The following in-hand exercises are designed to improve a horse’s core strength. They are easy to do at home (all you need is a reasonably flat surface and a few poles) and great to do when your riding options are limited.
Perhaps you haven’t got a lot of time to spend riding today, or you’d like to spend time working on the ground with your horse in order to improve your bond and help build confidence in each other.
The exercises explained below are done at walk and will help to improve your horse’s balance and strength.
Walk is really useful for getting your horse to use their back correctly, while reducing stress placed on their joints.
It is also easier to correct abnormal movement patterns and re-train muscle memory in walk, as the large limb muscles don’t overpower the rest in this gait.
Before you start working on the exercises, walk your horse around for about five minutes to get them warmed up.
Exercise 1: work on the rhythm
Set out eight poles in a straight line with 4ft between each pole.
Walk your horse over the line of poles aiming for the middle of each one and making sure the walk is purposeful and that you keep them straight.
Exercise 2: engage their core
Place four poles end to end in a straight line and serpentine your horse up and down over them, making little shallow serpentine patterns as you go.
So, as you look at the vertical line of poles in front of you, curve from left to right over the first pole, and then curve right to left over the second pole, and so on.
It’s surprisingly harder than you might think! Begin with larger curves to start with, and make the curves shallower as your horse gets to know the exercise.
To make this exercise a little harder for your horse, you can raise one end of your middle two poles onto jump blocks.
Give it a go and remember to have fun!
Main image © Your Horse Library. For illustration purposes only; the exercise described above is not pictured
