Twenty-Meter Pole Exercises

The 20-meter pole exercise is a great way to practice pace, distance and adjustments in preparation for jumping. Learn the finer points of this basic exercise, that can be made more advanced, with helpful tips from an experienced Grand Prix rider in this video on horse exercises.

In this segment, I'm going to do my favorite exercise and do twenty meter poles. And the reason that's great is, you can practice it anywhere, anytime, it's the best exercise for your eye, but there's a special way that I do it. The idea of the exercise is to put the pole in the middle of the horse's stride every time he jumps. Over the pole, you have to make sure that the pole is in the middle of your stride, so when I, it's going to be either a five or a six. And when you're more advanced, you can do four, five or six. And the beauty of it is, it makes your eye work to the absolute, tiny little details, to perfect your distance. When the jump is a real jump, their eye level is up, so they have something to gage against. A pole on the ground, they have nothing to back them off. So if you're too deep, it'll be evident, if you're too long, it'll be evident. So this is an exercise you can do anywhere, at anytime and it perfects your eye, and I practice this all the time. So I'm going to go ahead and show you guys a little bit of how it works and here we go. So the first time I'm going to do six, this is the basic time to start, it's a nice way, nice and relaxing. And the idea is to make sure they all stay on the same lead. So if I come on the right lead, I'd expect them to stay on the right lead, then you know he's on your leg. So now I'm going to stop and come back on the left lead. O.k., here we go, six strides off the left lead, so again, this is the basic. Very good, so that's the, that's the basic and then as you, the idea is to make sure, if I'm going to do five strides, that you can't tell. I don't do any of my adjustments inside the line. All of my adjustments will be done in my corner, so if I'm going to do five. There he is, the whole idea of this exercise is, so nothing happens in the middle of the line, all of my work is done in my corners.