Warming Up

Set up for this exercise by placing eight poles in a square shape, with two poles creating each side of the square. If you don’t have poles to create the shape, get creative with any (safe!) items you do have on hand. Each side of the square will be about 20 feet long.

As you warm your horse up prior to beginning this exercise, leg-yields and circles are beneficial. In the circles, focus on riding your horse from back to front with him pushing from behind and working up into the hand.

During the leg-yields, be sure to note how your horse is moving off of each of your legs. If your horse has a notably weaker side, you will probably want to start on his stronger side so that the two of you can more easily sort out the exercise in the beginning.

At the Walk

Begin the exercise by bringing your horse alongside one of the box’s sides in a forward, working walk. As you approach the last quarter of the side of the square that you’re on, begin to collect the horse’s step slightly, half-halt, and then apply outside leg just as your horse’s front legs have passed the corner of the box. This will result in your horse performing a quarter-turn on the haunches, with his body still parallel to the next side of the square.

The most common mistake is for the horse’s shoulders to fall to the outside, bulging out around the turn. Instead, you want him to rock back and lift during the half-halt, sending his energy into his outside hind leg to aid him in executing a pivot-like motion that turns his body and then propels him forward with power in the new direction.

This can be maintained with strong outside rein contact blocking the horse’s shoulder from popping out. His energy will then continue to flow forward through the cycle of being captured by the collection, rocked back into his hindquarters by the half-halt, and then funneled around the turn by the outside leg.

If the horse is slow to respond to your outside leg pressure, use a bumping leg or a whip/crop to improve his response to your leg the first few times.

At the Trot

Once you have fine-tuned your timing and understand the feeling you are searching for from your horse, you can move up to the trot. I generally find this easiest in the sitting trot, as your seat is very useful for reminding the horse to rock back and balance.

By this time, your horse should be moving willingly off your leg. As he carries more momentum in the trot, don’t allow him to swing loosely around the corner and end up further from the pole guides in the trot than he was in the walk. He should maintain his power and collection and use it to keep the turns sharp.

During this exercise, it’s crucial to allow your horse to take breaks and go to another section of the arena to stretch. It’s also not an exercise that should be drilled endlessly if your horse is finding it difficult. Revisit it over the course of a few days or weeks so as to not make your horse sore or frustrated in one session.

More Advanced Work

If you have been successful with this exercise and have a horse working at a more advanced level, use two sides of the box as a guide for trying a square turn in the canter. This is especially difficult, so I wouldn’t suggest asking your horse to do this for more than one or two turns at a time.

Another way to expand this exercise is by using it as part of an extension and collection exercise. The extension section could be anything you choose. For example, ride the full box in trot, then working canter across the diagonal, do a flying change of lead, canter back toward the box, collected trot, then ride the box again in the other direction.

There are plenty of times during your horse’s career that he may need an exercise to sharpen him up to the leg, create strength and muscle memory in the hindquarters, or that you need to remind yourself to make better use of your outside aids to support turning. This easily set-up exercise can do all of those for you, and more!

More Training Advice from This Author

◆ Achieve the Correct Timing of Riding Aids
◆ How to Improve a Lazy Horse’s Responsiveness
◆ Solutions for a Horse Stopping at Jumps
◆ Making a Spooky Horse More Confident
◆ How to Train a Horse That’s Rushing Jumps

This article about an exercise for your horse’s hindquarter engagement appeared in the September 2024 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

The post An Exercise for Your Horse’s Hindquarter Engagement appeared first on Horse Illustrated Magazine.

Tamie Smith of Next Level Eventing in Temecula, Calif., winner of the 2023 Land Rover Kentucky Three-Day Event CCI5*, has a strong focus on pole work in her program.

“Not only do they help your horse become stronger, but they get the horse to a place where he’s super rideable,” she says. “You can start off super simple, just trotting over one pole.”

Smith emphasizes that setting up pole exercises doesn’t need to be complicated.

“In my ring, I just have random poles out,” she says. “It’s a really good exercise for the horses to learn where their feet are and for them to let go of their bodies because they have to push over their back when they trot over them.”

