Make the most of your ride with cavaletti.II

A great way to continue legging up a horse coming back from winter break while continuing to improve the technical skills is to use cavaletti exercises. Once my horses are comfortable with the basic version of this exercise as I described in March I like to add small jumps in to work on what I refer to as "flatwork over fences". The exercise in this photo is fairly straightforward and works a lot on maintaining a balanced medium canter while coming through short approaches and changes of direction. Something we can never practice enough! 

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Set up: Refer to the March post for distances relating to the 3 bounce cavaletti sets.  The two brown verticals on the left are set 33 feet apart and are equal distance between the cavaletti sets. The vertical on the right does not have to be an exact distance but in this case seems to be 15 meters from the center cavaletti set. When I say small jumps I truly mean small jumps and would keep these verticals around 2 feet at the start for most horses...just high enough that you produce a "jump" to the canter stride but not so much that the rider can't remain around the horse through the exercise.
Tips: If I have trouble staying around the horse doing these exercises I lengthen my stirrups a few holes from my normal show jumping length. Repeat an exercise until you can reproduce the same feel consistently.  That may mean needing to use several rides to achieve this as once the horse becomes tired this type of work will become too challenging to do correctly. Always be aware of where you are looking and when...if you keep overshooting a turn focus more on where you want the horse to travel not just on the point you are trying to get to.
How to: 

1. Canter one outside cavaletti set directly to the single vertical and continue to the other outside cavaletti set.  Count the number of strides you get both before and after the jump as it relates to the bounce cavaletti.  The goal is to adjust your curve to create the same number of strides rather than changing the canter.  Work towards consistency staying on one lead at a time. Most horses find one direction easier than another so use this to show you how this difference effects the horses' success.
2. Building on the first exercise you can work on adding or subtracting strides before and/or after the small jump.  There is quite a bit of variety to work with so make sure you know what you want to achieve so that it does not become an exercise in reacting and make changes gradually so as not to lose the overall quality to the canter.
3. For more turning challenges incorporate the 33' verticals with the bounce cavaletti.  There are so many options here.  First you can ride the 33' distance in either 2 or 3 strides and you can turn to the middle bounce cavaletti and continue back to the 33' distance.  Or you can add one or both of the additional bounce cavaletti to make the turns come up much more quickly and to have to produce as S-curve to a straight line back to an S-curve.  
   If I have a horse that has difficulty landing and turning I would keep the canter a little more compact and do the 3 strides then turn to the middle cavaletti, add in the next cavaletti, then continue to the single vertical and repeat by going to the 33' line the opposite direction.  Hopefully that makes sense! Map out your options before you begin so you make the most of it...