“My father always said to me, ‘Enjoy riding!’ What I enjoy the most is when my horses become even more beautiful as a result of training and when they have learned to respond to very subtle aids.” — Ingrid Klimke
Complicated? Boring? Quite the opposite! Cavalletti work is a refreshing change to the daily training routine for horses and riders. Working with cavalletti strengthens muscles and improves the basic gaits. It enhances a horse’s natural movement by developing rhythm, power, expression, and cadence through engaged steps over obstacles. Riding over cavalletti helps train horses to assess distances that in turn enhance coordination and balance, and when the level of difficulty is increased systematically, horses’ reactions and skills improve significantly. In addition, cavalletti work trains riders’ seats, gives them better feeling for the horse, and teaches them to see a stride for jumping. This film, featuring Olympic dressage stallion Damon Hill as a young horse, shows everything you need to know to add cavalletti work to your schooling routine:
