Exercises to improve our balance

emmanash

emmanash

Well-Known Member
Joined
17 September 2009
Messages
313
Location
Cornwall
Visit site
Hi all,
Thought I'd post this in comp riders hoping that you knowledgable bunch may have some schooling exercises to help us.
Basically my mare hasn't done much work in the school and is very unbalanced at the moment. I'm hoping to do some low level dressage this year so need to do some work on improving her way of going. She falls in on our circles and rushes around like someone's pressed fast forward on the remote control! She doesn't work in an outline, although i'm concentrating more on getting her working forwards at the moment because although she rushes she isn't working nicely forwards and is tense and giraffe like if this makes sense? She doesn't listen to what I ask her half the time and I'm not sure how to get her to concentrate more?
She was used for endurance riding before hand and competed to quite a high level.
I'm also not the most effective rider in the world and am trying to sort myself out too! I've got myself a gym ball and have been working on exercises to improve my core strength etc. I'm going to start lessons again in a month or two, as soon as i've got the money available but am hoping to get started before then.
 
Put 4 poles in a circle, 1 at B, 1 at E and the other 2 on the centre line, use these to get yourself riding her forward onto the circle, the poles will help you concentrate on riding to the next one and should encourage her to carry herself more. To ride this well is harder than you would think and really helps with balance and rhythm, you can use it for trot and when ready canter, think of riding from your legs and keeping yourself balanced.
Otherwise plenty of transitions and leg yielding to get her listening to your legs so she starts to understand they dont just mean go faster.
 
You are going to need to unpick all the bosy habits she has picked up and ask her to work rounder and deeper.

Start with walk, get her really deep and round over her back and work on small circles with short whip on her shoulder. Use your inside leg to ask her out off her inside shoulder if she falls in, if she takes no notice tap her down shoulder, she will get the idea.

Dont try trotting until she has got it in walk! It will take time and give her breaks as will be using lots of different muscles.

When she has got the hang of that move on to trot and canter. Be careful tot not kill the forward movement.
 
Hi there,

all the boring theory helps too, to get decent balance we just want to encourage the horse to become a rear wheel drive and not a front wheel drive. Pushing a wheel barrow means it goes in a straight line and is easy to balance...but we all know by pulling it, it has a tendency to go all over the shop and in my case fall over and spill crap everywhere.

So here's a few things you can try to get the back end engine working, transitions and loads of them!!! halt, walk, trot, walk, halt at every marker, or on circle, helps engage the rear wheel drive engine and also helps with gaining some concerntration if she is liable to rush about...always do loads of transtions!!! lateral work will help, but as mentioned above concerntrate on improving the walk first and then the trot and not getting to technical, just lots of transtions.

All the best Bumblesticks
 
Transitions, flexing, circles, changing of direction, serpentines. Exercises to get her moving and USING her body. Use your legs to guide her and support her into these exercises but allowing her to work and coordinate her body and legs for herself.

Hope it helps!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top