Flo
4 weeks between the two videos to show Flos progression coming back into work. Flo has a tendency to go nose to the air and hollow, so this pole layout is designed to help her lengthen the frame, stretch out and stride out between the poles. While maintains a slight bend on the curve. I’m really pleased with the progress Flo is making, strength and posture both improving 👏
Weekly training - The Rein Aids
➡️What you need - just your horse and you can start with a head collar/halter, cavesson, bitted or bitless bridle
➡️WHY?
🐴build/expand/refine your communication
🐴 Essential education for young horses in preparation for ridden work
🐴re-educating troubled/traumatised horses or re-training from Previous careers such as racing etc
Our chosen aids are the ways in which we communicate with our horse. They should help the horse achieve what we ask of them.
The reins are used to relax the jaw and neck aswel as move their shoulders in different directions and halting.
Much like our body language with groundwork, the reins communicate our intent and energy.
Eg if we are tight and tense with our reins, so are our horses.
Our aim is lightness.
It may take time and repetition
➡️The Exercise -
We cannot get into the exercise without first discussing timing and reward.
Timing is everything (and I am still working on this, #progressnotperfection but not being perfect is no reason not to start!)
For the horse to understand an aid is one thing, for them to want to repeat it is another! This is where “reward” comes in. Positive experiences must be created for the horse to want to react accordingly again the next time.
So something positive happens when the desired response is given to our aid.
Wither or neck scratches or stroking are a good reward, and treats/food reward also (if they can be done well and safely)
A noise/word spoken can also help “bridge” the response to the reward. And often we can do this with better timing!
And in time the reward can be reduced and just the “bridge” used to convey a positive that the horse has given the correct response.
When teaching something new or difficult a strong positive reinforcer is best.
In summary we have
1. Know your aid and apply it well
2. Patience! Your horse may not respond perfectly or quickly straight away.
3. Timing. Timing of the release of the ai
We’re seeing big progress and improvements with Flo this week.
But Jo has been consistent in her training continuing with polework, in hand work, long reining and hacking in between lessons. 💪
Flos training has been a gradual re-introduction back to work and fitness following having a foal and some time off.
Today I felt she went better than before she had baby!!
Really great work today both of you.
Flo was relaxed, supple, stretching out for the contact, more balanced and we even had our first canter back in the school. 👏
Weekly workout - Shallow loops
➡️What you need - poles and/or cones (anything to give a visual for riding around for accuracy and guidance)
➡️WHY?
🐴 a great suppling exercise
Loops are a good test to see the horses willingness and ability to adjust bend in their body. A great suppling exercise without riding circles.
What you are aiming for is the horses body curvature to follow the line of travel, without resistance, change of pace or rhythm or speed.
➡️The Exercise -
The first aim for this is to ride a good corner with clear inside bend and well balanced. (half halts)
The the exercise is to follow smoothly, accurately with bend changing correctly with the line of travel, maintaining the quality of pace.
Things to look out for -
Loss of rhythm/balance
The horse hollowing or resisting
Swinging quarters
Breaking gait
To do this exercise on the ground in hand -
I find it best to have a rein in each hand, to have a similar feel as when i am riding, and then i can control bend on the outside aswel as the inside.
Do this exercise on both reins in walk.
You can also do the additional variation, adding in 10m circles at the K and H poles.
To advance the exercise try the deeper 10m loops
Ridden -
This exercise can be done in walk and trot (canter for more advanced horses and riders) on both reins.
Try both the 5 and 10m loops.
Variations include-
🐴Adding in transitions at K and H
🐴Try the 5m loop exercise by riding leg yield away and back to the track.
🐴Add 10m circles at both the K and H poles
Love to see how you all get on with this exercise. Any areas of difficulty? Easier or harder than you thought?
Any asymmetry becoming apparent in you horse?
Sam
Disclaimer
Exercises are a guide and you ride/train at your own risk.
Always wear appropriate PPE
Ask your vet or horses physio if you are unsure if the exercises are suitable for your individual horse.
🤩If you like this exercise please share.
