Training the Modern Jumper DVD
Training the Modern Jumper gives viewers a glimpse into training methods that have earned great success for the German show jumping horses and riders. The video is a companion volume to the book Training the Modern Jumper, by Elmar Pollmann-Schweckhorst.
Training the Modern Jumper starts out with some rather poor quality video footage of Mr. Pollmann-Schweckhorst's horse Diamond's Daylight jumping a spectaularly difficult course. Then, it proceeds, with better video quality, through a fuzzy explaination of how to select an choose a jumping prospect.
The first five minutes of the video zoom confusingly through footage of a mare and foal, a young horse free jumping, a comparison of the jumping style of two different horses, and a cursory explaination of how to use canter placing poles and gymnastic jumping exercises to improve a horse's jumping form.
The frantic pace of the video slows down aften the introduction. The second section of the video, which is entitled "The Breaking-in Phase" and shows a three-year old horse jumping its first jumps, which include crossrails and a small vertical.
The next part of Training the Modern Jumper, "Basic Training", which makes up the bulk of the footage, shows typical workouts for the stable's jumpers in training, which include young horses (five and six-year olds) as well as older horses who are experiencing training problems such as rushing jumps.
The horses in this section of the video are shown doing jumping exercises that incorporate all sorts of jumps, including liverpools, oxers and triple bars that range in height from about three feet high to over five feet high.
The final section of the video, "Training Courses", shows horses as they put their basic training to use, jumping entire courses of varying degrees of difficulty, up to Grand Prix.
Training the Modern Jumper offers relatively little in the way of step-by-step jumping exercises or tips for selecting and training a show jumping horse. And, the few times that details about the demonstrated exercises are given, distances are given in meters, not feet. However, Training the Modern Jumper is a captivating glimpse into the training methods being used by one of Germany's top show jumping stables.
Along those lines, viewers will have to bear in mind that the video is narrated by a gentleman whose accent may be slightly distracting to American viewers, even though he speaks English with nearly perfect diction (almost robotically so).
Also, the script for the video appears to have been translated from German. Therefore, some of the phrasing used in the video may be slightly puzzling to some viewers, especially since the narrator is attempting to explain some relatively advanced concepts, and the script seems to assume that the video's audience will have a fairly in-depth knowledge of the vocabulary and concepts used in dressage and show jumping.
Although Training the Modern Jumper won't necessarily provide you with the tools that you'll need while training your horse to become a successful show jumper, it might very well provide you with the inspiration to do so.