Thank Foitin, the videos are from a jump day. Normally what we go over are poles set up on these tiny blocks (not the traditional x’s, but like very little props). But point taken. I can be a lot more conservative going forward. I do think I was relying on elevated poles to get a better canter, and when I look at it more holistically, the issue is probably that he needs more maintenance, not more fitness.
If you’re trying to think of things to mix it up on your rides, but worry about not doing things in a “balanced” way, consider riding through some dressage tests. They pretty much always mirror figures, and would be very good for getting you thinking about using corners and your space in the ring.
If he’s having trouble with changes, that’s a sign he might need some more support than just basic feed through supplement, like hind shoes (if not already wearing them) or injections.
This is a great suggestion! ANRC also provides patterns for “dressage sportif,” and the pre-level and level 1 patterns would be great practice- replace the rails and the gymnastic in the program rides with a straight line up the quarter line or with poles on the ground.
Having watched your videos, your horse is adorable and I agree with your trainer that your practice time will be much better spent focusing on pace and track. Your video shows me a rider who’s typical of your level in that your primary focus seems to be getting to the fences, not how you get to them- so you make a decent distance to all of the jumps but it’s not consistently on a straight line with a balanced horse. I would like to see you focus on using the whole ring, going deep into your turns, and creating more straight strides before and after your fences. There are about 200 canter strides in a hunter course, and only about 8 of them have sticks underneath 
so exercises that develop your focus on using the whole ring and changing your horse’s balance from inside hock to outside hock (left bend, right bend) while also managing his length of stride will help you produce a really good other 192 strides.
This is a normal way of riding for someone who hasn’t been at it for a million years- I really like that you’re eager to improve and practice and I hope that you’re having these discussions with your trainer too, so that you can come out of lessons with homework to help you practice the skills you worked on that day.
If you need to work on your track and straightness, you can also set up things to go around or through rather than over. Set some of the cavaletti risers or cones and practice steering around them. Set up a chute where you’d have your line and go through. Can you do it if your chute is narrow? If so, then you can steer to the center of a jump.
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Building off this idea, you can also set up some standards/boxes/whatever suits you on the quarterline, sans poles. Put two together 4-5’ apart and set up another set like you would with a line and practice riding straight between them. You could set up a whole course this way and with the narrow gaps to get through, finding your track will be important.
I would recommend picking up a copy of the book 101 dressage exercises.
There are lots of different exercises in there. Some are simple serpentines and loops that can be incorporated into the warm up. Some are more complicated. Some involve poles, etc. And there’s the bonus that you can just pick an exercise for that day and work through it from both directions. Spend the winter working through the book.
I agree with the others that straightness looks to be where the difficulty is right now. Which probably means that you’re lacking some impulsion as well.
I would practice riding forward through the corners, and make a wall with you outside aids every time you turn toward a jump/pole. Practice riding 10’ off the wall, keep that distance consistent all the way around.
If you find that he’s bulging and ignoring your outside aids than I would practice some counter bend, as well as just getting him to move laterally off your leg. Start at a walk, than progress to the trot and canter.
This is actually a fairly common problem. I run into it myself every year when we move from the big outdoor ring into the small indoor. I have a big gelding with a big step. Outside we make it look easy, he rolls down the lines and flows through the turns. Inside? It’s like trying to drive a bus in a parking lot 
It takes a little more work to keep him in front of my leg, and a little sharper to the aids. Add in a spooky corner and straightness seems that much farther away…
Thank you! I bought that book last night after reading JenEM’s comment about the dressage tests. I’d previously downloaded the kindle preview, but ended up buying Jane Savoie’s Dressage 101 instead (they have similar titles but are very different books). It’s funny that I like the more descriptive books, but prefer trainers who don’t say much and teach through exercises. So it kind of calls into question why I wouldn’t have made it a priority to learn more exercises. Maybe I just like to outsource someone else to read the confusing diagrams and set them up for me 
And I took the advice today of cantering through empty jump standards. It made it obvious that when there are no jumps involved, I steer better. I think I tense up and use too much inside rein to turn when I am anticipating a jump. I only ride the inside shoulder and it shows. I am pretty sure that’s my big fish to fry, and things will look a lot better when I fix that.
You sound like a good student. I bet your trainer is happy to have you.