And if you Found this useful an
Sadie & Popsicle
Sadie’s very new and first own pony, Popsicle has had some saddle fit issues but not to waste the session I worked Popsicle in hand. Sadie fell in love with the in hand work straight away and has been giving it a go over the last few weeks. I’m so pleased and proud that young riders are seeing the benefits of this work for their ponies and their relationship and training. Working on Popsicles suppleness, strength and fitness even though they can’t ride at the moment. 👏 Also educating on correct use of a stick aid to replace and/or replicate a legs aid. #equestriancoaching #equestriancoach #progressnotperfection #inhandwork #classicalinhandwork
Seren & Rascal
Seren and Rascal did really well at their last competition, earning 2 2nds! This week I wanted to help them improve their round by concentrating on landing on the correct canter lead and Seren helping Rascal know where he’s going. Great progress with this in just one session! 💪🙌 keep up the good work. (We work on the fact he likes to take the fence a stride out sometimes the next time 🙈😂) #equestriancoaching #progressnotperfection #horseridinglessons #horseriding #equestriancoach
Poppy & lucky
Poppy & Lucky from this week doing their favourite thing… cantering! #progressnotperfection #poleworkforhorses #equestriancoaching #polework #horseridinglessons #horseriding
Synchronised riding
My 3 ladies starting some synchronised rides
Great session this week working on turn on the forehand and the canter 👏
Jo & Flo
Jo & Flo in their pole workout lesson yesterday.
Raised walk poles and trot pole slalom. Working on suppleness and strengthening the core and back.
Weekly workout -
Counter shoulder-in
➡️What you need - just you and your horse
➡️WHY?
🐴 a great suppling exercise
🐴Targets each hind leg to step more under the body.
🐴great exercise to start teaching lateral work
➡️The Exercise -
In Counter shoulder-in the horse moves forward and sideways in a 30-40 degree angle to the track.
Their body is bent away from the direction of travel and to the fence. This is a really good first exercise to start teaching lateral work in hand or ridden as the fence of the arena helps the horse understand the movement, as he can’t walk through the fence it helps him find forward and sideways.
It’s also useful for the rider to understand the aids before attempting shoulder in.
Start with asking just a few steps as it takes strength and suppleness from the horse to maintain it.
Stand between your horse and the fence and ask them to walk forward with you but bend their body slightly towards you and the fence with some pressure slightly with the caveson or rein if using a bridle.
Also use stick or hand if on the ground to encourage the hind leg to step underneath the body. If riding then you will use the leg.
Troubleshooting-
🙈 my horse walks into me or stops
First teach them to move their shoulders away.
Once they can walk with you and understand to keep the shoulder nearest you away go back to the exercise.
If the horse starts to lose balance and walk a little too much in front or on top of you, use some rein or halter pressure to push him back out and away. Straighten up and try again.
🙈 only getting neck bend
In the beginning this is ok for a few steps. Then to get more of the hind leg stepping under the body, teach turn on the forehand first. When this is good, go back to the exercise and add in more leg if ridden or stick/hand if on the ground to encourage the hind leg to step through.
Remember work is progressive.
Progress not perfection.
A few steps with a first try is a good place
Baby Ru
Even when there’s no time to train, there’s still time to train something.
The key is finding things you can do in 5 mins and make it part of your routine you have already.
I know Ru does not like water, so every now and again I test his confidence with the tarp.
Made part of our already routine of coming in for a feed and check over.
Jo & Flo
Jo & Flo
Their first attempt at the pole slalom. Well done 👏
3 weeks time we aim to raise these poles higher 💪
Weekly workout - The Pole Square
Weekly workout -
The Pole Square
➡️What you need - 4 poles
(Can be raised for progression)
➡️WHY?
Pole squares are a simple set up if your short on time, unsure on pole spacing, want a fairly easy intro to pole work for you and your horse.
There are also sooo many ways to use it! On the ground or ridden.
The square is a great set up to practice consistency.
➡️The Exercise -
Can be done in hand, long reining, lunge or ridden
Walk/trot/canter
Start the exercises in walk before progressing to trot or canter work.
Video shows lots of different ways to use a pole square
Sam
Disclaimer
Exercises are a guide and you ride/train at your own risk.
Always wear appropriate PPE
Ask your vet or horses physio if you are unsure if the exercises are suitable for your individual horse.
🤩If you like this exercise please share.
And if you Found this useful and you’d like to send me a coffee any donation is very grateful received, you can that here ⬇️
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/stlequestriancoaching
Charlotte & Maddie
This is our third session with Maddie bringing her back into work after over a year off.
Maddie is quite the Miss Jackyl and Miss Hyde!
With a very different horse personality in the school, compared to what we’ve had working out on the yard, drive and on the roads.
We’ve had a chat about Maddies past and feel that it might just be a very negative and triggering environment for her.
She needs to be in the school for her physio pole program, but we are keeping these sessions very short and sweet and simple for now and concentrating our efforts on her weight loss and fitness journey, going for in hand walks out on the road and in our last session we started to make some progress with the very start of long reining from the side.
I was really pleased with their progress last week and was nice to see Maddie enjoying her work.
Well done 👏
Long rein with us
Come long rein with us …
Well, a short part of our 1.5 hour long rein hack from yesterday.
