Simple change exercises can help maintain a horse's balance and can improve lead changes on the course. Practice simple change exercises with advice from an experienced trainer in this video on riding and jumping horses.
Right now, Hope is riding Coralino, and we're working on the exercise of simple changes. Simple changes are great exercise to incorporate into your flat work. They require you to get your horse up off of the forehand, to be balanced and light on both sides of their body. They also very much are a good training tool when you're trying to teach a horse to do lead changes or just get your horse to lead change better. It's very important when you're doing a simple change that you take your time. You want to do it in a straight line, and you want to get it done in an efficient manner, but at the same time each part of the exercise should be done well, the downward transition and the upper transition. So, after you do your downward transition, wait until you have a relaxed horse before you ask for that upper transition again. And here, our rider has a nice balanced canter. She's looking for a nice straight line that gives her enough room to do the whole exercise. Nice downward transition to the sitting trot. She changes the shape of her horse's body, and asks for the upper transition. That was very well done. She was patient, the horse was relaxed and gave her a nice change. Here our horse has a nice balanced, collected canter again, as we're going to do the simple change through the walk this time. We're just going to get a nice straight line again, finish her turn before she asks for the walk. She's going to finish the walk. He's now relaxed...and back into the canter. Very nice transition into the walk.
