Schooling Ideas.

If you read my blog regularly you will know that I sometimes struggle to make my schooling sessions interesting.  I have been trying to find new exercises and have a great book which gives me suggestions of things to try ........................

 I recently read an article in a magazine 'Your Horse' from May that was a lesson in 'How to lighten the forehand' with Ruth Edge (the eventer).  According to the article it is common for ex racehorses to work on their forehand.  This is something I didn't know although it is something that Basil and I are working on!  Interestingly she talked about transitions being a great way to improve this by encouraging a horse's hindlegs to come through.  

I have been working on an exercise with transitions on Basil.  Ruth suggest doing quick transitions so 6 strides of walk and 6 strides of trot.  This is similar to what we have been trying but the biggest problem I have is that Basil tends to get a bit excited if we do lots of transitions.  He is also not always that quick to react to my aids to slow down!  

Apart from transitions Ruth suggests using circles to engage the hindleg more.  By riding a 10 metre circle at every other letter (or where they should be).  In the lesson they are doing this in canter, Basil and I are certainly not balanced enough for this and we are still working to do this in trot.  However, this is an exercise I am going to try with him, we need to try to do smaller circles in trot so perhaps I should start by reducing our usual 20 m circles to 15 and then when these are balanced we can try 10m.

I also think we will have to work up our fitness to be able to canter these small circles as they are quite hard work!

Have a look at yesterday's 'Mini Haul' video on my You Tube channel.   
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Until next time!

Jo