Ru and I both love going out for a walk together.
This is great for building Baby Ru’s confidence. As he is out without other horses, I am on the ground with him but behind. So he has to keep his head in front, be brave, think and it really gives him the same or similar feeling to hacking out alone.
A few things I perhaps do differently:
🐴 Ru is wearing a caveson. We will introduce the bit and bridle to long reining once I am happy he is fully responsive to light aids in the caveson.
🐴 I use a pro lite pad under the roller. I’m not keen on using rollers without some way of giving a little spine clearance and padding, especially for tb types who have a more prominent spine. Research has been done about roller pressure.
🐴positioning and line attachment
You will notice I stand to the side to long rein (in line with hindquarters ish)
I can and have long reined from behind and this is fine however for me, I am short, Ru is tall. From behind my vision of what’s up in front is drastically reduced. Also a driver may see the horse but not me. I like to stand to the side so I can see everything up ahead. And give signals to drivers that can see me if needed.
I also stay in the horses field of vision .
And the outside rein is through the roller, the inside rein is not. This is fairly irrelevant but, As Ru is still young, if at any point I want to get to his head to help him in any situation, I can do this more easily if 1. I am not way behind him and 2 I can shorten the inside rein and get to his head quickly and easily without the rein being through a roller. I can even tie up the outside rein in the numbnah and just go back to one rein and leading at their head very quickly and easily if needed. 👍
This is the furthest baby Ru had been out on his own and he thoroughly enjoyed it!
I love how brave and confident he is becoming. 🥰🩵
1st lesson with an ex trotter who’s hardly done any ridden work…
A little help needed with mounting block training, but we made good progress with that in our first session and then ridden work, well….
He is just going to be so much fun!
A tendency to go a little over tempo but what an amazing start.
We set up the school with poles to give him an inside “track” to follow and so that he doesn’t have to navigate corners at this point so early in his school work and retraining.
This effectively turns the school into two long sides and two half 20m curved lines
This can help horses to balance their curved lines. What we don’t want is him learning to counter bend and fall on his inside shoulder which is how a lot of horses try to move around corners and curved lines.
#progressnotperfection #extrotter
Baby Ru
Synchronising sideways steps
🥰
Jo & Flo
Jo & Flo
Jo has been bringing Flo back into work after her maternity leave (she had a beautiful coloured colt foal last year)
Jo has been great at progressing her work appropriately, starting with in hand work in walk, in hand hacking, in hand over poles and more recently she has been out ridden hacking and some gentle schooling.
Today we progressed her pole work to some work over a fan, trying to lengthen the frame and get her to stretch the top line and engage the core.
After foaling turning on those core muscles again is going to be key.
And poles like this is a nice, low impact way to do that.
Simple body work session for Baby Ru
Join us for a quick pamper session…
Baby Ru had a minor “field mishap” recently, which ended him up in the field next door with the cows 🙄
A few leg scrapes and minor swelling so I’m assuming he’s taken a bit of a tumble whilst trying to hedge hop.
So we did a more thorough simple body work session which consisted of:
🐴 poll wiggle
(Ref: Jec Aristotle Ballou and Jim Masterson, The Masterson Method)
To try and ease tension in postural muscles of spine behind the horses head.
This was our first attempt at this exercise but you wiggle the nose a little side to side a few times.
Ru seemed a little uncomfortable about this which either means he is tense at the poll or he just wanted me to go away so he could eat his hay 😂
I let him move his head and fuss a bit and just asked for a little wiggle then release
🐴Wither wiggle
(Ref Jec Aristotle Ballou and Jim Masterson, The Masterson method)
Releases tension and helps mobilise the front end.
A slight wiggle over each vertebra in the wither area.
🐴wither rocks side to side
🐴hind quarter rock side to side
🐴Tail circles
(Ref: Jec Aristotle Ballou and Pilates for horses by Laura Reiman)
Stabilises the spine and relaxes the long back muscles
🐴 Tail pull back
(Ref Pilates for horses by Laura Reiman)
Gently pull backwards on the tail
Stretches stabilising muscles along the spine
Relives tension of top line muscles
Engages the abdominal muscles
🐴tail pull to the side
Activates the muscles surrounding the stifle on that side and is a weight shift to that side.
🐴massage
Increases blood flow, flushes the lymphatic system, relaxes tissue, decrease swelling, relives muscle restriction, improves range of motion, improves circulation, enhances digestion, strengthens the immune system.
🐴belly/core lifts
Exercises the core muscles
I am not a body worker. But all of these simple bodywork techniques can be done by any horse owner and they are a great way to bond with your horse and
