How high has your horse free jumped? I did it the other night and my horse went up to 4'3" for now. Not bad for a 15.1 HH Appendix(barely) quarter horse. Anyway, I also want to know if anyone sees any benefits to free jumping as well.
There's definitely advantages to free jumping. We have a permanent jump lane set up and it works wonders for almost every one of our horses. Whether it's trialling a new horse to see how they jump or exercising our current ones over jumps without riding, it certainly helps us. We only really use it for one horse at the moment, my big grey, and he's jumped probably 4'8'' (around 1.40m) which is as high as the cups will go. It's also good for introducing horses to crazy fill if you're not feeling confident. We've introduced many horses to tarps through our jump lane.
EDIT: Of course, there's always risks of doing this, such as pushing the horse to jump way higher than it is ready for, and jumping them too much. We only free jump about every month or so.
Thanks, the arena is called Rainbow Riding Arena so that's why they are rainbows. We also custom painted a bunch and they are the most unique and colourful poles I've ever seen. I'll post some pictures of them.
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