riding objectives for the child.
You’ve set your goals and looked at your issues; now it’s time to find an instructor. Begin by inquiring at the barn where you stable or ride your horse. Ask fellow riders with an interest similar to your riding goals for recommendations — word of mouth is still the best advertisement.
If you lack a horse of your own and don’t know any riders, drop by a local tack or feed store or seek out a barn that offers stabling. Trainers often post their business card or training information in these places. Talk with staff and check out the reputation an instructor has in the horse community. Match your immediate goal to the credentials of the instructor. Contact local riding groups and talk with the members. For the younger rider, local U.S. Pony Club affiliates or 4-H Clubs can offer training or referral to local instructors.

Finding the Right Instructor
Once you’ve selected several potential trainers, make arrangements to visit them. Sandy Hamm, a hunt seat instructor, competitor and foxhunter based in Fayetteville, suggests that you meet the instructor in person and check for a personality match.
“This makes communication much easier between student and teacher," she says.
Begin to add up your riding equation: the amount of time you have available for lessons, the driving time to the stable, the cost of riding lessons and your commitment to carrying through over a period of time. The investment in boots, helmets and safe riding attire can be significant for a young rider or adult. If your interest in riding continues, the purchase of tack, a horse and the associated bills must be considered.
If you have your own mount, a critical assessment of the horse is next. Do you have a horse that might have leg or joint faults unsuited to the stress of jumping? Is your horse young and still developing bone and muscle or aged and subject to accumulated wear and tear? Does your horse have a bold and forward attitude yet is sensible? What are your over-fence goals for yourself and your horse?
Questions need not be answered all at once, and goals can be revised. But, regardless of riding goals or whether you plan to use a school horse or have your own mount, the best place to start is with a trainer.
Hamm recommends several steps when you begin to look around for a trainer for your horse or an instructor for yourself: “Look at their work first. Watch the instructor handle a lesson. Listen to what they say. Watch more than one lesson if possible. Question the students about their progress and their goals. Watch how the horses work. Do they seem sour or happy? Does the trainer welcome new students or new horses? Do your research.”
Adds Diane Gooderl, a riding instructor and avid foxhunter based in Goshen, "If a parent calls and wants instruction for a child, I try to help them determine if their child is really interested, really serious. I try to help them understand this can be an expensive sport. The investment in time must also be considered."
Gooderl begins a child’s training with haltering, basic pre-ride grooming, safety considerations and lessons in how to saddle and bridle. Next comes mounting and riding. The more proficient a child becomes with the initial tasks, the more saddle time they earn. Even then, in the ring, Gooderl asks the young rider to focus and concentrate for short periods — 10 minutes — before allowing them to just ride and have fun. As the child’s skills and attention span increases, so does the amount of instructional time in the saddle.
Adult riders, riding for the first time or returning after years afoot, require a different instructional approach.
"Adults have much more focus and usually want to be as perfect as possible with their riding techniques," Hamm says. "An adult may work at one exercise the entire lesson. Youngsters have a much shorter attention span, so as instructor, I have to know when to quit an exercise and move on.”
Not only do adults tolerate longer lessons and want to understand the how and why of what they are doing, but they also learn by watching, listening and reading. They are also less physically flexible, often more fearful and are more concerned about injury.
Forty-something Catherine Phillips is a good example. As a youngster, Phillips rode with friends along trails and in open fields, happily learning from each other. Junior high school came along with homework, band, gymnastics and dating. She drifted away from horses. She got married, started her family and began a career. "Fast forward to adulthood," Phillips says. "My ‘equine therapist&Mac226;’ riding instructor Diane Gooderl, invited me to ride the Tally-Ho wagon at the Misty River Hounds Junior Hunt so I could watch my daughter ride. I got bit.”
Next came flat and over-fence lessons (several a week), tack, clothing, local hunter/jumper shows and a horse. Phillips has never looked back.
"It has really been such a positive life experience for me," she says. "I love my horse, love to [fox] hunt and truly enjoy the people I have met in the process. [Riding]’s a great sport that adult women are rediscovering. And, it’s a sport I can do well into my older years. It’s still difficult for me to balance work and parental demands, but I do my best because I find when I am riding my horse the rest of my life benefits.”
For Phillips, setting goals, dusting off riding skills and building confidence took work with her trainer, who understood and encouraged her as an adult rider.

