Relief Coaching.

Working on Accuracy

I was asked to cover at an RDA group the other day, it was with some riders that I hadn't taught for a long time and there was also some new riders in the sessions.

As I wasn't sure quite what they had been working on, I decided to work on accuracy using poles as this always seems to go down well and is stimulating for both riders and helpers.

I set the arena out  using 8 poles, 4 poles were set on a large circle and 4 poles were set on a small circle.

I also used trays on poles with items on, half way between the poles.

                          

    First I got the riders to walk around and over the poles on the large circle, the poles that I used had  a coloured centre section so I asked that the riders rode their horses over this and this helped them with being accurate over the poles, to look forward and plan where they wanted to go.
   Once happy with this, I asked that they rode over the middle of the poles on the smaller circle.
   Then to make it a bit more challenging for the riders I  asked them to ride first over a pole on the outer  circle, then on to a pole on the inner circle, then on to an outer pole.
   The exercise was repeated on the other rein.


       I then introduced the poles with trays that had items on. The riders had to walk over the poles and then ask their horses to stop beside the pole, as we were working on accuracy the horse had to stop so the rider's leg was right beside the pole, the rider then chose an item, then proceeded to walk over the next pole and place the object on the next tray.
       We started by walking over  the large circle of poles and then went on to walking over the small circle of poles.
       The riders were then told they had to walk over a set number of poles before putting the item on a tray.
        I also allowed the riders to chose whether they walked over the small circle of poles or the large circle of poles.
       The exercise was repeated on the other rein.


At the end of the sessions all the riders said they had thoroughly enjoyed their riding and had found these exercises quite challenging in various ways. Next session I shall carry on using a similar layout, to stimulate the riders, encourage more stretching and balance keeping with the idea of accuracy.