What are some good activities that will better your riding skills?

Question

I work with several kids and teach them to become better riders.. some of my drills are getting old and I would like to mix things up.. I have cones and tires and we do a lot of figure 8, weaving, practicing squares, and turning circles.. They all love barrel racing and pole bending so we do that also.. Any suggestions on some new, fun things? thanks!

Answer 1

I do a lot of gymkhana and I have found that indiana flags is fun to do. If you do not know it, you have your normal barrel pattern and set up 2 buckets on the barrels closest to the entrance. You then procede to put a flag in one bucket. After have one student pick up the flag, from the outside of the barrel, run around the far barrel and place it into the bucket on the opposite barrel. It's a lot of fun and we do it for a timed event on Equestrian. Thats how I first came to love Gymkhana.

There's also two man relay. You make a box on the ground out of chalk that is big enough to hold two horses length wise. You have one rider stand their horse in the box and the other has to run (choose gait) down to the other rider and hand off a baton or piece of hose. Thats a lot of fun too.

Hope this helps

Danielle

Answer 2

What you can do to make the kids have more fun is if they each have single lessons, line up the lessons to be at the same time. It adds alot more fun and what happens when kids get together is they try harder, each trying to be superior to the other but they also have more fun. You can play follow the leader, do the same patterns that you are doing and see which can do faster, stuff like that where you place them against eachother but in a way friendly, fun way will improve things. Also have them practice there two points, touching the horses ears, the top of the horses tail, touching toes, kids find stuff like that fun.