Relief coaching. Second week.

Accuracy

Relief teaching again the following week I wanted to carry on with the same theme of accuracy with the riders.
 So I use the poles in a very similar way to the previous week in that I placed them in a 20m circle using four of the poles and the other 4 poles I placed on a 10m circle inside the larger circle.

This time I placed the uprights with the trays on at the outer ends of the poles on the large circle.

The trays had various items on.

I used this layout in several different ways.

I first got the riders to walk around the outside of the large circle, then after they had done this, I got them to stand next to each pole, making sure that their leg was beside the upright.

Then the riders had to move an item from a tray to, first the next tray, then to a tray that I said.

The riders first walked over the large circle of poles and then over the small circle.

Making sure that the horse that they were riding went over the coloured part of the pole.

 

For some of the riders in  the last session, I brought in the idea of leg yielding using this layout, The riders walked over the centre of the pole, then they asked their horse to move away from the centre of the pole to the outer coloured part of the pole nearer to the outside of the circle by using the leg, they could see how well they got on by where they walked over the pole. 

For the first session riders, when they were walking around the outside of the large circle, I got them to count out how many strides that their horse had made till the next upright, they did this to each upright until they had gone all the way round the circle.

Some where the same and some had different number of strides.

This brought in the idea of rhythm and paces. Riders can be encouraged to ask their horses to make bigger or smaller steps so as to ride each segment with same number of paces.

All these exercises where done on both reins.

Although these riders only walked these exercises, trot could be incorporated by trotting round the outside circle, practising transitions from walk to trot, from 1/4 or 1/2 circle uprights, aiming to show the change of pace as the rider goes by the upright, (accuracy ).

Then progress to trot, walk and halt transitions doing this on both reins.