9 Best Cavalletti Exercises

Horses should spend equal time in all three gaits during training sessions in order to achieve both looseness and strength. Here's how cavalletti routines can help.

Single Pole Exercises

Simple exercises can sometimes be the most effective because riders are apt to practice them more consistently. Single pole exercises offer a convenient way of ensuring you do not miss the calisthenics your horse needs.

Exploring Leg-Yield

Leg-yield offers valuable physiological benefits that improve a novice horse’s balance while also resolving specific impediments to an advanced horse’s quality of movement. It helps tune up a number of shortcomings in how a horse is carrying himself.

What Are Corrective Exercises for Horses?

The more time a horse spends in the correct alignment and balance, the more firmly good habits form. But putting this into practice during our daily training is often not as straightforward as it seems.

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Groundwork: Using Footwork to Change Your Horse’s Neuromuscular Patterns

Using focused and brief groundwork sessions daily, many horses’ postural challenges can be rewired with far less tension and confusion than under saddle. 

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Building Stronger Horses

Balanced muscular development cannot happen without first achieving a body that can stay stable throughout movement. Before a horse can add power to his locomotive muscles, he needs to find joint and limb stability while moving in his basic gaits.

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How to Train on the Trail

If you ride primarily on trails and don’t plan to be in an arena anytime soon, does that mean you can’t give your horse the gymnastic and core exercises that optimize his body and comfort?

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Equine Physiology & Fitness

The horse’s big, fleshy gymnastic muscles that engage as we school him are not the ones where habitual patterns, sometimes called “muscle memories,” are stored. Working these muscles is not the fastest way to instate new patterns and habits. 

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