Spirals are Good for the Soul

I thought I'd share my absolute favorite exercise to do. It's a rather simple one, and probably already a staple if you do much dressage, especially for initial work with collected gaits.

This is great for doing as a warm-up for stiff horses, too, which is when I started using it a lot. You start out in a 20-meter circle at A in either direction. Ride it until the horse is supple and responsive, then spiral down into a 15m circle, keeping the "fixed" point at A. After the 15m gets good, spiral down into a 12m (if your horses needs the extra graduation), then into the 10m. For the initial down-spiral, don't worry about how many circles you do at each level. Concentrate on the horse being supple and round, moving forward well with consistent rhythm and impulsion. Only later on after they've done the cycle twice or so should you think about trying to run through the spirals. Anyway, now that you're comfortable with the 10m, go ahead and spiral back out through the 12m, 15m, and 20m, again focusing as you need to in order to maintain consistency.

Now, on the 20m, go ahead and change rein at X, starting out with the 20m on the other side. Just like before, spiral down to the 10m, and back out to 20m when you can change rein. I like to do three whole cycles at both the trot and the canter--it tends to be just enough that Toler's very consistent by the third cycle, but not too much that he gets cranky with boredom. I'd stick to simple changes at the canter, unless your horse is quite sufficient with correct flying changes (Toler definitely is not).

This exercise works wonders for Toler when I'm encouraging him to maintain his impulsion while slowly collecting his stride. Toler tends to have the common problem of losing momentum and impulsion at the collected trot and canter. He still associates collected:slow and extended:fast, though he's getting a LOT better. Thanks to spirals! The other day I was even able to get him to extend on the rail without moving faster. He was a bit above the bit, but he got lots of praise for not acting like a Trotter.

I also do tons of spiral work when I lunge him on-line, especially when I'm using the balance system (the topic of a forth-coming post).

Simple and consistent wins out every time. Swear by it.