Showjumps

Hello,
I am interested in everybody's opinion about wooden and plastic showjumps. Which ones do you prefer and why? What about their maintenance? How durable they are? I will be very happy to read any coments or pratical advises.

We have several wooden jumps at our barn...the thing with them is that there wood starts to chip off and just does not look as good, also the paint comes off,you can repaint them but that just turns into a pain...

I don't know how plastic jumps are, We don't really have them at our barn

I prefer wooden to plastic any day of the week, especially concerning the poles. I have found through experience that horses do better with wooden poles because when they hit it, it hurts more, teaching them to be more careful. Also, wooden jumps will be more durable and will last longer as long as you paint them.

I don't think the idea is to hurt the horse in training.....

I like plastic, less heavy, don't chip. Wooden are ok but I don't think a horse should learn to pick up his feet from a bad expirience. I think plastic is pretty durable too especially the thicker/bigger plastic poles.

Plastic can withstand more in my opinion. No rotting, chipping, peeling of paint, ect. I also like plastic because they are lighter and I DO NOT want to objectively cause pain and knee/leg damage by a simple fault. If you look at an ex-jumpers knees, you can often times tell when they've been pushed too hard. There can even be white patches of hair from a lot of stress on the area.

I just talked to my friend who does jumping and Recomended the wooden jumps....

When your showing people use wooden jumps.

When your training you want the jumps to appear as much like the other jumps, if they nick it the nick will "feel the same as the jump at the show or in training" You want the jumps to Not appear different at a show then in your training sessions.

The idea is to not have the horse fear the jump!

I have never had a horse make a distinction between wood and plastic, just the jump itself. Maybe we're thinking different things. I was thinking plastic jumps that generally were very similar to wooden. For my preference, I like to jump any thing in sight with a current jumper prospect. I believe they are desensitized and I learn what corrections to make, their fears, weaknesses and strengths.

I think it would be good for them to jump both wooden or plastic...I just got that from my friend who does hunter jumpers...I don't jump. :roll:

Amen to that!