WHY POLEWORK?

Polework can be useful for a number of reasons. It can be used:

• To help ponies improve their balance, suppleness, elasticity, and flexibility on the flat

• To encourage your pony to work better through his body.

• To help improve your pony’s coordination and ability to place his legs where he means to!

• To help young ponies as a progression toward jumping

• To help ponies who are struggling with an aspect of their jumping training, e.g. ponies who rush to the fence.

• To help teach ponies to lengthen and collect. When placed close together, the pony has to collect his stride, and when placed further apart, the pony has to lengthen the stride. This encourages the pony to engage his hindquarters and work in a correct frame.

• To work on your jumping while looking after your pony’s joints, as polework has a much lower impact than jumping.

• To help make flatwork more exciting and challenging for more experienced horses.

• To keep your pony fit in a well-rounded schooling programme.

• To teach your pony to figure our distances for themselves. This can really help you out later on!

• To help loosen up the bodies of older horses.

Poles can be done in hand or ridden over in a walk, trot and canter.

Raising poles on cavaletti blocks further aids in the energy of the movement and encourages the pony to activate his hindquarters. NOTE: You should only raise the poles once your pony is easily doing the exercise with poles on the ground.

POLEWORK DISTANCES

To avoid drawing distances on each diagram to try and suit every horse and pony, we’ve put all the distances you might need here.

As you can see, there is a bit of variety within each gait, and that is to allow for individual differences between our horses and ponies. You’ll need to play around a little bit to find the optimal distance for you and your steed!

General spacing tips

1. Make your distances a bit longer rather than a bit shorter when you try the exercises for the first time.

2. Check how your pony copes with the distances every time you ride and adjust accordingly.

3. Remember that if you put jumps up in the place of poles, you are likely to need to increase the distances.

HORSE DISTANCES:

Walk poles: 0.8 - 1m

Trot poles: 1.2 - 1.7m

Canter poles: 2.7 - 3.4m

PONY DISTANCES:

Walk poles: 0.7 - 0.9m

Trot poles: 1.1m - 1.4m

Canter poles: 2.3m - 2.8m

Please note that these are just general guidelines, and you must play around yourself until you feel the distances are right.