Photo via Lainey Ashker.
LAE (Laine Ashker Eventing) is at it again with another GOTD (grid of the day)! You’re going to need a boatload of standards and a big arena for this one, but once set up you’ll have plenty of options to keep you busy for a while. It looks complicated, but there’s just two steps to building this monstrosity:
- Start with building the middle series of verticals 21 feet apart.
- Then build outward from the middle vertical 24 feet for each vertical on the diagonal arms. This will automatically give you the two and five stride lines parallel to the middle series of verticals.
As you can see, this mother-of-all-grids has many different lines to choose from. The short 21-foot distance down the middle will encourage horses to rock back and will also encourage the rider to use their position to help the horse do so. The 24-foot distances across the diagonal over angled jumps are great for teaching more advanced riders to ride forward on a straight line and push the horse forward into an even contact.
Watch how it’s done:
#GOTD alert: “Vertical Frenzy!” Lots of options with this exercise that you can use with your less experienced horses and riders teaching them striding from 5, 2, to 1s to the more advanced pairs working on their contact in the super angled lines (both directions) and beginning with the one strides from lowest to gradually raising the bar (pun intended 😉) testing the rider’s position to balance his or her horse in the line. *Remember that when building this correctly to begin building the angles from the center vertical in the straight line OUT for it to work! (If angled one strides are measured correctly your two strides and five strides will automatically appear when finished). I made the straight line of one strides short in 21 feet to teach the horse to rock back and encourage a better position of his rider whereas in the angles you’ll notice they’re longer in order to encourage the rider to push the horse forward into the contact from the leg NOT try and steer in a straight line from the hand! Hope you enjoy the challenge my friends!!! 💪🏽🤙🏽👊🏽
Posted by Lainey Ashker on Saturday, August 4, 2018