An exercise you can try for this is to ride your patterns with your reins only in your outside hand, carrying your inside hand on your hip. That’ll illuminate how much you rely on the inside rein, and sharpen up your inside leg to outside aids muscle memory right quick!
Thanks, I like this idea! It is much better than my idea, which was to clip reins to a halter and try doing it bitless. Who knows if I would have lived to report back 
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Something I used to like doing with my horse that you can try is dropping your reins at the walk (just keep a finger on them to keep from sliding down the horse’s neck) and steer through empty standards/over poles using just your legs. Once you get good at doing it at the walk, you could try trot and canter if you feel comfortable. I find that I had to make sure I was sitting and using my leg properly to make turns and such, so it’s possible you might find this helpful.
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For you also think that when the horse has done something correctly a couple of times they can view it as punishment to be asked to do it again.
That is where dressage training and the levels come in. They are designed to keep both the horse and the rider from getting bored.
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Do you have any research to back this up? Curious about this thought.
I would have thought, repetition correctly is actually training/learning?
An exercise you can try for this is to ride your patterns with your reins only in your outside hand, carrying your inside hand on your hip. That’ll illuminate how much you rely on the inside rein, and sharpen up your inside leg to outside aids muscle memory right quick !
Wow, I did it. It was so hard. Here we are on the right lead: https://imgur.com/a/AU1GJRW And here we are, much better, tracking left: https://imgur.com/a/sNCYo9n
That is some exercise! Lots to improve before trying it over rails, but I’m thrilled we made it between the standards.
Suzie Q, thanks for replying. That is a good point and bears out in my experience too.
Sorry I will have to leave that for you to research.
My sister put me in front of her to jump before I could walk.
Nearly half a century of lessons to learn to ride and will still take lessons when it cools down.
Too many decades of lectures to become an instructor.
I have both trained and retrained many horses over the years.
I have never kept a training diary. I remember things to do with each horse and each ride. My instructor has commented on this. I tell him things he does not remember telling me but knows it is something he would say.
The mental state of the horse I am riding is paramount to me. I want to only ride happy horses. My horses work their heart out for me and that is what I enjoy.
Horses learn a lot faster than the rider. The horse does not need to do shoulder in after shoulder in after shoulder in over and over. I don’t usually ask more than twice in each direction when teaching them. After it is taught they do not need it over and over.
It is the rider who needs it over and over and over and over. It is the rider who doesn’t get it after doing it twice. In fact as an instructor we tell you something 1,000 times that you do not know you are doing, for the next 1,000 times you realise it before we say it. Then you start doing it before we say it. Once you are doing it without needing us to say it, we start on telling you somthing else. Annoying aren’t we?
Horses learn something after having done it 3 times. This is why green on green means black and blue. It is because a horse will learn the wrong thing if you let it happen 3 times. The horse is busy learning every time you interact with it and it is harder to retrain than it is to train. Let it do something 3 times and then decide you want the opposite, it us not going to be so easy.
With an experienced rider and a young horse, the horse only learns the correct way. Then things happen extremely quickly. With an inexperienced rider things can go the other way just as quickly. That is because a horse us not the same as a bike. Every day the horse is a little bit better or a little bit worse. Have it a little bit better every day and you start off with a better horse than you did last Monday. Next Monday even better. Next Monday it is unrecogniseable to the horse who arrived. If the horse is a bit worse each day. Get help fast as the horse you have 2 Mondays from now will also be unrecogniseable from the horse on the first Monday and that is not a good thing and things will go downhill faster and faster.
If the horse is the same each ride, you are a horse rider and not a horse trainer and you are not seeing what is happening underneath you.
As a horse trainer people say I am extremely patient, that is because I do not worry about today’s ride. Today’s ride is setting up for the rides in the future. All I want from today is for it to be a bit better than yesterday.
Most young horses learning don’t need more than 20 minutes riding. Remember I am in a hot country. If you want to ride more than 20 minutes schooling, ride again in the afternoon.
When the horse is older they are doing more interesting work. Then you can ride more than 20 minutes as you have more things to run through.
You do not need to run one thing they have learned over and over and over. Think of all those dejected bored horses in the Parelli world we have seen in the past from doing the same games in the round yard.every,single.day. Asking again and again is punishment.
I was riding my mare I had bought off my employer. So I was learning from a horse that was stepping down. I had brought her back into work as she was in with the brood mares when I found her. She was going well and I was trotting a circle. She had competed at Medium in the past and had been trained up to half steps.
