Stick Jumping II

For those of you who are having a hard time keeping up with my spotty, mile long and distracted posts, Bailey has had two semi-crappy jump schools over the last week (Wednesday and Sunday). I've been doing a lot of thinking and talking about our issues with a friend, and while I've got over a month to resolve the problem... it's not the most confidence boosting issue we've ever had.

Bailey's always been a pretty easy jumper but lately it seems like we're more and more reliant on getting a good "spot". My preference, the long, isn't always the most popular with her, so we still end up with a lot of chippy, too close for comfort distances. B is scopey, so she gets us out of plenty of binds, but I'd prefer if we could figure this out now, when we can still get out of a bad situation. There seems to be a sweet spot for good jumps:

I've also noticed that when I kick for and actually get my long spot, the jump is amazing. It checks all of the boxes; air time, position seems to just work out, hands actually manage to do hand things... and generally she doesn't take that rail. 

So how do we fix the issues? Beyond going to a trainer (and we've got just a few rides before I'm going to call in reinforcements), I am going to try the following this week:

1. Switch into the waterford. We can't get distances and we can't deal with the other issues if I can't half halt / soften / etc my gosh darn horse. In her defense, I'm also going to put the neck strap on her so I don't yank on her pretty face. 

2. Roll them placing poles out. 12' or so seemed to work out for the smaller stuff... so I'm tempted to put the fences up around 2'9-2'11 and roll them out to 14' just to see what happens. 

3. Set up a gymnastic in the near future. We haven't done one in quite some time (I mean, single fences do have more utility when you only have a few standards/poles to work with...) and I think its time. I'm also seriously considering trailering over to the gymnastics trainer extraordinaire to put Bailey through her courses and grids. If Bailey isn't jumping better by mid June, I'll find the money and make the trip to WI happen.  

4. Translate our jumping needs over to other areas - more half halts and collection-extension work to tune and lighten the front end, raised trot poles to strengthen her back and some fitness work because she's definitely felt "tired" sometimes lately. It could very well be a food thing, but we'll up her workload first to see. 

Who has a favorite jumping exercise? I need some ideas :)