Hunter or Jumper?
Like Phillips, Joyce Metzler began riding horses as a child but didn’t begin jumping until she was an adult.
“But I was always drawn to the people wearing English riding clothing and watching them jump when they were on TV or when I would get to go to a show,” says Metzler, a native of San Diego, Calif., who moved to Hot Springs three years ago. “So it was something I always desired to do. When I was out of nursing school and working, I put a little money away; my goal was to buy a horse I thought I'd be able to jump. That got me started.”
Metzler has spent the past 27 years riding both hunters and jumpers — 25 of those competitively. She says that riding hunter and jumpers requires different skills (and even personality types).
“You need to be a little more assertive, more willing to take risks when you're riding jumpers because the jumps are brighter and bigger, and the path to the jump can be more complicated, and speed is an issue,” explains Metzler, who has competed at a number of major venues, including Del Mar and Indio. “For jumpers, it's a very objective style of riding over jumps — you want to clear the jumps in the fastest time without any faults.
“With the hunter, however, it’s a subjective way of judging the horse because style and grace are part of the standard on which they're judged — they like to see a beautiful arc over the jump with the front end and hind end in the very classic style. And with the hunter, which is the show ring version of chasing the fox through the fields, they have very traditional hunt wear and the horses work with very traditional equipment. Although maybe material and colors get to change, the style of the wear hasn't changed in maybe a couple hundred years.
“Whereas in the jumper ring, there's protective gear on the horse's legs and although you're still wearing breeches and boots and a riding helmet, there’s a little more freedom.”
The requirements of the horse vary with the two disciplines, as well.
“The jumping effort of the jumpers can get bigger and more intricate, and they definitely have more combinations of jumps,” she says. “In a hunter ring, they jump something that may be a simulated appearance of what you find in a field, like a picket fence or a stone wall; things you'd see out in nature. In the show jumping ring, they're jumping big, wide jumps and liverpools (water-based jumps) that may be bright colors and can be big spans, and the jump standards that hold the poles might be butterflies or Shamu whales or whatever. They're very bright and can be intimidating because they don't necessarily have to resemble anything in a horse's world. That in itself makes the whole scene a bit brighter and riskier.
“So both styles are athletic, but the hunter is smoother, slower, more graceful, and jumper is very forward and more aggressive.”
That also often means that different-tempered horses are better-suited for each.
“The jumpers are sometimes a little hotter on the muscle, as we say, and take you to the jump a little more — they just have bigger motors and are somewhat fearless, you hope,” Metzler says. “The hunter, you want to be mellow and almost what we refer to as ‘kicking quiet,’ where their style of going looks relaxed — the topline (the position of the head and neck) and the softness of their back all has to look like it flows.”

The Next Step
For any rider, Hamm says, "Flat work is necessary — tons and tons of flat work. The rider needs to learn how to handle the horse using all parts of the body. The horse needs to learn to handle the weight of the rider and how to manage his body. When work over fences is introduced, the rider and the horse have to learn how to handle a jump as a team.
It’s also critical that whatever instructor or trainer you choose is a rider.
"A good instructor must be a good rider," says Kayvonne Primm, a professional trainer, instructor and breeder based in Farmington. "The good instructor must be able to ride above the level which is being taught. They need to be a teacher, a psychologist, a cheerleader — in order to help a person reach their riding goals or enlarge their goals.
When a rider has talent, they should be encouraged and challenged to continue advancing and even to compete at a regional or national level. Conversely, a rider may have limited talent for jumping — in which case, riding over crossrails and jumping at 2 feet is a worthwhile place to plateau. That rider may also consider another facet of riding, such as dressage, in addition to jumping at 2 feet or less, Primm suggests.
Hamm agrees that it’s important for an instructor to ride.
"It may be a simple point — but you need to think about the trainer riding," she says. There are many times a trainer may have to get on a horse and demonstrate what is required with a particular jump or quickly reschool the horse. A trainer may need to "feel" how a horse is responding to an aid. On the other hand, the rider may not understand what he or she is being asked to do and need a demonstration, to learn by watching. The instructor should ride in competition, for pleasure or for sport. In other words, Hamm says, a professional trainer should keep teaching, riding and training skills honed.
Once a decision about a trainer or instructor has been reached and riding goals set, the next step is to decide on lesson format — group lessons, semi-private, private lessons. Each has advantages and disadvantages. Group lessons often have between six and eight riders. A group lesson, typically less expensive, provides for more riding time (usually a full hour) but less individual attention. The private lesson allows for one-on-one attention and often faster advancement but is more physically demanding, so it is often shorter. The semi-private lesson (two to three riders) is a happy compromise for those just beginning since it allows for individual attention without the cost and intensity of the private lesson.
Finally, after the assessments are completed and your goals set and a trainer selected, get out there and ride. Ride as frequently as possible. Nothing solves riding problems or builds confidence like plain-old time in the saddle.