My employer walked past and said you are boring her. I started doing figure of 8’s incorporating canter. She walked past again, you are boring her. I started doing serpentines changing the gait in the loops. You are boring her.
I stopped to clarify. You are boring her going straight, start doing lateral work.
It was with this same employer. Grand Prix rider that I started riding a pony for a customer. The pony was too green. I was reprimanded for not having completed all my work. I said I had ridden the pony for half an hour as that was what they were paying for.
NO. They are paying for half an hour with that pony and that is it. That includes catching, tacking, riding, untacking and putting away.
I did not have a choice. I devised a 5 minute work out. I can tack and groom at the same time. I brought her up the driveway with other horses and back down the driveway the same way. I was the master at trying to get things done in that half hour to squeeze in an extra 30 seconds.
In 3 months that pony was working elementary. Which is walk, trot and canter 10 meter circles and lateral work. She was fit, she was muscled, she was happy.
It is not the horse that needs repetition to learn
They need quality over quantity, so as the work they do get, creates the correct muscles.
‘repetition correctly’ as you say is drilling. Nobody horse or rider likes drilling.
As I have no research for you I will leave you with this saying. Dissect it. Understand what it means. This has to do with the mental side of the horse as well as the physical. One time is equal to the other mathematically. It is the secret to training a horse.
It is why customers complain that they pay for training rides and the trainer doesn’t ride enough and they are not getting their money’s worth which you see over and over and over again on this forum.
It is why competitors complain that they are beaten by someone who hardly rides when they themselves have put in so much time and effort and hard work. So obviously the competition is rigged and the judge is awarding who they know.
It is why I used to ride 8 horses a day as well as do all the feeding and cleaning of paddocks as well as teaching lessons.
I used to event and show jump my first horse. I used to take him around the State Forest and jump stuff out there. I lessened once a week.
I started doing jumping equitation. In the end I was winning at Jumping Equitation and a jump judge once told me we looked better and better each time. I raised my eyebrows at that comment, as we had not jumped from one competition to another. The horse doesn’t need it. Correct work creates correct work. It is why you can create a better canter on a horse that can’t canter yet by training at the trot.
'It is better to ride 5 minutes a day than it is to ride 35 minutes on a Sunday.
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Thank you for the reply but a lot of your post is not relevant to me, I really just want to see if there is actual research behind your statement or just anecdotal, for learning/training purposes.
I have found especially with jumping work, going through a gymnastic or exercise 2 times say vs 5/6 times, the horses learn a lot better with the 5/6 times. So I was a bit surprised by your comment.
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Remember in your research to ask horses not just scholars.
By not doing the same thing twice and not asking the same thing over and over does not mean do not go over cavelletti 5 or 6 times.
It means change direction afterwards each time then twice in a row go the same way so as you are not alternating each time.
It means don’t always have them the same. Change their configuration. There is a book that gives different exercises using poles and cavelletti the same as the 101 dressage exercises.
It means use different things like above has said go through jumps wings, go over trot poles, make bounces. You can do different things like setting up grids. That is not drilling. This will be more interesting for you as well. You are already incorporating trail riding which is good as well.
I agree you don’t need to drill the same movements 20 times around the ring every day, but this statement doesn’t make sense to me. You don’t teach a horse shoulder-in just to teach a horse shoulder-in. It’s a suppling and strengthening exercise that if done correctly should help improve all your other work. So why would you teach it then use it so sparingly you can’t get the gymnastic benefits?
Plus, there are always aspects of any movement that can be developed and improved. It’s not like once a horse understands what the aids for the movement mean, that’s all the training you can do.
I do lateral work in every dressage school (and sometimes warming up before jumping, out on a trail ride, etc), according to the horse’s level of training, and I’ve never felt like they couldn’t benefit from more or that they were bored with a particular movement. I must be misunderstanding something?
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I don’t mean I do it sparingly. I mean I might do it twice to warm up, twice each way once warmed up, twice each way while in walk, twice later in trot. Maybe again in cool down with plenty of praise.
What I don’t do is shoulder in down the long side 20 times in a row one after another.
As you said it is a gymnastic exercise, it is a strengthening exercise. I use it when I want it or need it but I don’t go out there and drill it for 15 minutes by itself.
