United States Eventing Association

Grid Pro Quo with Jon Holling

Don't let winter weather get you down. Use the off season as an opportunity to fine tune your riding! In this winter weekly web series, we will revive past Grid Pro Quo articles from our magazine, Eventing USA, to help you brainstorm ways to keep you and your horse in tip-top shape even if you only have access to an indoor arena.

WHY

The most important tool that riders need in order to jump a clear round is a quality canter. Without a quality canter your horse is more likely to go for the long spot or have a big chip, which usually results in a rail. This is one of my favorite exercises to help teach a horse the proper length of stride needed for a show jump course. The rails in front of the cross rail are the perfect tool to help your horse understand this concept.

This exercise is also great because it works both ends of the horse. The canter rails really get your horse's hind end working. They have to sit on their haunches while staying active and quick with their feet to get through the rails without making a mess of them. The ascending oxer works to sharpen your horse's front end. By putting the front rail on the lowest cup and raising only the back rail, you give the horse a little extra time to get his front end up. If you are on the ground helping someone with this exercise, you will notice that the horse will push up off the ground, lift its forearm up, and then reach out over the back rail. These ascending oxers are particularly good for a horse that jumps over its shoulder a bit.

The purpose of the box of rails on the ground is to introduce the idea of stride length regulation in a less demanding way than the seven to eight foot canter rails in front of the cross rail. The 30' rails are an easy three strides, and the 42' rails are an easy four strides. The hard part with these rails is that since there is not a rail for every stride, your horse (and you) can make his own choice, and it will not always be the right one. The positive is that, especially with green horses, these single rails on the ground are more forgiving than the series of rails before the cross rail.

HOW

After properly warming up on the flat, I will have the riders go over the rails in the box one at a time and then start to put the lines together. The end goal is to be able to quietly canter the lines in three and four strides without the horse lengthening its stride to the rails, or backing off the rails, or any other sort of disobedience. Furthermore, your horse should be straight. You will find that the straighter your horse is, the less likely he will try to become irregular with his stride. Having your horse really straight is one of the hardest things to do because every horse (just like every person) has its own quirks or areas of soreness and will inevitably travel a little crooked to compensate. Some horses also use crookedness as an evasion or disobedience, and, depending on your horse, it depends on how adamant they will be about staying crooked and for what reason—disobedience versus soreness. Be aware of your straightness as you go through the lines, and you will be surprised by how much it affects your horse's rhythm and regulation.

As the horse gets more experienced, you can play around with the striding in the box by adding a stride in each line, but you cannot lose any quality to your canter while you are adding the one stride to each line. Remember to keep your horse straight between your aides and add some bounce to the stride. If you are with a group of people, you can make it fun by getting competitive to see who can add the most strides to each line without losing the quality of the canter. Regardless of whether you are at the point of adding strides to each line or you are happy with getting the quiet three and four strides, you cannot move on to the grid portion of this exercise until you have successfully completed this box of rails exercise.

Exercise #2

Once you are good and solid with the rails on the ground, you can move on to Exercise #2. The first thing I will do is have the horses canter through the poles with an additional stack of rails where the cross rail will go. Depending on your level, you can set the canter rails at seven or eight feet, with the seven foot distance reserved for the Preliminary and above horses. Regardless of whether you are doing the seven or eight foot canter poles, you should always have an eight foot distance between the last canter pole and the cross rail. As you are cantering through these rails, remember that this is not like a traditional trot grid where you want to have a loop in the reins. In this exercise, you are working on the connection, so you have to come in with a quality canter and maintain the quality over the canter rails. It seems a bit hard on paper, but riders are often surprised by how quickly their horses understand the exercise.

You are ready to finally start jumping when your horse is powering over the canter rails and maintaining a connection and quality canter throughout. Now you can put in the cross rail with a landing rail nine feet out. This landing rail helps to finish your horse's jump; some horses (and riders) think that their job is over as soon as they have taken off. The landing rail makes it so that you and your horse have to keep thinking and keep working after the fence. One thing that I will often see riders struggle with in this exercise is executing a proper release over the jump. As a rider, do not get so focused on maintaining the connection over the rails that you forget to have a following hand over the fence.

As soon as you are comfortable with the canter rails to the cross rail, you are ready to start building your oxer. I will start by putting the front rail in the bottom holes so that it is about 12"-18" high. The back rail can start at 2'6" to three feet, depending on your comfort level. As you go through this exercise you can raise the back rail of the ascending oxer, but I will never make it larger than 3'6" regardless of the experience level of the horse. If you are breezing through the exercise and want to make it a little harder, you can move the front rail of the oxer in a foot or two to tighten the distance. Just make sure that when you move the front rail of the oxer in, you also move the cross rail's landing rail in by the same amount. This is when a good helper comes in handy.

You will probably notice that the collection piece of this exercise makes your horse work quite hard. So once you have successfully completed the grid at least two or three times, give your horse a pat and take him for a hack.

A second variation of this exercise can be made for greener horses and riders. I will make the seven to eight foot canter rails into four foot trot rails and build the exercise from there. The key to this exercise, regardless of which version you do, is to keep it very progressive and to take your time!

About Jonathan Holling

Located in Ocala, Florida, Jon Holling operates Holling Eventing at Willow Run Farm alongside his wife, Jennifer. A world traveler, Jon has ridden at Burghley Horse Trials in England, the World Cup Eventing Finals in Sweden, and was a member of the 2012 Nations Cup team at Boekelo in the Netherlands. In addition to his busy competition career, Jon is also busy teaching riders through the Advanced level. He is currently coach of the two-time team gold medal Area IV Young Riders team. Click here to learn more about Jon and his horses.

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