Productivity Inside

I've been struggling a bit during the week (when we're stuck inside) to do productive work. I have to dodge a lot of craziness in there and even when I have the arena to myself, the arena is only a little wider than a dressage court, and about the length of a short dressage court. On a baby horse with a ridiculous stride length, it's really hard to do much more than ride around in large circles waiting for daylight savings time to kick back in and hoping that it doesn't rain (and then feeling like a terrible person for thinking that because we REALLY need rain).

Wide open spaces!

So I started trying to come up with some exercises to do in a small space. Here is a list of the ones I came up with, PLEASE add to this if you have anything.


Transitions
Obviously we can and should do transitions. TC needs to be more responsive to my leg and seat in general. We also need to work on our halt transitions for centerlines. So I'll be employing several of my own walk-trot transition exercises, as well as working on canter-trot-canter, which is a prerequisit to doing simple changes through the trot. I want to get the trot to canter itself better too, he's slowly learning to stay on the bit during them but they could use extra attention.

Glad he finally let me pull that damn mane

Spiraling in and out
This is great for us because TC isn't the world's most supple creature. It also really helps the connection, especially in a small space when he wants to suck back or get too low. Or both.
Make it harder: leg yield out instead of just spiraling
TC can do this, I like to do both to test the difference. Can I distinguish between the two? Or does the spiral out feel leg yield-y and does the leg yield feel like he's just falling out?

Smaller figures
TC needs to learn how to ride on smaller figures. He's been in dressage training for nearly a year now, and he's a lot stronger. I'm no longer as worried about the stress on his joints at the trot, so it's time to start adding in those ten meter circles. The smaller arena is good for him to learn to canter on smaller figures for real. Twenty meter circles are still really hard for him, so I've been doing fifteen meter half circles sometimes. My goal coming out of this winter is to gain full access to the canter- laterally (not lateral work, just controlling the bend) and longitudinally- so that I can really turn next year into canter boot camp. Realistically, the canter will always hold him back from moving up, so I want to catch it up to the trot as best I can.
Make it harder: Haunches and shoulder in on small figures is a great suppling exercise.
TC isn't quite ready for that yet, but I use a lot of this on small circles to prep for pirouettes.

Such a good baby

Riding on a square
I need to do more of this. It's really good at TC's stage even just to get there to be more definition between corners and circles in tests. It tests whether I have him on the outside rein. It tests the straightness. It's just awesome in general.
Make it harder: quarter walk or quarter canter pirouettes
We aren't quite ready for this, but I do a LOT of work on a square with horses learning walk and canter pirouettes. It helps to isolate the in and the out of the pirouettes, which are often times the hardest parts.

Lateral work
There's not much room for a lot of lateral work at the trot, because we cover too much ground and I want to keep that tendency in him, but we can really get our walk lateral work on. I need to revisit turns on the forehand this winter, especially the responsiveness to my aid in them. I also want to do some leg yield zig zags. And we'll continue getting comfortable with shoulder-in and haunches-in. Unfortunately again TC isn't very laterally supple, so the lateral work is something I'm going to have to do every single day. But because he isn't supple, lateral work feels like a chore so I avoid it. Bad.

Miss trail riding

In hand work
I want to start getting TC used to more dressage focused in hand work. I think when the arena gets too crowded or he is too up, we'll be doing some in hand work in the round pen. The first thing I want to teach him is the square halt like a trick. I'm really bad about teaching that in my horses. Rico almost never halted square until we got to the FEI levels. And even then it was questionable. So I think an easy thing for us to work on to introduce working in hand would be a square halt.

Along the same lines, we'll be starting the very beginning of piaffe training. Mostly I just want him to be used to Alfredo's techniques before we see him for the first time probably a year from now depending on how strong he is. The beginning is easy on his legs, it's mostly just me touching his hind legs with a whip and him having to pick up just that hind foot. Given how uncoordinated the horse seems to be with his legs, that is going to take a good year.

The passage training may not be started for a while, especially with a horse who doesn't need more incentive to paw. To start Rico, I taught him the beginnings of Spanish walk. In my client's Alfredo clinic on Tuesday, Alfredo actually taught me how to officially put passage on a horse, so I'm excited to practice some more on her horse and then when TC is ready, I will have had a lot of practice.

I even miss this trail that always creeped him out

And now to bookmark my own post on my phone so that when I get into the covered arena and longingly stare out at the outdoor arena, I can actually get some work done. PLEASE give me more exercises if you have them for working in a small space.