Relaxation & Rideability

Additionally, Smith uses poles as a check-in for riders to see if their horses are adjustable and listening. Instead of passively riding over the poles, Smith encourages her riders to think about how their horse is completing the exercises and what holes in their training the poles bring into focus.

Smith says to ask yourself the following: “Do the trot poles create more tension and make your horse stiffen? Do they create anxiety?”

The more trot pole work the horses do, the more comfortable they get and the more rideable they become.

“I always err on the side of making sure that the horse isn’t feeling overwhelmed by the trot poles,” says Smith. “If he’s struggling, I’ll take away multiple poles and only use one until he gets really confident with it.”

Fresh Footwork with Ground Poles

Catherine Donworth has spent most of her riding career focusing on fox hunting. When her long-time partner, Skippy, was ready to retire, she got a ranch horse named Doolin Banjos. She began prepping Doolin to be her next fox hunting mount, but quickly discovered that he might be destined for a dual career, so Donworth began her dressage journey.

She uses ground pole exercises to keep things fresh for both herself and her horse in training.

“When you have a dressage horse that doesn’t jump, or doesn’t jump very often, poles are a huge way to introduce variety into your schooling,” says Donworth.

She regularly sets up different pole exercises in the ring year-round and finds new creative ways to use the smaller space of the indoor arena in the winter to keep training going, especially in colder weather when hacking and hill work aren’t an option. When Donworth sets up an exercise, she tries to leave it up for others at the barn to benefit from.

“You can tailor the exercises to whatever level your horse needs very easily, depending on his level of collection or how quickly he can do transitions or how much he can lift his hocks,” she says. “You can easily lay out a pole exercise, and with tiny alterations, work several horses at different levels without needing to set the whole thing up differently again.”

For Doolin, Donworth has found that the main benefit has been that poles keep him thinking.

“It’s helped sharpen up his feet,” she says. “It sharpened his reflexes, and he has to think for himself about where he puts his feet.”

In addition to the mental benefits, Donworth has also seen physical perks.

“It’s good from a physiological standpoint,” she says. “It keeps their hocks and back moving in a way that plain flatwork might not. It strengthens their bodies and can increase range of motion without putting extra pressure on their joints.

“Even walking over small, raised poles gets them to lift their hocks. If a horse has hock problems or arthritis in his hocks, just even walking over poles can loosen, flex, and extend his hocks. It’s like us stretching as part of our warmup.”

Ground Pole Set Up

How to Set Up Distances

• Walking poles: Set 2.5 feet apart for most horses.
• Trot poles: Set around 4 to 4.5 feet apart. Smaller-strided horses may need closer-set poles, while horses with a longer stride may need poles a little farther apart. Adjusting the distance between the poles can help your horse learn to collect or lengthen his stride. Try to avoid having only two trot poles in a row; your horse might think he is supposed to jump both in one go.
• Canter poles: Set around 9 to 11 feet. Like trot poles, the length of your horse’s stride can influence your placement.

Simple Eight-Pole Set Up

Place four trot poles and four canter poles on either end of a circle. Begin by trotting the whole loop.

Then ask your horse to canter through the canter poles and come back to a trot before the trot poles, and then canter again before the canter poles. See how accurate you can get your transitions.

Once your horse gets comfortable, try raising some of the trot poles to add difficulty.

Benefits of a Single Pole

Whether you jump or not, finding a distance to a single pole will help you learn your horse’s canter stride length and increase his adjustability. Sometimes it feels easier to find a distance to a larger jump, so breaking it back down to a single pole makes you check in on the details.

For greener horses, trotting a single pole helps build confidence and get them trusting their footwork.

Key Takeaway

Integrating ground poles into your horse’s training program can increase strength and flexibility, add variety, and sharpen response time. A useful tool for riders and trainers at level, pole work is worth adding to your routine.

This article about using ground poles in training appeared in the November/December 2023 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

The post Using Ground Poles in Your Horse’s Training appeared first on Horse Illustrated Magazine.