Why and How to Lunge Your Horse

Lunging is a great exercise for your horse that I use regularly for:
- Teaching horses to remain calm and focused in faster movement
- Building strong voice cues for transitions
- Creating motivation for forwards movement
- Staying connected at greater distances and higher energy
- Shaping a horse’s movement to be balanced and engaged
- Channelling extra energy positively
- For fitness and fun as you build in collection, pole work and jumping exercises
However, I often find that many horses and their humans have had bad experiences with lunging in the past - either chasing the horse round in endless boring circles, or the horse rushing round out of balance and out of control, or meeting confusion and resistance such as turning in, reluctance to move and even rearing and bolting.
How you teach your horse to lunge makes all the difference. When you use techniques that make it clear and fun for your horse, he’ll understand what to do and enjoy the game.
In this video, you can see two simple techniques I use to quietly and easily teach horses to lunge and then what you can use lunging to achieve. You can see why this is one of my horses’ and my favourite exercises!
Lunging is part of a range of gymnastic groundwork exercises I use to build suppleness, strength and engagement in horses.It's covered in step-by-step detail in the Gymnastic Groundwork Home Study Course in the CT Club.
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[@jesseydalla-vecchia3086]

THIS is exactly how lunging should be taught. Shaping for not only different situations but to engage all of the benefits of lunging.

[@WithGreatDifficulty]

Amazing!

[@DarleneDeMayo]

I just loved this! Great info! I was skeptical about lunging after I saw how my 2 horses reacted the same to it which was exactly as you explained. They were both tense, resistant, rearing, and going really fast, so I stopped all training with the woman I hired from my stable. Now that I've found CONNECTION TRAINING... I train them myself even though I have no previous horse handling at all, and it's more than I could have dreamed for my horses and I *:D

[@ConnectionTraining]

So great to hear Darlene. It's definitely possible for everyone to learn and it's so much fun :)

[@rhene1548]

Thank you so much for sharing this and other videos! Loving the very safe alternative methods

[@ConnectionTraining]

You are so welcome!

[@mayim7041]

I really loved the video, but I have a problem. One of the ponies in our stable doesnt want go straight to the circle. He is turning around, but I dont know, how to lunge him. I dont know, if he just doesnt like it, or he cant do it. He used to lunge normally and he was very good. And I dont know, what changed...

[@silvia.paleogeo]

How long should be a lunging session?

[@samantharobinson1393]

CuorediFlicka 45 minutes to an hour

[@BeittaMontero]

I really admire your work. This really helps in improving horses welfare. What you have accomplished with positive reinforcement and giving the horses control through making choices when learning is spectacular. I will share it with all my veterinary students and the equestrian people I have the opportunity to guide. Hope to subscribe soon to your club in order to learn your different methods for training. Best wishes from Chile (FB and IG: bienestar.equino). We are building our webpage at the moment. Beatriz