Gymnastic

The rider is working with his body the body of his horse. Gymnastic means working on the reduction of the natural crookedness of the horse to get it to travel straight and balanced.

Basically any good training is a gmnastic for the horse when you always keep the training scale in mind. The muscles get stimulated and therefore stronger.

The more different kinds of gymnastic we do with a horse the better all different kinds of muscles get stimulated.

Work over cavalettis in walk, trot and canter is for instance a wonderful way to train the horse very effectively. The horse has to pay a lot of attention to the ground and stretches his neck. His back activity increases a lot because the departure off the ground is much more. You improve also the rhythm of all gaits and you keep your horse interested in his work.

Canterwork over cavalettis.

Wrong gmynastic

This horse was trained over years with a hollow back, above or behind the bit and with a lot of influence of the riders hand. This horse was then corrected by forward- downward stretching on the double lunge and over cavalettis for a longer period of time.

Lack of muscles in the hindquarters and in the back. Because of weak hindquarters and sore back it was not possible to ride this horse correctly at the beginning. A lot of work without rider and later on climbing hills and working over cavalettis solved this severe back problem.

Visible severe lack of muscles in that part of the back where normally the saddle is. Sometimes this problem is caused by an illfittig sattle. This horse is overmuscled in the forehand and weak in his hindquarters. Because of a lazy temperament it was hard to get him to work well. Canter work in combination with hillwork, cavalettis and lots of interval training improved him dramatically. But it took some time to get his overall fitness to a level where he was able to work with light aids.