Minimum space requirements for lunge pen / arena

Lucyad

Lucyad

New Member
Mar 30, 2006
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Renfrewshire, Scotland
I am thinking of surfacing part of my back garden to form either a lunge pen or small arena. I have enough space for an 18m lunge pen, or possibly up to an 18m x 30m school (though this would take up a lot of our space). What would you recommend, and what do you think is the minimum for actually riding in? Any pros/cons and/or tips?
 
just recently i was confined to a approx 10m x 15m as that was the area that was dry. i couldn't do much and had to just do slow work but at least i was riding. if it were me i'd go for the school. its not going to be huge but you can get an almost 20m circle in there and work away quite well. you can lunge a horse in a school but it is much harder imo to ride in the confines of what you lunge on.
I found it very hard riding on such a small area and i couldn't do much. canter work was out of the question as my horse would have to be fairly fit and work in a very collected way to do less than 3 canter strides down the longest section of dry ground.

i don't like riding in anything smaller than a 15m circle as it is strenuous on the horse, IMO the bigger the area the better really... when the ground is dry and hay cut i will be back to 5acres... thats what i call a school ;)
 
I had a 15m x 30m sand school at home that I used to train my two over 17hh horses. It was tight, but I could cope with it, even managed to do bit of jumping, though couldn't really put up jumps higher than 3ft. Have to say anything smaller than that and it would not have worked for anything remotely like schooling.

For anything else I used my RS huge sandschool, but that was half an hour's drive away..

Nina x

Edit: To say that my sand school would have been waaaay too small to school youngsters though!
 
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Yes, I use my RI's large sand school, and a sand pitch a short hack away for generally schooling, however I am anticipating winter again, and would like to be able to keep things up when the nights get darker, even if only lunging. Otherwise it's back to riding at weekends only, which isnt really enough to keep his fitness up, or his flexibility.

I have had a couple of months off doing much schooling, and have been shocked at how much his flexibilty has deteriorated (have been hacking and doing a few local shows) - I really need to keep up some form of circling even if just walk / trot.
 
There is one more good thing about smaller schools though.. ;)

You only need one good light at one end and you can ride regardless of what time of the day it is. Any bigger and you would have to figure out how to light the other end of the school as well. I had my Dad climb up a tree that was at one end of the school and hang a light there, and it was enough to light up the whole thing! :)

Nina x
 
Lucyad said:
Thanks, Coss. 10 x 15m must have been a nightmare to work in!!
Click to expand...

10 x 15 is a nightmare and not something i would use on a regular basis as i would normally build up (over the WHOLE summer) to working regularly in small space. The odd 10m circle is fine but to work constantly on it doesn't do the horse any good. The bigger the area the better really ;)
 
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