Lunging Exercises

[Sprat]

Hi all,

I'm looking for a bit of inspiration for lunging exercises.

Sprat is currently in 24/7 due to our fields being horrendous, and I am not always up for riding every night, so was wondering if you had any good lunging exercises to try?

I do lots of transitions and spiralling in and out of a 20 / 15 / 10 mtr circle in varying paces but aside from that I'm struggling for ideas!

I don't want the beast to get bored of going around in circles!

 

[Cortez]

Horses don't get bored with lunging, humans do. You can free lunge if the arena is empty, or lunge in squares or rectangles (requires effort on lunger's part). Or lunge with two reins and do figures of eight, half pass, shoulder in, etc.

 

[Eventing Girl]

Can you lunge her over jumps and poles?

 

[Wheels]

You can do pretty much anything that you can do ridden in the school - circles, squares, diamonds, changes of rein, serpentines, some lateral work (although this pretty hard at distance, easier to do close up to the horse and build up from there)

You need to be able to send the shoulders away or quarters away and be able to draw the horse towards you without pulling him, then you can change rein in walk and trot without having to stop, you can go in straight lines or circles and you can use the whole arena to work in. Then that's a work out for you and the horse