WHO the exercise is for:

Horses who are stiff and lack bend (either those returning to work after a break, or greenies).

HOW to set it up:

You don’t need to set up anything at all! You can even do this one on the side of a hill (not too steep though!) to incorporate muscle building with bending work.

WHAT to do:

This exercise can be done at walk, trot and canter. Begin on a 20m circle, establish your round circle at an even pace, then use your inside leg to push the horse onto a larger 25 or 30m circle (as illustrated in the red line). It may take more than one ‘lap’ of the circle to move onto the larger circle, don’t rush it. Once you have established the larger circle push your horse back onto the smaller circle with your outside leg (watch that you don’t invert your horses bend to the outside of the circle, we still want him curved like a banana to the inside). Avoid steering the horse onto either circle in a straight line (as illustrated in the grey) as this completely bypasses the point of the exercise.

WHY we do it:

To get the horse to move away from our leg. We want to be able to ‘steer’ the horse with our leg so that we don’t have to tug him around by the reins (we want the horses head as free as possible over the jumps). A horse responsive to leg will also be able to make tighter turns in a jumpoff.

MORE tips:

You can work on smaller circles if your horse is balanced enough. More advanced riders might also like to experiment with asking the horse to move onto a different circle very quickly (moving almost totally sideways) and alternating that with asking for a more drawn-out transition to the other circle, ensuring that the horse is honestly listening and not just ‘learning the exercise’.