Starting
Free jumping is primarily used to start horses over jumps. The goal from this training method is to develop an honest jumper that has confidence over fences and to strengthen muscles used for jumping. Starting without a rider is viewed as beneficial because a rider can interfere with the horse’s natural way of going and create unnecessary problems. A poor rider will create nervousness or bad habits in the horse that will be difficult to reverse. Allowing a horse to jump on its own also develops better balance and strengthens the necessary muscles which will make it easier on their joints and back when it comes time to jump with the added weight of a rider. By starting a horse over jumps without a rider it makes the horse better prepared and easier to ride over fences.
Read more about this topic: Free Jumping
Famous quotes containing the word starting:
“It smells like gangrene starting in a mildewed silo; it tastes like the wrath to come, and when you absorb a deep swig of it you have all the sensations of having swallowed a lighted kerosene lamp.”
—For the State of Kentucky, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“But even at the starting post, all sleek and new,
I saw the wildness in her and I thought
A vision of terror that it must live through
Had shattered her soul.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)