Making adjustments to grid exercises gradually can help maintain a horse's confidence while it works towards a more advanced skill. Find out how to properly adjust rails for grid exercises with advice from an experienced trainer in this video on riding and jumping horses.
Grid exercise is also called gymnastic. A great training tool for both horses and riders. For the horses it is really going to work on their straightness, and strength, their balance, controlling their body on the take off, and the landing, part of the jumps, and also getting a nice even arc in the air. From a riders perspective we are able to control some variables that we can't always control when jumping. We are going to be able to do this repetitively, and with a grid like this we have a trot rail in front of the first jump we can pretty much assure ourselves a good distance. So from a riders perspective we can work on things like our balance, our focus, and a feel of our horses mouth, a feel of our horses body in the air. So the grid exercise works both for the horse very well, and the rider. What we have set up here is a trot in one stride. We have about eight feet from a trot rail to a vertical, about seventeen feet to a small oxer, about twenty-eight feet to a small another oxer, and then twenty feet to a vertical. This is a good starter exercise for a beginning horse or beginning riders. From a riders perspective when you are approaching a grid you want to do as much as you have to to make sure your horse comfortably gets to the other side of the jump, but also do as little as you have to so you horse can learn on his own to study the jump, and learn when he needs to balance himself or when he needs to move up to make sure he gets up to the other side in a safe clean manner. We just finished working on a very introductory grid where we had a trot rail leading to a cantor out one stride, two stride, and finish with a cantor one stride. So we have taken away the trot rail, we have moved out the A element of the exercise so there is a little more room, and we are now going to have the horses cantor in off of both leads so they can start off the right in cantor in this exercise, they can also reverse, and then come back to the exercise the other direction. It is a little more of an advance exercise, we also raise the jumps a few inches. Now what we are going to do is we are going to add a couple of bounce elements to that grid we have been working on. This was a two stride portion in the middle here, and what we have done is we have put two bounces in the middle. This is really going to work the horses hind end, get him jumping very snappy, and quick, and it will really help them jump through this line in a nice even rhythm. And this is a more advanced grid for horses and riders that have the experience working through different types of combinations. I really like to build up to this point in a work out with a horse. You want to start with a more simple exercise such as we did earlier, which would be a trot in, and possibly a two stride element here, and then as the horse gets confident with that you can add different elements. Always want to make sure your horse is confidence stays up. This is a fairly tricky exercise, but because we have worked up to it the horse is now confident, and should accept it, and excel at it.
