What prevents YOU from moving up?

Money and time. I don’t get time during the winter to maintain the level of fitness or lightness on my horse that I would like, so it makes it harder to achieve what I want at weekend competitions. I also can’t afford lessons at the moment, which I would really like before I start seriously campdrafting.

Also, my horses back… He has a lot of issues that restrict the amount I can ride him at the moment. I have a saddle being custom made (which is part of the money problem, lol) which will hopefully fix a lot of his problems.

It’s so frustrating because I know where I want to be and how to get there, I just can’t do it at the moment!

I'm schooling over 2' crossrails and 1.5 oxers, but as I'm on 15 yrs + school horses, and that's about as high as they're allowed to go. But all the advanced jumpers are too hot for me to handle, especially as I'm just in the early stages of gaining a strong position over jumps.

I've schooled a variety of horses varying heights depending on their level. When I was last schooling over fences regularly, on horses that could jump big, it was about 3'6 to 4', depending, but I lost access to many of those horses and haven't had the opportunity to jump much bigger than 3 ft lately. Most of what I get on is anything so I don't neccesarily get to jump. My horse is a bit small, but not for sale, so I don't school her much bigger than 2'6, why stress her legs, she's mine for twenty more years. If I got the chance to own/lease something to move up on I would love it, I would even TRY the bigger stuff, but might chicken out in the High A/O's, 4'9 I believe? And what I school at home is usually bigger than what I show at, so, I can't say I wouldn't try a Grand Prix sized course if I could/had horse and sometime to acclimate to bigger fences, but going to show and walking onto the feild is something entirely different, but I already have my entrance music picked out!

My personal weight and maybe a LITTLE my horse. He can jump 3' but it's when we get to solid 3' spreads He's probably never going to go higher than 3' MAYBE 3'3" if I am lucky but it's a lot to ask a horse to take a 235lb rider over a 3' by 3' Oxar you know? I'm not trying to say I am this awesome perfect rider I am getting better but I do still drop my eye and need to pick him up more but over all getting better .

Well, in lessons, it's purely my confidence. I get nervous and tense up even over 18" jumps, so I just need to get used to it before I can move up.

Now that I have my first hose, who also happens to be a green 12-yr-old draft, I think the reason we're not jumping is pretty obvious. =) Buuutt, we've just started doing trot poles and tiny 6" crossrails, and she's doing wonderfully. Doesn't hesitate at all or slow down over the poles!

One thing is the lack of lessons I've had. We've recently started again and were back up to 2'9", however my horse can be a bit unpredictable over fences. One moment he's steady and jumping willingly, the next, he's refusing fences and dumping me =P

So it's a bit of a problem for the show ring. But those are the two reasons we aren't jumping the 3ft that we used to.

Where to begin?

#1 Lack of money. I've had to cut down my lessons to once every other week.
#2 Lack of sane/capable horses. The capable ones are either leased or broken
#3 Because of the lack of horses, I haven't had much to learn on when I do get to lesson.

2'9 3 feet at the moment due to having a large pony.

1. I don't have my own horse.
2. Only have lessons once a week.
3. Haven't had any lessons for the whole summer holiday :( (pure torture! :P)
4. I know I'm ready for higher jumps. And I have jumped 3ft, but we usually jump crossrails - 2'6".

well i can only jump as high as my pony can go i have jumped him to 3'6 the highest hes ever jumped is 4'. i would love to jump higher but to do that i would need to buy a horse and the thing stopping me from doing that is money.