Cedarhill has never fast tracked their riders on to the bigger, since we understand that bigger is not necessarily better.
We are talking about the size of the jumps… our success comes from good riding, with a great foundation, the base of any success story.
Today we see many riders with no business jumping the size fences they are facing their horses. Approaching the fence without balance, rhythm, or straightness, they might be able to post pictures of themselves jumping large on social media, but we prefer to post pictures of our riders winning large instead.
As an instructor it is tedious to teach the importance of good body control and position to be able to do good flat work on the horse, it is far easier to “make it fun” and just put up higher jumps for everyone to jump but that comes at a great cost, not only does the horse pay dearly since they are ultimately the ones doing the jumping, but our riders pay the price when they are aren’t able to execute what is required which becomes dangerous.
Ultimately the horse does the jumping, we are only the passenger. Our job is getting the horse to the jump in the right place, at the right time, confidently, in balance, which comes from… you guessed it, flatwork. We believe we can make it fun by challenging our riders to be able to do solid ground pole work and low jumps repeatedly with and without stirrups. Rather than only be able to jump a few large jumps in a lesson, we would rather practice on our horses economically with many more small jumps. We are developing muscle memory with good habits which we can then build on.
This philosophy is used by some of the top Grand Prix Jumper riders in the world- for most of them, their preparation is flat work, flat work, and more flat work.
Cedarhill welcomes our newest instructor – Steph Chong who has extensive experience in dressage as well as eventing and jumping who also strongly believes in our values. We look forward to watching the riders that she brings along develop into the riders that go on to competing AND ribbon in Junior Hunter Finals, Children’s and Junior Jumper Finals and International Derby Finals.