Another fun training exercise I recently did was putting 4 poles down in the shape of a circle. Then start riding over all the poles which helps to keep your circle line correct. Afterwards, you can raise the poles up to cavalettis which is also fun!

Canter leg yields are not commonly referred to, as they are not mentioned in dressage tests. Thus, I feel they are really only commonplace when teaching the half pass. Thus, we miss out on the incredible benefits from them!! For jumpers, dressage riders, eventers, they are CRUCIAL!!! Not only do they reinforce inside leg to outside rein, but they will supple and strengthen your horse immensely. Also, when approaching a jump or need more bend, having your horse responsive to the leg yield at the canter will tremendously improve your horse’s rideability and your ability to rate your horse. To do them, make sure your horse knows the leg yield at walk and trot first. Then at the canter, start on a quarter line and ask for the movement to shift over with each stride. I find horses generally need a bit to sort out how to coordinate their legs and balance if they don’t know this already. Because of this, your horse might be a bit sticky until it understands. Be gentle and reward effort! Many horses love canter leg yields, and this exercise is one of my personal favorites to ride!! The better your horse gets, you start going down centerline and past it. Canter leg yields will also make your counter canter better. Counter canter is also great to use in conjunction with canter leg yields.

A fun exercise which I recently did with my trainer is riding serpentines over poles! Place two poles in the middle of the arena and three poles on each side of the center poles. Then ride your serpentines over the poles! You can decide to ride over just the three poles on each side for a three loop serpentine or go over all the poles making it a 4 loop serpentine, depending on the size of your arena! This really helped me to get my lines right and is just a nice change to switch things up a bit!

How to gradually recover a horse that has been abandoned for 10 years. This is one the first video of me and Dandy. Now we are a strong duo♥️

Here is the second part of the technique exercise. The purple line is ridden here. Jump 1 follows Oxer 2 in a tight turn then straight on to 3 and again out of a turn on 4. This exercise was quite difficult and tiring for me and Orylle. Orylle is not good on her hindquarters yet and still swims quite a bit. But we still continued to improve from round to round.

Exercises from our last jumping lesson. The exercises ask questions about rideability and technique. Even at a small height you have a great training effect. At the beginning you can still choose the long path from blue 1 and 2. Then we ride for a long time before 3. This is followed by the short blue path 1 to 2. The path behind 3 is chosen. In both variants you ride to the left, but in a larger hall or riding arena you can also ride to the right. We only have a 20x40m hall, so a right turn would be too narrow and not good for the joints. I'll post the purple exercise in a second post with our video about it.

Working with a young green horse who is starting to jump. This exercise of a ground pole in front, small crossrail, and then a halt after it to help keep his mind active and engaged and to not “run off” after a jump. Once he has figured out to be calm and relaxed through this exercise every time, the height can increase.

*Not my exercise* I saw this on social media and it looked like an awesome exercise, so I had to share with my PS family! So much versatility from 8 poles and 4 cones!