help with young horse and trotting poles

[SecretAgentBilly]

Hi, I have had a 4yo on loan for about 5-6 months now. we have been doing
polework for maybe 3 months and some little jumps as well which he has been doing okay with, although he has not got much jumping talent However recently he has been trotting up the the poles fine and then slamming the brakes on before walking over them, he hasn't had a bad experience with them so I don't know whats happened?
Does anyone have any tips on how to get him back into polework again or why he has suddenly started stopping? Thanks

 

[shampain]

Hiya, I had a similar experience with my mare when I bought her home having just turned 5 (I'd been riding her for almost 6 months and she'd been perfectly happy jumping and doing pole work). She'd just slam on the breaks, skitter out to the side, and just generally refuse to cooperate. It was almost as if she'd suddenly regressed and just didn't know how to cope with them.
We went right back to basics, just walking over single poles randomly placed around the school, slowly moving on to trotting over them and, over the following sessions (it only took a couple of weeks, with schooling twice a week), increasing the number to 3 poles in each set, just keeping a steady rhythm trotting over and around them, being completely random and not focusing on the poles whatsoever so that they become a complete non-issue. We were then able to start to reintroduce little cross-poles after each set of 2/3 poles, and from there... well, onwards and upwards! She never had any issues after that with pole work or jumping.
Hope this helps.

 

[SecretAgentBilly]

thank you very much - might just take him right back to basic poles like you say then