HHO virtual clinic exercise 2

[milliepops]

do we want a new thread for each one?
it's a leg yield exercise this time

https://www.facebook.com/dressagewithgeorgia/posts/164754231981186

 

[Sprat]

Looking forward to trying this one. My mare has nice lateral movement, but it does tend to leak out through the shoulder, especially to the left. I've got into a bad habit of only leg yielding from the 3/4 line to the wall so it will be good to swap it up and see how she fares with this exercise.

 

[Kat]

Excellent, will try this tonight

 

[j1ffy]

I had a go at this last night and it was great. I rode with my schooling whip and for some reason Danny took exception to it, so we started off a bit tense and over-reactive. However even with this (in fact it probably exacerbated the issue, which was good for this exercise ) he struggled with the concept of a few steps sideways then straight, he just wanted to dive across the arena. It really helped to keep him in the outside aids and I'll give it another go this week when he's more relaxed.

 

[Surbie]

Aaarrrgghhhhh!!! Thanks for posting @j1ffy, I'm glad I'm not the only one struggling.

We can happily zigzag down the centre line, or cross to the fence from the 3/4 line, but going sideways then straight then sideways towards the fence is frying my cob's brain. He's falling out through the shoulder in walk yielding to the left and if I try it in trot I get bouncy canter and a banana neck - which is impressive given how short his neck is!

I gave up and went back to the trot-walk-trot-halt-trot exercise, and the trot/canter Snowman from last time, both of which he now absolutely loves.

Will try again tomorrow but more slowly and with halts inbetween the different moves. Like the last exercise, a great part of the problem is probably me thinking 'I know you can do this' and going a bit too quickly...

 

[Roxylola]

Played with this in a fashion this morning. I'm not using the arena as it's too deep at the moment so we play at lateral work down the tracks in our bridle path. We haven't really room to it fully but we do a few steps the straight and a few more then back the other way. We did a bit of shoulder in too and something that I'm determined will one day be travers

 

[j1ffy]

Aaarrrgghhhhh!!! Thanks for posting @j1ffy, I'm glad I'm not the only one struggling.

We can happily zigzag down the centre line, or cross to the fence from the 3/4 line, but going sideways then straight then sideways towards the fence is frying my cob's brain. He's falling out through the shoulder in walk yielding to the left and if I try it in trot I get bouncy canter and a banana neck - which is impressive given how short his neck is!

I gave up and went back to the trot-walk-trot-halt-trot exercise, and the trot/canter Snowman from last time, both of which he now absolutely loves.

Will try again tomorrow but more slowly and with halts inbetween the different moves. Like the last exercise, a great part of the problem is probably me thinking 'I know you can do this' and going a bit too quickly...

It's a good exercise for realising that the horse isn't as 'on your aids' in the lateral work as you think! Part of our problem is that Danny doesn't cross his hindlegs as much as we'd like, so I was also trying to focus on that once we'd done it a few times so it added another level of difficulty. I wish we had arena mirrors as it's hard to feel while thinking about the exercise.

 

[milliepops]

Aaarrrgghhhhh!!! Thanks for posting @j1ffy, I'm glad I'm not the only one struggling.

We can happily zigzag down the centre line, or cross to the fence from the 3/4 line, but going sideways then straight then sideways towards the fence is frying my cob's brain. He's falling out through the shoulder in walk yielding to the left and if I try it in trot I get bouncy canter and a banana neck - which is impressive given how short his neck is!

I gave up and went back to the trot-walk-trot-halt-trot exercise, and the trot/canter Snowman from last time, both of which he now absolutely loves.

Will try again tomorrow but more slowly and with halts inbetween the different moves. Like the last exercise, a great part of the problem is probably me thinking 'I know you can do this' and going a bit too quickly...

i think this exercise is really good for highlighting whether you are in control of a movement or whether the horse has gone self employed
So it's not a bad thing for it to be difficult, it's just telling you that you're not really in charge. I think I would scale back the amount of sideways you are asking for and make the focus more about the stopping and starting of sideways steps if that makes sense. one or two sideways steps max and then 10 or 15 m straight, and then repeat if you can. and then build up from there when that is easy.

 

[j1ffy]

i think this exercise is really good for highlighting whether you are in control of a movement or whether the horse has gone self employed
So it's not a bad thing for it to be difficult, it's just telling you that you're not really in charge. I think I would scale back the amount of sideways you are asking for and make the focus more about the stopping and starting of sideways steps if that makes sense. one or two sideways steps max and then 10 or 15 m straight, and then repeat if you can. and then build up from there when that is easy.

I absolutely agree - it's really helpful to find that a supposedly 'simple' exercise is confusing for the horse. Your description is exactly how we started, then once we got that I confused things again by asking for more crossing - my bad ?

 

[Sprat]

I had a little go at this last night before doing some polework. Didn't find it too much of an issue with the stopping / starting sideways so much, but I do struggle to get the turn onto the centre line. Which makes sense as I am crap at centre lines in a test, so that's something to work on. My mare is quite long so it does feel like trying to turn a bus a lot of the time.

 

[SEL]

Even I get to play at this one - although just in walk because she's still not 100% in trot.

On the left rein she thinks she is boss and wants to go sideways to the fence at warp speed. On the right rein we have a grump because she'd rather be a banana than a pony.

Just a little bit because she's so unfit but its suppling her up and she was a lot less grumpy by the end (plus she likes sideways stuff and is bored stiff of straight lines)

 

[ihatework]

And once you have the control sorted you can modify it to leg yield back to the centre line rather than continuing the same direction to the track.

 

[nikicb]

This is an exercise that I used to do with Cassie as once she was on a mission, she usually continued. We also used to do it leg yielding away from the track, going straight, then leg yielding back again. I tried the exercise as prescribed with Maddie earlier this afternoon and found it very useful to 'catch' the outside shoulder in particular. She is more laterally supple than Cassie was (slightly lighter build and less of an Arab sprung barrel), but quite sensitive to changes in my weight/aids, so it was useful to help work on both of our straightness through the movement. Will try again next time I ride her.

 

[SaddlePsych'D]

Ooh I managed to try this one in walk on a hack with share horse yesterday on a wide track - a few steps to the middle, straight for a few steps in the middle of the track, then continuing across the track before doing the other way. I think I probably should have got a 'spotter' because I find it hard to tell if I'm getting the correct steps sideways. We sometimes leg yield out on the tracks but I liked this exercise as it got S to listen to me for the straight bit in the middle rather than drift over from side to side. Next time I shall try trotting it

 

[Northern]

The Staircase Exercise! I use this quite often at the moment. Challenge yourself by ending up on the inside track rather than the wall, to stop the horse from using it as a buffer. Not as easy as it sounds!