Give me some fun schooling exercises for tonight

[Aniseed]

Can you give me some fun flatwork exercises to do tonight. I'm bored of doing the same thing and want to push forward with my horses schooling.

We are working at Prelim level and the areas I would like to improve are:
Make her sharper off the leg particularly in upward transitions
Help her be more balanced and working in self carriage in canter. We are getting there slowly but canter is something she finds really hard work.
Her walk is quite sloppy I find I give her a nudge and she walks out for a few strides then slows down again so I end up nagging.

I'm not having lessons at the moment so any suggestions would be great.

 

[Crackajack]

I've been after the same thing - I've been google'ing it today!
I've found some random things ive not done in a while!
Have you tried putting three trotting poles on your corner...?
Gets them to balance and think about the corner - you could make these into canter poles too!
Or try putting poles in a cross shape - circle round them which again allows you to play with strides and get her to pick her feet up
Just try some random stuff....even if people think its silly - it's good just sometimes to have some fun too!
x

 

[katie_and_toto]

Can you give me some fun flatwork exercises to do tonight. I'm bored of doing the same thing and want to push forward with my horses schooling.

We are working at Prelim level and the areas I would like to improve are:
Make her sharper off the leg particularly in upward transitions
Help her be more balanced and working in self carriage in canter. We are getting there slowly but canter is something she finds really hard work.
Her walk is quite sloppy I find I give her a nudge and she walks out for a few strides then slows down again so I end up nagging.

I'm not having lessons at the moment so any suggestions would be great.

Walk to canter transitions will help to sharpen your horses transitions and get her off the leg quicker. Also try simple changes which are the introduction to flying changes and will help your horse to bend to change direction

Also include poles into your schooling, set up two canter poles with a set distance of 6 strides, and ride through it with your horses natural canter stride at 6 strides, and then shorten her stride to 7 strides, next time lengthen to 5, this will help with your control and canter balance

 

[Ani]

I work sometimes on figures of eight using transitions as you cross, beging with progressive transitions then direct transitions, this will help balance and sharpeness. Also shallow serpintines not going all the way to the track with a transition each time you cross the centre line to change the rein, you can do this and incorporate circles, so if you do a loop of your shallow serpintine and feel the horse needs a truer bend carry on round and change the rein next time round. You can also incorporate poles into both these exercises. Also shallow loops try fitting two or three on an long side, you could do these in walk trot or canter, then try leg yeilding them. Or a 10m circle in the corner, say on the left rein then riding in 10m to X and circling right 10m then riding back our to the next corner and riding an 10m circle left again. or circling between E & B 20m with a 10m circle as you cross the centre line either insid or outside linked to the 20m circle, again poles and transitions can be incorporated in all. Have fun

 

[Kenzo]

Riding through a long channel of poles, close together (very close) placed down the centre line...or anywhere else for that matter, for you to canter down, you test how straight your horse is, some horses will find this a little daunting because it's a little bit different, so it can be interesting and fun.