Train Your Horse with Patterns and Figures

Do you ever find yourself riding around and around without any clear purpose? You’re just not sure how to get your horse listening and on the aids? Well, don’t fret, because I have a solution for you: ride patterns and figures!

Why ride patterns and figures? Patterns give you a plan and a purpose and help to get your horse supple and on the aids. In this week’s video, I will be sharing my top tips for riding patterns and figures and showing you a few of my all-time favorite patterns and figures from my new FREE Patterns and Figures PDF.

Before we get into the tips, make sure that you check out my Free Patterns and Figures PDF, where I show you my five favorite patterns and figures to help you get your horse relaxed, listening, and on the aids. Download your Free PDF here.

Okay, now back to my three top tips for riding your patterns and figures:

· Put out Markers – The key to riding effective patterns and figures is to ride them accurately. Putting out cones or some kind of marker for the touch points of your patterns is a great way to help guide you as you’re riding.

· Focus on Rhythm and Tempo – As you’re riding, make sure that your horse maintains a consistent rhythm and tempo. You don’t want them slowing down or speeding up unless you ask them to. Counting is a great way to make sure that the rhythm and tempo are staying consistent!

· Three is the Magic Number – You want to ride each exercise enough that it is effective, but you don’t want to drill. I like riding any exercise about three times before I change direction or move on to another exercise. This gives me enough time to get used to the pattern, and figure out where my horse needs support.

Watch the video where I show you a few of my favorite patterns and figures, like the Shallow Loop Serpentine, The Snowman, The Leg-Yield Staircase, and more! Make sure that you download my FREE Patterns and Figures PDF mini-course to learn five easy patterns and figures to help you get your horse relaxed, on your aids, and help you move up the levels!

I hope these tips and new exercises help you and your horse!

Happy Riding!

Amelia

ABOUT YOUR INSTRUCTOR

Hey there.
I'm Amelia Newcomb

At Amelia Newcomb Dressage, I work to develop a trusting and confident relationship between horse and rider. I draw on theories from both natural horsemanship and classical dressage, creating a holistic training approach that adapts to the unique needs of each horse and rider.

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Patterns and Figures Workshop

Dressage is full of figures, patterns, and exercises that we use to train our horses, improve suppleness, and as tools to help them learn what we are asking of them. When you ride figures accurately, your horse becomes on the aids and becomes more supple, connected, and responsive. In this workshop, you will learn about some of my favorite figures and how to use them to help your horse.

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I want to thank Amelia from the bottom of my heart for creating this group and learning module for us. I've followed your suggestions religiously even when it felt like we were hitting a wall at times. Finally, it all came through, all at once! I never thought I'd get a connection and have such light hands in the left lead canter, and yesterday we pulled off a 7 in left canter and an 8.5 in right canter in our WDAA Basic 1 test, with a total score of 67.3!

Holy Moly. I just learned that I earned 1st place at Training 1 with 5 entries in the class in a virtual show. I received a 65.00. Wow. This is starting to work. Thank you Amelia. Thank you supportive new friends. I encourage you all to try virtual shows. I have tried Greystone, Lower Puget Sound and Oregon. Very helpful for building confidence. I really support this idea. It works like this: you ride at home, send in your video, and then you receive your test with judge comments and your ribbon in the mail. See you all in Strides!!

We see and feel the difference!! Thank you Amelia for this difficult but very helpful program. Our #1 issue was giraffe head in transitions. Downward as well as up. Don't look at my position, I was giving everything to the aids for him to maintain roundness in the trans. Now it will be time to work on our position more!

I can't stop making progress, thanks to this awesome program. Today my horse and I could do the counter canter on both hands on the first attempt without our trainer.. Thank you so much for explaining my missing parts! I have to wait until tomorrow, 8 hours of time difference, to see who is the lucky one, but I think we are all lucky to join this incredible program!!

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Train Your Horse with Patterns and Figures

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