The Perfect Circle

The Perfect Circle Being able to walk a perfect circle is no easy task. Brad Barkemeyer breaks down the basics of this exercise and how it’ll help your horse stay collected without losing any forward motion.

- BRAD BARKEMEYER, WITH NICHOLE CHIRICO

As easy as it sounds, walking a perfect circle can actually be quite difficult. Especially if you’re working with a green horse who has a different plan in mind. Regardless of a horse’s age or level of riding experience, I like to include this perfect-circle exercise into my daily warmup to ensure my horse is listening to my cues and has forward motion in his feet when I ask him to stay framed up and collected during a training session.

Here I’ll break down the steps I take so you can include this perfect-circle exercise to your daily warmup.

STEP 1 Find Your CIrcle

To begin this drill, I recommend riding your horse two-handed in a snaffle bit. As you advance this exercise, you can move up to a shank bit your horse is comfortable in, but when you do that, continue to ride two-handed to ensure you can get your horse framed up properly.

Find a spot in the arena and walk in a 10-foot circle. If your horse doesn’t like working in the middle of the arena, I recommend walking there. If he likes to lean toward the gate to go back to the barn, practice this drill in front of it so he learns that he has to work when he’s near it.

If you struggle with distances, an easy way to help you stay on your circle is by riding in a freshly dragged arena. If you’re not able to drag the arena or aren’t riding in an area where you can see your tracks, place a barrel, cone, or anything you have sitting around as the center of your circle to help you better judge where the center of your circle is.

STEP 2 Ask for collection