For many riders, winter means you might be stuck riding in a small indoor arena when the weather doesn’t cooperate. That doesn’t mean you take a hiatus; it means you learn to work with what you have. Here I’ll share six tips for making the most of your smaller riding area.

Tip 1: Work at the Jog/Trot

Working at a jog makes you slow everything down so you can refine it. Work on small circles and arc exercises, moving off your leg, and turning/rolling back at a jog or trot to dial-in your correctness. 

Tip 2: Square Your Corners

It might seem counterintuitive, but making square corners can improve the roundness of your circles. When you stay on a round track all the time, your horse starts to lean in. When you focus on straightness on the rail and squareness in the corner, you keep your horse’s shoulders elevated and his body in position instead of leaning.

Learn Al Dunning’s Tips for Longeing a Horse

Tip 3: Check Your Five Basics

Everything I teach my riders goes back to the “five basics”: go forward willingly and readily with rate, turn left and right equally on both sides, stop accurately, back smoothly, and do it all with collection. You can tune up all these elements in a small space so that you’re ready to go once you’re back in a larger arena.

Tip 4: Challenge Yourself With Lead Changes

It might seem impossible to change leads in a small pen, but you can do it by working on the diagonal. Here, I’ll explain a left-to-right change. Make a circle to the left. When you come to the corner, turn to go diagonal across the pen—but be sure you’re not rushing; allow a couple strides of straightness before you make the diagonal corner. Lope across the center, then stop your horse, sidepass to the left, reverse your leg position from going to the left to cueing for a right-lead departure, and lope off on the right lead. Once you’ve mastered that, repeat without the stop and sidepass to change leads on the diagonal. If your horse doesn’t change leads, rollback toward the fence and go back to try again.

Tip 5: Fix Ducking

A smaller arena might lead your horse to start to duck to the inside, which can be a bad habit to break if it’s gone on too long. If you notice him ducking, roll him back toward the fence when he feels like he’s about to dive to the inside. Pay close attention so you can make the correction at the right time, without anticipating his behavior. The perfectly timed correction can quickly eliminate the problem.

Tip 6: Be Smart About Stopping

Running and stopping in a small arena can ruin your horse. He’ll forget all that work you’ve done teaching him to run long in a larger arena. To avoid this, do more at the trot, and if you must run to stop, lope around the arena a few times, keeping his body straight as you go down the long sides and making square corners before you ask for a stop.