1. ‘The Seven Skills’ ‘The Seven Skills’ comprise of the following:
I. Forward pick up offside
II. Backwards pickup offside
III. 10 yard throw offside
IV. Bounce
V. Forward pick up stick side
VI. Backwards pickup stick side
VII. 10 metre throw stick side
This exercise should be done in a 10-15 metre circle with the pace dependant on your ability. It is important that you maintain the circle at all times as this helps you not only gain better control over where you are putting the ball but it is also easier to pick the ball up when on a circle. If you miss the ball you should maintain your progress on the circle and collect the ball on the next go round. By doing this rather than pulling your horse round you are training your horse to put you onto the ball and maintaining a nice balanced platform from which to collect the ball.
You should complete each exercise one after the other completing the offside pickups on a left hand circle (right hand circle if you are left handed) and the stickside pickups and bounces on a right hand circle (left hand if you are left handed). Once you have mastered these 7 skills you should start to train yourself to do them all at pace accelerating on to the ball checking your horse and then accelerating on to the ball once more. When doing the exercise at pace you should increase the size of the circle to 20 metres.
2. Developing Body Position in the Turn
When asking a horse to turn a common mistake people make is that they hold their racquet in the horses face and they fail to open up there body into the turn. A good exercise you can use to prevent this and improve your horses turn is when riding your horse practice trying to change the direction you are going in by using only your body position as an aid. To do this you should look the way you want to go opening up your shoulders whilst keeping your eyes above shoulder level. This will require patience and repetition and will not happen immediately. In order to help you can hold out your opposite hand to the direction you wish to go in.
Once you have practiced this exercise a few times you can introduce a racquet. The body position is the same but you are now carrying a racquet and this in itself can be used as an aid to help you improve your horses turns. If you are turning to right the right you should move your racquet right back towards the horse’s tail and therefore out of their eyeline as they don’t like to turn in to the raquet. When asking the horse to go to the left you should hold the racquet in the horse’s eye line as this acts an aid by which to encourage the horse to move away.
The important thing to take from this exercise is too look the way you want to go and open up your shoulders in to the turn.