Lesley Brodbeck is a BHS and NCAS accredited coach, and an Australian 3DE representative. At the Queensland Dressage Festival she demonstrated a series of simple exercises using poles to help the dressage horse. Her ‘guinea pig’ was Liz Owens and her huge, five-year-old Diamond Hit gelding, Diamond Jubilee.
Lesley warns the spectators at Queensland’s Dressage Festival – “pole work is deceiving, it looks easy but in fact it is quite demanding. Diamond Jubilee is built uphill, and this first exercise is to encourage longitudinal stretch, the poles help him focus down and out.”
Exercise one – Poles are placed at R and P with tramlines at B.
Objective: gentle introduction/warm up for greener horses, encouraging stretch, and focus. Tramlines can be used to measure accuracy in transitions, add a small circle at each pole, halts can be made inside tramlines also. Ride lengthening and shortening in tramlines for stride adjustability.
“When I am working over poles, I encourage the riders not to do too much to help the horse, we want to encourage the horse to make mistakes if necessary, and switch on.
“With the tram lines, the parallel poles, we are working on stretching, it is important to keep the tempo slow and let the horse focus on the rail and process the exercise…”
