Cob Jockey

I have not been super great about doing Cavaletti Sundays, but I did it this week!  I pulled out Jimmy Wofford's "Gymnastics: Systematic Training for Jumping Horses" and did Exercise 1, which is a trot pole exercise.

Yes it involves 16 poles and PRECISE measuring (says Jimmy) and it took forevvvvvvvvvver to set up...which is why we do cavaletti on Sundays ha

The poles are set up in the arena the way they are laid out on the page.  "A" is set to working trot length, "B" is variable, "C" is extended trot and "D" is collected trot.  Jimmy has you go back and forth over A, then over the working trot distance in B, then spiral in and out over B, then do C, then do D, and finally you string them together.

On Sundays we wear white (just kidding, I just wanted to play with liners)

Jimmy advocates getting the horse to the poles and then letting them figure out the exercises without micromanaging, but he's developing an eventer and I'm developing a Dressage horse, so for the most part I focused consciously on asking for what was in front of us - the way I saw it, the poles would help reinforce my not-so-expert aids for each gait.

Connor really enjoyed himself and quickly figured out what was going on.  He had the easiest time with the collected poles, followed by the extended poles and the "B" poles.  The working poles he had the hardest time with, but, I mean, the point of the exercise isn't to do it all perfectly, and he did get better as we went along.






This exercise rode so well, I'd love to say I'll work through the rest of the Wofford book, but it's unfortunately very reliant on mid-ride jump height changes and I'm usually riding alone, so we'll see.