Monday Video from Total Saddle Fit: Gemma Tattersall’s Rideability Exercise for All Levels

Winter is a wonderful time to work on the basics — with seasoned campaigners and green horses alike. You might think that training exercises for a green-bean versus a five-star runner-up might differ greatly, but that’s not necessarily the case — at least in British Olympian Gemma Tattersall‘s yard.

Gemma posted the above video of herself and Pau 2018 runner-up Pamero 4 skipping over a fun gymnastic exercise and working on improving Pamero’s rideability. The video was a hit, garnering over 14,000 views on Gemma’s Instagram, so she followed it up with a video of her working student Hannah Lavender riding a very green horse over the same exercise to show that anyone can do this exercise, regardless of the horse’s level. Hannah’s instruction from Gemma was to have the horse trot to every fence to teach the horse to wait and think about her footwork:

Gemma also shared a third video to show that the exercise can be ridden in the opposite direction as well. This is Gemma on one of her showjumpers who is very keen to the jumps and needs to work on staying relaxed and waiting: