Exercising your horse!


Short Exercises!

If your fortunate to have your own horse then you either have exercises to do with your horse or you have no idea so for those of you who have no idea then this blog is for you. So here are 5 short exercises to do with your horse.

1. The first short exercise to do with your horse is just doing 3 loop serpentines, for example, you would start on the left rein at A and you would trot a half 10-metre circle but instead of finishing the circle you would ride a line parallel with A and C to the other side of the arena to change the rein and go on a right 10-metre circle but don't finish it and do another parallel line with A and C to the other side of the arena and turning left to finish at the letter C, it does sound complicated but its really not once you know what your doing.



2. A canter exercise you could do if your bored of just cantering circles or if your just cantering around the arena constantly then you could try doing a figure of 8. You would start by just trotting into the corner and catering a half 20-meter circle and once you get a couple strides before X you come back to trot and change the rein and once you are a couple strides on the other rein you come back into canter on a full 20-meter circle on the other rein coming back to trot just before X changing the rein and cantering on the rein you started on to finish by cantering large and doing an extended canter on the long side.



3. Leg yielding, leg yielding is an exercise that gets your horse listening to your leg instead of just having to turn them with your hands. To do a leg yield, say you were on the left rein, you would turn down the 3 quarter line from A or C in position left and with your left leg you would be pushing them out to the fence but still keeping them parallel with the fence, you are trying to not push their hindquarters too far ahead of the front quarters you want them parallel with the fence so they can easily get their inside leg to cross their outside leg and keep it moving until you gett to the fence and in the perfect world you would want to get out to the fence by the time you get to M or K if your on the left rein, H or F if your on the right rein and once you get to the corner you should be able to get onto the 3 quarter line after A or C.



4. Drill work, If you're in a big group with your friends then drill work gets the horse listening to you instead of playing follow the leader with the other horses. When doing drill work what you need to do is if you have a big ride then you split into 2 rides to do this exercise, so while riding down the long side you should have one person shout turn now and everyone in your ride turns at the same time across the arena just like from going from B to E or the other way round and riding from E to B then once you get to the other side of the arena you turn onto the opposite rein but only on your command so you don't let your horse just turn when it sees its buddies turning because then it thinks it has control and may start getting bad habits like cutting off corners and aslong as you also predict what your horse is going to do like cutting off corners then ou can keep your outside rein tight so it knows that you know what its thinking and it will not gain any more bad habits.



5. The last exercise to do with your horse is to do with steering, it is quite a simple exercise to do with controlling your horse and all it is, is weaving through poles or cones or anything you can set up to weave your horse through, idealy you would set up about 6 cones on the centre line and you would weave through them and when you get to the bottom you change the rein by turing to the opposite side you start on.

There are some simple exercises to do with your horse as long as you are fortunate enough to own one.

Thanks for reading and ride on! XXX



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