Creating your own lesson

Trinket12

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So I’m starting to think about things to do for when Miss Sugar is ready to go. Outside of my twice a week lessons, I plan on riding her three times a week.

We don’t have a lot of hacking, there is a park near us but you need to trailer over (on my list is to make friends with someone with a trailer!)

We have two indoor and one outdoor arena a back field with jumps (not that we’ll be doing those!) and a half mile track around the property.

I don’t want her to get bored with just the arena. So will mix it up with arena and field/track.

But what to do in the arena? I was thinking trot poles, but not sure what would be good outside of the usual 3 in a row and over you go.

I also thought some ground work might be fun, and a bit different (I haven’t done it before) but no idea what to do!

Any suggestions greatly appreciated 😃
 

be positive

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Your instructor should be giving you more ideas than '3 in a row, over you go' part of my job as an instructor is to give riders things to work on between lessons, I use poles a lot and rarely have a row of 3 set out with no variation as it serves little purpose, especially if the rider just thinks it is about going over them for the sake of it, even the children I teach can set out a mix of poles to use in different places and know why we sometimes raise them, space them for trot or canter or maybe just use one to help make movements more accurate.
I would either ask your instructor for more variety in what you are doing, get some homework to do in between lessons or get 100 schooling exercises and work through some of those, or find someone else to come to you to get you started with groundwork, possibly a different instructor for a few lessons to see if someone new may offer a more interesting perspective on what you are doing, schooling does not need to be boring but it does need to be varied and the rider needs to have a clear idea of what and why they are doing things if both are going to improve along the way.
 

JFTDWS

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101 schooling exercises and 101 jumping exercises are good starts - they're available on Amazon, or, indeed, from any good bookshop which actually pays tax... Don't be fooled by "jumping" exercises - most of them are actually pole work, or can be converted to pole work.

Youtube is also your friend - watch lessons and clinics and instructional videos from the people at the top of their fields - see what exercises they do with young horses / new horses / green horses / novice combinations in clinics to bring them on and try them out at home.
 

elliejhb

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101 schooling exercises and 101 jumping exercises are good starts - they're available on Amazon, or, indeed, from any good bookshop which actually pays tax... Don't be fooled by "jumping" exercises - most of them are actually pole work, or can be converted to pole work.

Love the 101 books, I'm slowly collecting them all by either purchasing 2nd hand copies on Amazon for a few £s or receiving as Birthday/Christmas presents.
I find Pinterest is also handy for pole exercises.
 

Rusty Rider

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Seconding YouTube - look at Ingrid Klimke's pole work, she uses it for both her eventers and pure dressage horses and it looks really engaging!
 
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Trinket12

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I have the 101 Arena Exercises book, I use it sometimes for my therapeutic lessons. I sort of forgot about it!

I should have been clearer in my first post, my coach gives me lots of different poles (we have started with some very small jumps, and working on gauging distance) in our lessons. I hadn't actually asked her for any ideas yet, I was musing about this yesterday after my lesson, so thought I would ask you lovely horsey lot!

I like the idea of asking for 'homework' and will definitely do that, I'm thinking that I can keep a little book with what I did (similar to what I do for my students) and then I'll have a library of ideas I can reference back to.

I also started using the Equilab app which tracks your walk, canter and trot time and I can add notes on how the lesson went and what I need to work on for next week. So that's been useful.

I feel a Pinterest board coming on to keep track!
 

Rusty Rider

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The Equilab app sounds great but where do you keep your phone when riding? I usually take my coat off 5 min into our warmup, and breeches pockets are clearly purely decorative 😅
 

Trinket12

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The Equilab app sounds great but where do you keep your phone when riding? I usually take my coat off 5 min into our warmup, and breeches pockets are clearly purely decorative 😅

I have riding tights and they have good side pockets for a phone. One pair is from Noble Outfitters and the other are Horseware Ireland and they have two pockets! So one for phone and the other for tissues. They're also super comfy :D
 
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