WHO the exercise is for:

Anyone wishing to practise turning and approaching fences at an angle. This exercise is reasonably advanced and would not be advised for greenies.

HOW to set it up:

Set up 3 simple verticals with the spacing as shown above (measured from teh middle of each fence) this gives us about 8m between each element for 1 stride, please adjust these measurements if your horse has different striding.

WHAT to do:

Use any of the 3 elements in any order to practise turning and sharp or blind approaches. The blue tracks illustrate some simple approaches. Try not to let your horse swing out on the turns (lots of outside leg, used just behind the girth to control his hind quarters - you can even use an open inside rein to help greenies get the idea of what you are asking). Advanced combinations can follow the red track to go straight through over all 3 elements.

WHY we do it:

We practise turning to help with our horse's balance and blind approaches (off a sharp turn) to help develop our eye for placing the horse in a good spot to takeoff from. The more difficult part of this exercise (straight through the slide) is practised so that we learn to keep our legs on when heading our horse towards an angle fence. 2 angled fences in a row isn't too hard, but to get through 3 straight takes a lot of direction from the rider (if the rider goes to sleep the horse will just slip out the side). It's useful to be able to do these combinations not only for jumpoff and Take-Your-Own-Line style showjumping, but also for cross country combinations where few fences are faced straight on.

MORE tips:

You can make the fences quite narrow to make this exercise very difficult. If you are doing this I suggest using low jump stands, or fences that don't require a jump stand (just in case you meet the jump wrong and end up jumping the very edge of it). You can also adjust the measurements and spacing between the fence to make the angles more generous or difficult, or to take the stride shorter or longer. Once you are comfortable with the exercise why not try to space the elements differently so that the first is a collected stride, then the second stride is much more forward and on a slightly more generous angle?