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Improve the quality of your horse’s paces using just three poles

Martha Terry Martha Terry

    • While a horse’s paces are largely down to natural talent, there’s plenty you can work on to improve their quality, scope and cadence. Paces will typically improve as your horse strengthens and you can use poles on the ground to help them develop.

    This polework exercise uses just three poles, but by putting them on a fan, you can vary the line and therefore the adjustability of your horse. This works on the ability to collect, lift and lengthen, while staying in a rhythm to negotiation the poles.

    Aims

    • Improve your horse’s paces
    • Encourage a forward, balanced rhythm
    • Stop your horse falling in round the corner

    The setup

    Setup: place three poles in a fan anywhere in the arena, as long as you can ride a straight line towards the fan and away at a right angle. Ideally you will use matching poles so that you can visually ensure you stay on the same curved line.

    To ride the exercise in trot, set the poles at around 1.25–1.50m apart (approx 4.5 to 5 toe-to-heel steps for most adults)at the centre point, making a wedge shape.

    To ride the exercise in canter, set the poles at around 3–3.5m apart (approx three adult walk steps) at the centre point.

    Ponies will need shorter distances (or to take a tighter inside line).

    Diagram showing horse training exercise with fan poles

    How to do this exercise

    1. Once warmed up, pick up an active trot and ride over the fan crossing the centre of the poles making a smooth curve around the corner.
    2. Keep the rhythm and ride over the inner line, again with a smooth (albeit tighter) curve. This is to shorten the stride and encourage your horse to use his hocks.
    3. Then try the outer line, encouraging your horse to take a longer step, while keeping the rhythm. He cannot simply go faster, as the poles will guide his stride length.
    4. The inner and outer lines enable you to practise lengthening and shortening the stride, using the poles as an aid to help the horse to stay engaged as he has to lift his shoulder and use his hocks.
    5. Once your horse is working well over the fan in trot on both reins, widen the distance between the fanned poles for canter.
    6. Repeat the exercise in canter, working on inner and outer lines and always maintaining a smooth curve.
    7. If your horse is confident with this exercise, you can then raise the middle pole into a small fence.

    Tips and troubleshooting

    1. Falling in or escaping through the shoulder

    Make sure you are following the line through the poles, looking forward around the bend and keeping the contact from inside leg to outside hand. Identically marked poles can help you stay on the same curved line throughout the fan.

    2. Shorten and lengthen

    This is a great exercise to help your horse’s medium or extended trot. Ride the fan on the inner line to encourage a correct collected trot, giving your horse more lift. Then take that energy and put it into a medium trot across the diagonal or down the long side.

    3. Simplify the setup

    If you have six poles, you can set up two fans – one at trot and the other at canter distance so that you don’t have to get off and reset the poles.

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    Martha Terry
    Martha Terry

    H&H features editor
    Martha is an experienced journalist who is mad-keen on horses and dogs. Her reporting CV includes the Paris Olympics, European championships, Aachen World Equestrian Festival and World Cup finals. After growing up with assorted liver and white springer spaniels, she enjoyed 14 years with two rescue dogs. Now, her constant companion is Fidget, an extremely energetic and habitually muddy black and white springer. Martha has written on topics as diverse as a top horse’s clone to the best GPS trackers for dogs, as well as equestrian and rural matters for Country Life, The Field, The Times, The Spectator and The Telegraph alongside Horse & Hound.
    Martha Terry

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