Friday riding sessions.

My third week of taking the Friday riding sessions at the East Devon RDA group I wanted to carry on with the same theme as the last couple of weeks using poles on the ground, I used a similar idea as I had done last week by putting poles on a  20m circle, this time I used both ends of the school so two riders could use one end and another two riders the other end.
I also used two uprights and some cones, as shown on the layout plan.

The helpers on the Friday sessions are not the same ones as that come on a Thursday so I was able to see if these helpers found my layout plan useful to use. They were impressed with it and all agreed it made setting up a lot quicker as everyone knew what was needed and where it was to go in the school.

I had bean bags and other items on the trays of the uprights.

The cones were set up down one side, these were used to warm up both the riders and horses.
We did some of the exercises over the poles that we had done over the last couple of weeks.

One of the exercises was to walk over the poles one way doing a whole circle,then walk to the upright and then stop collect an item off the tray and walk across the middle of the school to the other upright and stop,place the item on this tray and then when reaching the track turn and go the other way and over this circle of poles.
 For the last session where the riders are needing more of a challenge I got them to ride a small circle around each of the poles and then a circle around the outside of all the poles.

All the riders enjoyed their riding sessions and found these exercises quite challenging.

Some of the riders managed to ride off the lead rein towards the end of their session, which gave them a great sense of achievement.

The helpers enjoyed the sessions as they found it better than just walking around the outside track in the school.