Keep it simple with Tom McEwen

When it comes to training, often the more simple things are most effective – why complicate things if you don’t need to?

These warm-up and gridwork exercises can be adapted to suit any horse, so build the fences as small as you like. The benefits come from the exercises themselves rather than how high you raise the bar.

As well as being suitable for all levels, these exercises are great fun and will get your horse thinking and using his body to perform at his best.

Crack the cross-pole

A great way to warm-up, cross-poles help to keep your horse straight and encourage him to pick up his feet when he’s jumping.

1. Put up a high-sided cross-pole somewhere in the middle of your arena with a placing pole immediately in front of it and another set at a trot distance (about 1.2m) on the approach to the fence.
2. Ride over the cross-pole in an active trot and repeat a few times, approaching the fence equally from both directions.
3. If all goes to plan, set the placing pole to a canter distance (roughly 6.5m) away from the fence and ride through the same exercise again, approaching in canter.

Did you know?

Trotting into fences is a great way to bring things back to basics, so you can check in on your horse’s straightness, rhythm and balance.

Have a go at Tom’s simple grid and cavaletti exercises in August Horse&Rider – get your copy today!