flat work and jumping exercises?
has anyone got any good exercises for flat work and jumping to encourage concentration, proper use of hind leg and listening to the rider?
Oh man, you’ve opened up my favorite topic haha.
Ok, spirals spirals spirals. They are difficult to do correctly, but boy! you’ll have some engagement once you get the hang of them. Start at twenty meters and spiral in, leg yielding to make the circle smaller until you feel like your horse is getting a tad unbalanced. Then go back out. Eventually, your horse will be able to make quite a small circle in good balance. It’s all about accuracy and keeping a nice bend. You can do them from the trot or canter- I prefer the canter.
Drop your stirrups, and do this exercise- dropping your stirrups will free up your leg and improve your seat like whoah. Ok, get an active trot going-sitting or posting, it doesn’t matter. Extend down the long side, collect in the short, for three sides of the arena. At the fourth short side, ride into the far corner, come to a dead halt, do a turn on the haunches, and trot off. This is *such* a great exercise- my hardcore jumping trainer makes us do this all the time.
A variation would be to ride half a ten meter circle into the far corner and leg yield back to the rail, making kind of a teardrop shape, only not as curvy. You’ll have changed reins in the process.
As to jumping exercises, the pole-crossrail-vertical-oxer-pole always gets your horse’s attention, and it’s hard to rush through. Play with your distances- you can put them all a stride apart for a challenging gymnastic to slow a rusher, or you can space them for a more leisurely exercise.
Riding courses with lots of roll backs will help tremendously. If you aren’t used to rollbacks, I’d start with poles on the ground as fences so you don’t have to worry about striding quite so terribly, i.e. there isn’t a massive fence to greet you if your horse drops his shoulder and cuts in.
Oh man, you’ve opened up my favorite topic haha.
Ok, spirals spirals spirals. They are difficult to do correctly, but boy! you’ll have some engagement once you get the hang of them. Start at twenty meters and spiral in, leg yielding to make the circle smaller until you feel like your horse is getting a tad unbalanced. Then go back out. Eventually, your horse will be able to make quite a small circle in good balance. It’s all about accuracy and keeping a nice bend. You can do them from the trot or canter- I prefer the canter.
Drop your stirrups, and do this exercise- dropping your stirrups will free up your leg and improve your seat like whoah. Ok, get an active trot going-sitting or posting, it doesn’t matter. Extend down the long side, collect in the short, for three sides of the arena. At the fourth short side, ride into the far corner, come to a dead halt, do a turn on the haunches, and trot off. This is *such* a great exercise- my hardcore jumping trainer makes us do this all the time.
A variation would be to ride half a ten meter circle into the far corner and leg yield back to the rail, making kind of a teardrop shape, only not as curvy. You’ll have changed reins in the process.
As to jumping exercises, the pole-crossrail-vertical-oxer-pole always gets your horse’s attention, and it’s hard to rush through. Play with your distances- you can put them all a stride apart for a challenging gymnastic to slow a rusher, or you can space them for a more leisurely exercise.
Riding courses with lots of roll backs will help tremendously. If you aren’t used to rollbacks, I’d start with poles on the ground as fences so you don’t have to worry about striding quite so terribly, i.e. there isn’t a massive fence to greet you if your horse drops his shoulder and cuts in.
References :
flat- leg yields,serpentine down the ring,transitions (walk-trot,trot-canter,canter-trot,canter-walk,trot-walk, also halting every now and then, if your horse knows to counter canter you can work on that too. that’s all i can think of right now.
jumping- bounces, transitions between jumps (canter in trot out, trot in-halt-trot out, etc..) you can also set up 3bounces(out side line) — a 1 stride (diagonal line) — a single vertical on the other outside and go from collected canter to medium canter to extended canter, then the other way around. other things are roll backs,bending lines. and once again that is all i can think of right now. hopes this helps!!
References :
hunter/jumper/eq rider
There are so many out there that you could do but some of the ones I usually always do when I ride are these. Warming-up is so very important and most people overlook this part of the ride because they think it’s boring or whatever which is really stupid. When warming-up I always do walk – halt, circles, lengthen and shorten the stride, serpentines and do circles that start of big and gradually get smaller whilst adding the odd halt there to ensure she’s really engaged. Then I let her stretch for a while.
When I move onto trot I always do walk – trot over and over until I am perfectly happy with her listening skill. Then I will do the same sort of thing as I did in the walk (or warm-up). A great way to get her engaged is to do lots of transitions sporadically around the school and concentration comes with proper engagement and the correct use of leg.
After a couple canters like this, I would then return to walk and ask for halt in random places and do some rein-back and leg yield etc. as these are really good exercises to do.
Then you could do some jumping and doing all that before-hand would be the right way to go about a good riding session. I don’t know how good you horses jumping ability is, but I’ll tell you what I do with mine and you can adapt it to your horse. My horse is currently jumping 3ft+ and I am going to work her into some proper show jumps so I would do this by starting at a comfortable height for her, eg 2.5ft then I would work in some spooky fillers and get her jumping this lovely on each rein then increase the height. To get her jumping it straight, I would put to poles edging into the jump at a pointed angle and balancing on the top pole so she would use them as a guide and jump it dead straight etc.
References :
Personal experience
i agree with Liz T thats what i do x it gets him listening to you and on the bit, hes really good at it.
i agree with the jumping as well – thats what i used to do x
References :
grown up with horses x