Flatwork

Ok here goes. well i love the idea of dressage and flatwork and things like that ijust seem to get so bored doing flatwork at home on phoebe. then I end up doing to much jumping with her and she will get fed up of it.
So what I am asking is how do I make flatwork more interesting for me?

If you answer a few questions, I would be happy to help.
First of all, is there anything specific you would like to accomplish with flat work?
What are you currently working on with flat work?
What are you having problems with during flat work?
What benefits are you looking for during your flat work?

Pin pointing your interests and goals will help you develop your own plan, and make things more interesting for you and your horse. If you answer these, I will gladly offer any advice I may have.

^ if you dont mind im wondering the same thing, so i will be following this thread :)

Same here. I ride in a natural sand outdoor arena right now and I have a hard time finding time for a long flat work session, so I need to get everything stuffed into 30 or so minutes before it's dark.

Well first of all I should have explained what we do. Phoebe and I do competitive showjumping. I have only had her a year and she has been very excited in the show ring and will not calm down. Now I didn't train her and I am only 14 when I got her I was only 13. I didn't know as much about horses as Ii do now and I am still learning. Since being on this site and reading I thought I would go back to basics with her in flatwork and try to calm her down so I suppose that is what I am trying to accomplish with flatwork.
I have been working on relaxing exercises like working her long and low first to get her relaxed.
We haven't been having any specific problems I just seem to get bored for some reason if that makes sense :S
I am looking to get a more relaxed well rounded horse and eventually want to compete at low level eventing

Well I hope I have answered all your questions and hope you can help me and thank you all in advance

I am of the opinion flatwork is meant to be boring, that's why there is no "competitive flatwork". I guess dressage is similar, but to me there is a difference between flatwork and dressage, but I don't like either. But I am firmly of the opinion that its neccasary for control and to be competitive.

I'll share how I approach flatwork. I don't do it for over an hour, horses do not concentrate for long periods of time and few horses are going to concentrate for an hour of flatwork. Decide what you want to do. I don't think you need much longer than 30 minutes of actual work. I would approach it as - warm up time - 20 - 30 minutes of work time then cool down time. Look at what you want to work on for that session. Decide where you want start. Is your flatwork for teaching the horse, or are you just doing it to maintain his current training?

If you want to do circles then decide to start at trot 20m circles, and then work towards acheiving whatever you want. Don't expect too much. I've had those sessions where I wanted to perfect canter transitions or something, and then gone way over the time I would normally ride obsessing about it, and my horse loses attention, gets tired, and I get frustrated. Know what you want and make sure its realistic. If you start out and discover its not realistic, then change your goal mid way through but I have a firmly set goal so when you have finished your flatwork session you can walk away with an achievement, and it suddenly won't feel as bad. Compete against yourself.

Do something a bit different, who says you can't practice turning around cones or something. Set out poles to practice transitions in between. Do a whole session bareback and practice your rising trot. Do circles and transitions without any rein contact. Teach you and your horse something that you don't know.

Don't over do flatwork. Work out an equation for yourself. Maybe 4 hours of flatwork equals one hour of jumping and one hour of trail riding. Or something like that. Keep to your plan.

Thank you very much I was thinking of only doing jumpin training once a week and two days of hacking out one day of competition and the other days flatwork

Bumping

bumping