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Hey, so I'm training my QH mare to do barrels, and I was wondering if anyone had any good exercises/drills or just tips on general, and thanks in advance for all that help! |
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Trivia Team |
Put in that flatwork! Avoid drilling her on the barrels- if you do the same pattern too much, she'll start to anticipate them. Do the flatwork, get her moving off your seat and legs. Get a good rollback on her, and then make it even better. Lots of transitions- walk to halt to canter to halt to trot to walk to canter, etc., will get her sitting on her hind end, which is where the power comes from around barrels and on the stretch. On the barrels, do practices where they're super close together, and practices where they're very far apart. Every arena you compete at will have different sizes. If you only school the same size pattern at home, she'll get thrown off when you're competing somewhere different. And ride on different terrain! Do the trail rides and keep her brain fresh, but it also gets her moving and used to more than one footing type which is great for their stability and also for their surefootedness in arenas with different footing! |
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I agree with everything FirstLight said, but once you have a solid start on her and want to start on barrels do a lot of slow work before you add in speed |
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Make sure you have a solid start and honestly work through the pattern at a slower speed. Work on how close she gets to the barrel and taking the shortest path to the next one. One drill that really helped my gelding and I was a drill of doing three big circles at a walk then a trot then a canter around the barrel and then three small circles around the barrel the same way. It helps you and the horse. Also I hardly ever breezed the pattern, maybe just two days or so before the events I would go to, everything else was done at a trot or canter. Also lots of conditioning! That will save you, you want your horse to be in the best shape you can get them into! |
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