As I also said my instructor said my horse was getting bored going on one track so the shoulder in was interspersed with half pass, renvers, etc, etc and I try not to stay on one track all the time. Back in those days we did not leg yield. I have added leg yield now as well as pirouette and turn on the forehand.
2-3 times a week. Almost every lesson. Different set up and moved all the time. It has actually done wonders to strengthen our gelding’s hind end. My vet told me when I asked what was “hard” that anything under 3’ in a youngish, fit, athletic horse is not hard as long as the distances, footing, etc. is good.
Apologies for the upcoming wall of text, this interesting topic sent me down a rabbit hole. As a sufferer of “one-more-time-itis,” I have been taught by multiple trainers that drilling is for the rider and that for training the horse, repetition should be limited to its effective amount. Drilling the same jumping exercise makes hot horses hotter and lazy horses duller. The best way to improve a horse through a gymnastic exercise is not to repeat the full gymnastic 5 times but to build it up in 5 steps by adding in the next element each time and finishing when the gymnastic is complete. On the flip side, riders who do the full gymnastic 5 times will improve their position faster.
My understanding is that the goal of the theory of three repetitions is to have the horse rewarded as fast as possible (by taking a break) because the reward/release is what actually makes it click for the horse, not the development of muscle memory. Only repeat an exercise a second time if improvement from the first is required but not risky, and if the second attempt is worse, repeat a third time and finish if the third is better than the second. If the third attempt is worse, then do something different by breaking the exercise down into parts and address the smaller piece that is causing trouble.
“I keep the school really short and simple, I would rather jump 2 or 3 times per week in shorter session than have a 1 hour jumping session of million fences. The horses learn more that way, they retain the lesson, because you’re able to repeat the same training principle a few times in a row rather than grilling on them for an hour… when you’re dealing with hot horses in particular, by working in shorter spans of time, the horse won’t get so hot in their brain… if you repeat over and over again the horse will get quicker and quicker. You want the horse to stay interested. Finish the school positive, the horse leaves confident, and jumping better than when he began.” – Kent Farrington, gymnastics demo, GHM Horsemastership Clinic 2018
McGowan 2017, Muscular and neuromotor control and learning in the athletic horse: “Although there are few peer-reviewed publications on equine neuromotor training, knowledge from human research should be taken into consideration whilst training horses… Whenever training is commenced, the concept of the logarithmic law of practice should be remembered. The law states that most and fastest learning, and thus greatest improvement in performance, happens at the beginning of the practice period (Newell and Rosenbloom, 1982). Along with the amount of training increments, the improvement gradually slows down. This ties in together with the above-mentioned timing of muscle’s physiological adaptions as response to training… One cannot separate motor learning from other, i.e. behavioural, aspects of learning, when training a horse. For example the attention span of a horse should be considered, which might also be affected by the age of the horse (Rapin et al., 2007), and the effects of individual’s temperament as well as stresses in the learning situation should also be taken into account (Valenchon et al., 2013b)…Currently there are no validated outcome measures for evaluating equine motor learning.”
Rapin 2007, Measurement of the attention time in the horse: average equine attention span is 12 seconds, younger horses (3-7 y/o) have worse attention spans and worse recall in remembering a new task 3 weeks later, while mature (8-23 y/o) horses showed either no change or some improvement. Short training sessions (2-5 minutes) with breaks or different exercises in between are recommended as well as immediate positive reinforcement.
Valenchon 2013, Stress Modulates Instrumental Learning Performances in Horses (Equus caballus) in Interaction with Temperament: “Horses that were stressed before [the training session] tended to [learn faster] than non-stressed horses did [which is attributed to the fear response making them more active and engaged]. Eight days later, during the reacquisition session, contrary to non-stressed horses, [horses stressed before the task], and, to a lesser extent, [horses stressed after the task], did not significantly improve their performance between sessions. [Individual] temperament influenced learning performances, but only when performances were affected by stress… We hypothesize that horses associated the stress applied with the context of learning. Then, when replaced in the same context eight days later, this association might have induced a state of stress that impaired [recall] of the task.”
Foster, 2019 “Do Horses Have Muscle Memory?”: “Horses might very well be faster than humans in typical training situations [as they are faster, stronger, and an escape action sequence can be learned quickly due to stress caused by a rider]… Procedural learning and memory of motor sequences has been studied by cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists. I’m not aware of any published studies on this topic in horses, but it would be an interesting research topic!”
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