When your horse has mastered the exercise, add width to the poles to increase the challenge. Photo: Donna Stidolph
A horse’s ability to cover ground with big, powerful trot strides comes from stability in his pelvis and hips. When he is weak or wobbly in the muscles and connections around his hip joint and croup, he can’t adequately balance the flexion and extension of each hind leg within each stride. This wobbliness often transmits to the rest of the body. Read on to learn more about the cavaletti snake over poles exercise that is great for horses to find better stability while riding.
Creating stability in the pelvis and hips is not always as straightforward as it seems. As with humans, it’s usually best accomplished by using varying planes of movement with small, controlled leg placements. These kinds of coordinated movements significantly help improve a horse’s balance for lateral movements like shoulder-in and haunches-in, in addition to strengthening the trot extensions.
I use the Snake Over Poles exercise to improve stability, and I like it best in the very beginning of a ride before a horse is warmed up. This provides the greatest challenge to the horse’s coordination and finely controlled motor patterns. If you lack blocks or risers to raise poles up as described in the exercise, you can still practice with the poles just lying on the ground. It’s best performed at the walk only.
You can do this exercise either from the saddle or by leading or ground-driving. As long as the horse is moving steadily, changing the bend through his body in every turn, and stepping across the pole, he is gaining the benefit.
After performing the previous exercise for a week or two, many horses are ready for an advanced version.
Since doubling the width requires so many poles, you can often be creative with other materials if you don’t have a lot of poles. Some barns have railroad ties lying around, which are an adequate height to step over in addition to being wide enough to mimic this exercise. Or you can try using planks or boards to set up this pattern, so long as the edges are smooth and won’t scrape the horse’s legs.
This article about a cavaletti snake over poles exercise originally appeared in the August 2018 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!
Jec A. Ballou is the author of 55 Corrective Exercises for Horses: Resolving Postural Problems, Improving Movement Patterns, and Preventing Injury.
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