💎The Diamond 💎

Using five poles (one red, two blue, two green in the illustration) the poles can be on the ground, or to make it more challenging you can raise the red pole and the ends of the blue and green poles nearest the red pole.

Three exercises different exercises today, focusing on bend and straightness.

Orange - going from one point of the diamond to the other, this exercise focuses on straightness. Using each point to aim towards, simply trot in a straight line over them. This works on the balance whilst developing the hind quarter muscles.

Brown - circles. Starting by riding a 20m circle over the point of the diamond, this encourages correct bend whilst maintaining balance (be careful to not allow the horse to fall in!) and raising awareness of prioperception. Once you’re both used to this exercise and the horse is riding over it well, you can reduce the size of the circle to 15m or even 10m to make it more challenging and help with suppleness, flexion and bend.

Purple/pink - across the diagonal. This again focuses on balance and straightness whilst working on the hindquarter and core abdominal muscles. The angles of the blue/green poles will keep the horse interested and will encourage lowering and stretching of the neck and back.

If you do any of these exercises, please make sure to carry out each exercise equally on each rein!