covid challenge #5

1- Walk your horse for a full 10 minutes on a loose rein.
2- With light contact warm up your horse in a trot and canter, riding circles, figure eights and serpentines. Simple changes.
3- Shorten your reins for full contact and revisit your work with shoulder in from Challenge #1. Just get the feel back and feel like you are getting a little piece of it. Work both directions until you like it.
4- The new exercise will be Haunches in or Travers. In haunches-in, the horse bends its hindquarters slightly to the inside of the arena, away from the arena wall, so that the horse is bent in the direction of movement.
The aids for Haunches in:
The outside rein lies against the neck and allows the bend.
The inside rein maintains the inside shoulder from falling.
The outside leg is back and encourages the horse to bring his outside hind in and under.
The inside leg of the rider stays on the girth and maintains the lateral bending.
The outside rein allows the amount of bending in the horse.
The rider puts more weight on the inside seat bone.
The rider keeps his shoulders parallel to the horse’s shoulders and his hips parallel to the hips of the horse.
I have attached a video for Haunches In. I like her use of the small circle and coming off into the movement. Use this method to practice. Once you feel like you are having some success move onto #4.
4- I like to put the two movements together to prepare my horse canter. Working on a large circle, work in the shoulder in at the trot. Once that is consistent and steady, move into the haunches in. Once that feels good ask for the canter. This really sets the horse up from a nice balanced depart off that outside hind. Work on this a few times each direction until you feel like you are getting consistent good results in the upward transition.
5- Finish your horse with a 3 minute long trot. You want the horse to stretch into the bit. He will still need light contact with this longer rein and most importantly a working hind end.
7- Enjoy a nice walk around the yard, get him out of the ring.