Tackle common lungeing problems

Lungeing can bring so many benefits to your horse’s way of going and is invaluable in helping you achieve an effective schooling session when you’re short on time or unable to ride.

Work the warm-up

Whatever exercises you plan to focus on in your lungeing session, a good warm-up is a priority. Consider the best way to begin for your individual horse. This might be free lungeing to start with or attaching the training aids very loosely – trial and error is needed here to find the most effective way to encourage your horse to move his body forward in a positive but calm way while he limbers up.

The horse who: rushes

Horses who tend to rush and find it difficult to take their time on the lunge do so for a multitude of reasons – such as stiffness, greenness or sharpness.

Patience is key with a rushing horse, and transitions are your very best friend. It sounds obvious, but your biggest aim should be to slow the whole thing down. To get started…

1. First, you need to get him listening to you. Work on transitions between walk, trot and halt, always keeping yourself calm but firm in what you’re asking. You can incorporate canter transitions within this work, too.
2. If you ask for a downward transition and he doesn’t listen, bring him onto a smaller circle for a couple of rotations. This is fine to do, provided you don’t keep him on a tight turn all the time, and he’ll be more inclined to slow down without an argument.
3. Keep your aids to go forward subtle and quiet and, if he starts to rush, ask him to walk again, taking your time to allow him to relax before you ask for trot or canter once more.
4. Once your horse has the hang of a downward transition, you can easily teach him to half-halt by asking him to close his stride down and then encourage him forward again before making another downward transition.

Pick up a copy of April Horse&Rider magazine, on sale 24 March 2022, to find out how to correct falling in, the lazy horse and contact issues.