There’s no avoiding corners. They’re part of every single ride, from Introductory Level to Grand Prix. But because they aren’t an official movement in any test, they’re often overlooked. In reality, corners are the most valuable real estate in your ring because you can use them to:

• Test if your horse is listening to your aids.
• Balance your horse.
• Prepare or set up for the next movement.
• Make corrections without directly affecting a movement. 
• Take a breath.

Think about how you ride corners. Do you ride into them and your horse waits and listens for your aids, or does he turn or fall through the corner before you ask?

It’s natural for your horse to anticipate corners because he knows he has to turn to avoid hitting the rail. But often, he takes the initiative to turn before you’ve asked. And that’s where the problems come in. He’s come off your aids without you realizing it and is likely out of balance because he’s drifting or falling in.

I’ll explain how to correctly ride into corners and how this will positively affect your ride—both in and out of the show ring. 

How to Ride the Exercise

Starting on the long side of the ring, walk your horse straight into the corner by using more outside rein to keep him along the rail while supporting with your inside leg to block his instinct to drift in or turn early. Your inside leg will also help to maintain his forward energy and upright balance. Once you are one to two meters away from the rail, ask for a halt transition by trying to stop your hip and seat movement and tightening your core. If needed, add a little rein aid to reinforce your seat by closing your fists and stopping your arms from following the forward movement. 

Because you still have one to two meters in front of you, you will have enough room to walk forward, turn and go through the corner. Wait a moment after your halt, and then turn your head and look to the next corner while slightly turning your upper body in the direction of the turn without dropping your inside shoulder. The turn from your upper body will put a little more weight into your inside seat bone and inside leg. The weight aid is the primary aid for guiding your horse through the turn coming out of the corner because he’s naturally inclined to follow your weight. 

Ask you horse to walk forward while making sure your inside leg and outside rein continue to support him through the turn. If you’re doing the exercise correctly, your horse shouldn’t fall against your inside leg or bulge through the outside rein. After a couple steps of brief bend turning out of the corner, straighten your horse by using inside leg and outside rein on the short side of the ring on the way to the next corner where you’ll do another halt transition and repeat the exercise.

Practice getting comfortable going into the corner, waiting and then consciously aiding your horse to turn and walk out of it. This makes corners more tangible, so you can relax in the corner and prepare, instead of rushing to the next movement.

The more you school this exercise, the more corners will become natural, and you won’t need to think about them as much because your horse learns what to expect and how to carry himself. Over time, corners will become your half-halt. Instead of rushing through the corner and anticipating the turn, your horse will start to view the corner as a place to briefly pause, rebalance on his hind legs and prepare for the next movement.

The goal is to achieve as much harmony, lightness and subtlety as possible, so it looks like you’re not thinking about the corner or any movement coming out of it. If it looks easy that means the horse and rider are connected, and the horse is responding to the softest aids.

Tailor the Exercise to Your Level

The higher the level, the greater the expectation for how deep you can go into your corners. And depending on your level, you can also experiment with different transitions to increase the difficulty. 

Initially, I recommend doing walk–halt transitions in each corner with a simple turn. It’s not fair to expect a lower-level horse or a horse trying this for the first time to go all the way into every corner. Most lower-level horses don’t have the strength yet to maintain their balance deep into corners. This doesn’t mean you should allow your horse to cut the corner, but you don’t have to go all the way into it. For Introductory through Second Level, the depth of the corners should feel like a portion of a 10-meter circle. 

At First Level, riding a trot–halt transition between the corners is a fair question. When you halt, you should still leave one to two meters in front of you to allow for a couple of walk steps to make the turn and then trot to the next corner. This may surprise your horse a little bit, especially on the short side, because there’s not a long window of time between trotting out of the corner and halting again in the next corner. But it gets the horse really listening to your aids and helps achieve the necessary adjustability and rideability to go forward out of the corner, and then come back on your aids to the next corner. This idea is useful in tests because it encourages your horse to really listen to you from one corner to the next.

You can also try this exercise without the halt transition by trotting into a corner and then doing a walk transition. The goal is the same—you want your horse to stay on your aids and listen to your inside leg and outside rein before trotting out.  

For Third and Fourth Level, think about your corner as a portion of an 8-meter circle and take your transition a little farther into the corner. You want to feel almost like the rail isn’t there. Your horse should be on your aids so if you want one more step into the corner, you have it. 

At the upper levels, you can also do canter–walk transitions or canter–halt transitions. To make the exercise even more challenging, try cantering into the corner as far as you can and then turn out of it, which would become a quarter of a pirouette of really collected canter. 

During a test, think about what you need to be preparing for coming out of the corner. That will determine how far you go into it. The more you have to do coming out of that corner, the longer you want to stay there to set yourself up for success.

Common Mistakes

This is a simple exercise, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Here are some solutions for common problems.

Your horse bulges through the outside rein. To correct this, use a little bit of counter flexion before, during or after the corner, depending on when you feel like you’re losing your horse’s shoulder through the outside rein.

Your corners are actually circles. When riding a correct corner, you should have a straight line going into it, two to three strides of bend and then another straight line coming out. But these three elements often bleed together. The corners on the short ends become more like circles with a constant bend through the whole short end (see diagram, left). This is great if you’re doing a 20-meter circle, but if that’s not your goal, you need to ride a correct corner. Make a point to straighten your horse with your outside rein coming out of the first corner. The goal is to have your horse’s body parallel to the short side of the arena between the two corners. When you’re coming out of the first corner, it’s also helpful to look for a point outside the arena to prevent yourself from turning too soon before the second corner.

Your corner is a motorcycle turn. In a motorcycle turn, the horse leans in and falls against your inside leg. Both horse and rider are likely off balance and the horse will have lost some bend through his ribcage. Because your horse is out of balance, you may also lose control of his gait’s tempo. He might start to go faster, or the opposite may happen—he might lose energy and try to slow down. 

This can affect any movement you are doing after the corner—whether it’s a 20-meter circle at B or a line of two tempis across the diagonal. You want to maintain a good rhythm of the movement and get a good tempo that’s on your aids, not a tempo that’s a result of your horse having lost balance or bend and he then speeds up or slows down to feel like he can stay on his feet through the corner. 

First, make sure you aren’t encouraging the motorcycle lean by tipping your body to the inside through the corner. Stay tall and straight through your spine like a telephone pole. Make sure you’re not collapsing through your inside shoulder or inside ribcage. Think about your inside leg as a pillar or lamp post that your horse has to bend around and that you can use to help prop him up around the corner. Instead of coming through the turn like a motorcycle, your horse should bend through the corner like an articulated bus (a long bus with an accordion-style section in the middle), and your inside leg can help create that bend. You can also use your inside leg to leg-yield into the corner to catch him from anticipating the turn and get him a little deeper into the corner.  

The way you school corners at home will carry over into competitions, so practice a mindful approach to turning through corners and use them to your advantage for a responsive, balanced horse who is ready for the next movement.

For More:

• To watch a video of Ashley Donadt demonstrating this exercise, subscribe to EQUESTRIAN+. (Use code ASHLEY15 to get 15% off your first month’s subscription.)
• To listen to a previous Dressage Today Podcast with Donadt, click here.
• For more on how to improve your dressage transitions, click here.