( schooling q&A) )


Mountain Horse and Imogen Gloag team up to answer your schooling questions


International event rider Imogen Gloag, 23, is based in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire.


In 2016, Imogen was the youngest competitor at that year’s Land Rover Burghley Horse Trials riding Brendonhill Doublet and the pair a re former Pony Club Champions and British Junior team members.


In 2018 she made her first appearance at the Mitsubishi Badminton Horse Trials on the same horse completing with just one unlucky run out.


Imogen’s ultimate goal is to be selected on to the British teams and to ride at the Olympic Games.


Imogen is sponsored by Mountain Horse which makes stylish, elegant and durable riding gear. Visit www.mountainhorse.se.


Are there any schooling exercises that can help build up and strengthen my eight-year- old mare’s hind quarters?


Leg yielding on a circle is a really effective exercise that will help strengthen up a horse no matter what his age or experience.


Start with a 20 metre circle at walk or trot and gradually decrease the circle by spiralling down to about 10 metres or until you feel that your horse is slightly losing balance. Remember when doing lateral work, everything you do must improve and enhance your horse’s movement and if you feel the rhythm or movement of your horse is being interrupted or compromised go back a step.


competition, you will arrive fully prepared.


Establish the circle with a good bend through the whole body, not just the neck, using your inside leg to the outside rein and perhaps open the inside rein towards the middle of the circle on a less experienced horse. Never cross the inside hand across the neck and be sure to maintain the bend throughout the whole body


Push the horse away from the inside leg towards the outside rein. You are asking your horse to take his inside leg across and under himself with his hind foot print coming on a line that would fall between his two front legs.


Increase the size of the circle by leg yielding back out to 20 metres. It is important not to let the horse run through the shoulder and this is where the outside rein – the stabiliser - comes into play.


Use this exercise equally on both reins until you have the horse supple, bending and stepping through.


Add some transitions to increase the difficulty. When you have decreased the circle and ridden back out to 20m, make a transition to walk or canter, again with the feeling that this hind leg is coming between the two front legs.


I have just started unaffiliated eventing on my 15.2hh horse. We’ll be competing at 70cms – 80cms this season, with the aim of building our confidence steadily. Do you have any tips about riding safely and making the time across country?


Firstly, a great mantra is fail to prepare, prepare to fail. That means that by getting lots of cross country practice in before the


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I would recommend hiring one of the many cross country schooling venues and taking along an experienced instructor who will be able to teach you how to ride the various different types of obstacles. Once you are fully confident over ditches, drops, water splashes and the like, your instructor will put a course together for you, teaching you how to maintain a steady rhythm, and helping you to understand the speeds at which you should be travelling.


Once the starter says go at the competition, get into a rhythm as quickly as you can. Try not to go flat out between the fences as you will then have to pull up in order to set yourself up to each fence which can lose valuable time.


When you are walking the course it is sometimes really useful to look back as you might see a line you can take that will shave off two or three seconds and give you a slightly quicker route.


When you are walking a course be aware of the more complicated fences. Always ride the fences how they should be ridden and don’t rush because you feel the pressure of time.


Above all enjoy it. If you are riding at the level you have prepared for and done the necessary training at home, it is just the next step.


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