Wow!! What a great set of exercises for riders and horses in a group setting! Love the scattered poles exercise.
very cool!! am going to send this to my barn.
[QUOTE=Mike Matson;7959577]
Wow!! What a great set of exercises for riders and horses in a group setting! Love the scattered poles exercise.
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=770263463065396&set=vb.100002452477047&type=2&theater[/QUOTE]
When I was a teenager I had an amazing instructor from Germany who did things very similar to this. It did so much for my riding. He ended up being a true horse-seller in terms of ‘moral equity’, but was a fantastic riding teacher.
I do miss the riding school lessons - where it is a bunch of us in a ring working on very specific things. It was so challenging and so fun…
In fact, he had one pattern that was quite hard, but amazing to develop your core:
‘Circle of Poles’:
4 poles placed on a large circle, with more poles placed to the inside of the four poles, and so on so forth until the center of the circle.
3-5 riders, one rides to the left on a 30m circle @ canter. 2nd rider to the right @ 25m, 3rd rider to left @ 20m, 4th rider @ right at 20m. so on… so forth.
He would have us nearly entirely ditch our reins and ask us to ride the horse to the outside so the horse ‘fell’ on our outside aids - meanwhile we would have to keep the horse on the circle he assigned us. It was an excellent, excellent exercise.
I wish I could be a part of that-- it looks like so much fun and such excellent flatwork for both horse and rider.
Kim
