Q: My horse and I always struggle with verticals. What can I do to fix this?
A: Vertical fences, especially planks, are easy to bring drown whether they are 50cm high or 1.50m, so don’t worry – you are not alone in this!
In your question, you don’t mention the specifics of the problem and when it is most likely to occur. If you are uncertain about the cause of the issue, we would highly recommend working with a knowledgeable coach or videoing your rounds for analysis to fully understand the challenge. This will help you to address the problem more specifically. When watching the video look out for any changes in your horse’s rhythm or your body and aids on the approach. Are you restricting your horse with your hand, or are you tipping forwards over the fence? Is the canter long and flat? Is your horse getting deep to the fence, or is he just not picking up his feet enough? Once you have isolated the issue, you can start to do the work to correct it.
Here we look at a couple of the common problems encountered with verticals:
Horse gets very deep to the fence
Unlike oxers, verticals naturally draw you and your horse into a deeper take-off spot. For this reason, appropriately placed groundlines can help teach your horse to stand off the fence a little for better clearance in front. Next time you train over verticals, put the ground pole out from the fence by approximately 60cm, and once your horse is meeting this comfortably and rhythmically, you can gradually return the pole to the base of the fence.
Losing rhythm
Verticals need to be jumped in a short, energetic canter, but when asked to produce this, riders often do one of two things – rely on the hand alone to shorten the canter, which kills the energy, or mistake speed for power, resulting in a long, flat gait. To fix this, you need to produce a canter in which your horse feels light in the hand while powering himself from his hindquarters, and, crucially, nothing should change on your approach to the fence.
You can work on this with the use of poles. Begin with one randomly placed pole and, once your horse feels bouncy, soft and consistent towards it, add a second and third pole each at one bounce stride (roughly three paces) from the preceding pole. You want to feel the same bouncy canter over all the poles. Just make sure you don’t rely on your hands to create the bounce, but rather your seat!
Top tip
Rhythm is often lost if you tip forwards, as this throws the horse onto his forehand. Keep your shoulders back and look up to help rectify the issue.
Technique challenges
If your horse doesn’t pick his feet up over the vertical, it can be worth placing V-poles on the top plank to offer a visual aid that helps improve concentration, straightness, carefulness and use of the shoulder. This helps your horse to better plan for verticals in the future.