Pessoa, JW, side reins or...?

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trundle

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I need to do some work building up muscle and topline on my mare. I'm starting my lessons, so I know I'm working her properly when she's ridden, plus we do have a lot of hills to trot up, for general bum improvements.

When i run out of time, i lunge her. At the moment i jsut use side reins, but Ella has a very high head carriage, and the side reins don't seem to be helping. I was wondering if it would help if I lunged her in a Pessoa or a JW training thing, or a Topflight, or similar.

Does anyone have any thoughts on what would be best to lunge her in? I need to build up her muscle over her back and bum, and encourage her to lower her head as she has a very "upside down " neck at the moment.
 
i would use a harbridge training aid. i used it on my 5yo and it worked sooo well. even tho side reins give a little i still dont like them because i think that a horse should be able to move its head from side to side if need be. i also would give Clayton Fredericks Lungie Bungie a try but you said she lifts her head up so i would try a harbridge training aid to encorage her to work from behind and hold herself better.
hope this helps
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I would definately recommend a pessoa or similar. I have the john whittaker one and its excellent. I also find a harbridge is great for getting them to stretch down. It puts no pressure on them whatsoever unless they raise thier head too high. My 4yo works really long and low in it x
 
I have spent months building up my large mares back following years of incorrect training and used allsorts of gismos and gadgets but found the pessoa by far the best. I can use in on my mare at the lowest level (through the legs to roller) every other lunging session as i find that it has helped her to learn to carry herself correctly over her back and from behind even with out it. I did find at first though that she took a good 10 mins to warm up in it before she really started to accept it, i know that sound obvious but alot of people forget that you have to warm the horse up just as much as ridden work when lunging with aids. Hope this is of help as i know it is such a pain stakingly long process to build up the back and top line fully.
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