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Sharpen your aids for bending and straightness with this diamond exercise
This is a great exercise, which can be ridden in an arena or field, for young and green horses to help them learn clear aids for straightness and bending
This “diamond” exercise is ideal for training young or green horses that wobble when they are meant to be on a straight line, and fall out or in when they are meant to be bending round your leg.
This flatwork exercise can be done in walk, trot and canter, getting progressively harder as you move up the paces.
Another way to increase the difficulty level is to make the diamond shape smaller, which requires quicker response to the aids to bend and straighten.
Setup: four cones in a diamond shape with enough room to ride around them. This can be in a field or an arena.
Ideally the dimensions should start at approximately 20m x 30m, although more supple and experienced horses can do much smaller.
(Image credit: Future)
How to ride the diamond exercise
First, do the exercise in walk on both reins. Imagine a diamond shape connecting each cone and ride around the diamond on the outside of the cones.
In between cones, concentrate on your horse’s straightness – looking ahead and keeping your body in balance and straight – before giving the aids to bend around each cone and then riding in a straight line to the next.
Half-halt a couple of strides before each cone to make sure your horse is listening and engaged.
Look around the cone in the direction you want to go.
Your inside leg should be on the girth to encourage your horse to bend around it; the outside leg slightly behind the girth to control the outside hindquarter.
Squeeze the inside rein to ask for soft flexion, keeping the outside rein steady to prevent the shoulder falling out.
Next, try the exercise on both reins in trot on the outside line.
Tips and troubleshooting
1. Level up
To make this exercise more challenging, try riding a smaller diamond, inside the cones (green line on diagram above). The tighter turns inside the diamond will require more suppleness, and also more accuracy as you don’t have the physical focal point of a cone to bend around.
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2. Crookedness
This exercise quickly exposes if your horse struggles with either straightness or bending. Most horses are stiffer on one rein than the other.
Establish clear aids in walk first.
3. Adjustability
The diamond shape means the cones at the top and bottom of the diagram require a tighter turn than the ones on the sides. This means you need to fine-tune your aids rather than letting your horse anticipate.
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.
