That's like what my daughter does, and what I even taught children myself. My daughter competes with her horses, they all have to go through extensive training for that, SHE, herself has to go through extrensive training for that as well. And there is a LOT of math involved and before each competition the riders go and and walk the courses and while they are doing that they are literally planning it all out mathimatically in their minds and considering the horse's strides as horses can have different strides and ya gotta know that in order to make all come out right in the competition. For example, the average stride of a cantering horse is that it covers 12 feet of ground with each stride, each jump is set at a certain height and distance from other jumps. You need to walk it out so you can calculate the strides between fences and how the fences are set and the angles, then you have to see where your horse needs to take off jump and land so it has enough room to do the strides to the next fence. My daughter's horse is more of a challenge in that his stride is 14 ft. He covers more ground with that and it can do well if his jumping is timed but she has to walk it out so she can come up with the plan in her mind so she rides her horse in a way that everything works out. LOL, the spectator can say "hmm, looks boring and they are doing the same circles" wrong, not when you know all that is really involved with what you are watching a rider actually do when they do that course of jumps.

If you have a trainer with a bad attitude, that can throw a rider off because you don't want to go into a huge math problem like that with your amygdala too active. Young children learning all this don't need that extra distraction of a bad attitude trainer. That's when they need to learn this math and learn to focus the most to set a good foundation. Because it's NOT what you don't get that's important it's what you DO get that means you are learning. As it all comes together if given the right amount of time and instructor it's an achievement not only for the rider but also the horse. Horses need the rider to do well too, especially young horses that are learning about it all too.