5 Best Groundwork Exercises For Horses

Groundwork allows you to communicate with your horse face-to-face in a way they can understand. By working on specific exercises that teach them to follow pressure, move their feet when asked, and respect your personal space, you lay a foundation for improved safety, trust, and harmony. Below are the five best groundwork exercises for both horses and riders, along with the core goals they help you achieve: control, communication, and clear boundaries.

Key Goals of Groundwork With Horses

Before diving into the exercises, it’s important to understand what you can achieve through them:

Control: You want to be able to control your horse’s body and help them understand how to use it properly in response to your cues.
Communication: Groundwork should teach you and your horse to communicate effectively, ensuring they understand what you’re asking.
Boundaries: You need to draw clear personal space boundaries so your horse knows exactly where they can and cannot be.

Groundwork Exercise 1 – Following the Pressure

The first exercise is teaching your horse to follow the pressure you apply. This can be done with any horse, young or old. You can actually combine a few different pressure-based maneuvers into one exercise, and all can be done while the horse is standing still.

How to Do It:

• Start by gently pulling on the lead rope in one direction and see if the horse can turn its head all the way back toward that side.
• Then try pulling down and see if you can get the horse to lower its head. If you pull forward slightly, see if the horse will step forward toward you.

Many horses initially find this challenging because they’re prey animals and instinctively want to fight pressure. If you pull down on their head, they may resist by throwing it up. Your goal is to teach them not to fight the pressure but to give to it. The moment the horse responds correctly—even if it’s just the slightest dip of the nose—release the pressure. This release is the reward, letting the horse know it did the right thing.

It’s often easiest to start by asking your horse to lower its head. Most horses resist at first, so begin with light pressure on the lead rope, pulling it gently toward the ground. If the horse does not respond, gradually increase pressure until it dips its nose, even a tiny bit, then immediately release. Over time, your horse will learn to give to that pressure more willingly.

After your horse can lower its head, you can move on to asking it to step forward. Gently pull the rope forward, and if the horse resists, hold steady pressure until it takes a step toward you, then release. Eventually, your horse will learn to follow the pressure with ease, making everything else you do—from leading to more advanced maneuvers—much simpler.

This exercise directly supports your three goals: it helps you control the horse’s position, improves communication through pressure and release, and establishes boundaries by defining where the pressure ends and where the horse needs to respond.

Groundwork Exercise 2 – Backing Up

The next essential groundwork exercise is teaching your horse to back up. Here, we’ll focus on using the lead rope as the primary tool. Backing up helps you control the horse’s feet and reinforces the idea that they must respect your space. This is especially useful if the horse is crowding you or coming too close for comfort.

How to Do It:

• Stand facing the horse and begin by lightly shaking the lead rope to ask it to step back.
• If it doesn’t respond, increase the intensity of the shake slightly, moving from light to medium pressure.
• The moment the horse takes a step back, stop shaking and release the pressure as a reward.

At first, many horses don’t understand and may throw their head up or try to move in different directions. Your job is to remain patient. Always start with the lightest possible pressure. If no response, go to a medium pressure. If still no response, you may need to increase the energy further—perhaps step towards the horse, making a bit more movement until the horse finally steps back. The instant it does, release all pressure. Over time, the horse will become more sensitive and back up with the slightest cue.

This exercise fits into your goals by allowing you to move the horse’s feet (control), communicate that it needs to stay out of your space (communication and boundaries), and maintain a safe bubble around yourself.

Groundwork Exercise 3 – Yielding the Hindquarters

Yielding the hindquarters is another key groundwork exercise that involves moving the horse’s hips away from you. This provides control over the hind end, communicates to the horse that it should move its hips when asked, and creates a safer environment by keeping the hindquarters—where kicks can come from—out of your space.

How to Introduce It:

• Stand at the horse’s withers. There are two main parts to this exercise.
• First, slide your hand down the lead rope and be prepared to bring the horse’s head slightly around by pulling the rope out and back. At the same time, turn your belly button and eyes toward the horse’s hip and step toward it.
• If the horse doesn’t move, you can gently swing the end of your lead rope towards its hind end to encourage it to pivot on the front end and swing the hindquarters away. You want to see the horse step one hind leg in front of the other as it moves its hindquarters away from you.
• Once the horse understands what you want, you can make your cues more subtle. Position your body so your belly button faces the hindquarters, and look at the hip. You can swing your lead rope lightly or just use your body language to ask for the hindquarters to yield. Eventually, a small shift in your posture can be enough to get that hind end to move away.

This exercise can feel tricky at first, but it’s crucial for gaining respect and clear communication. The horse learns that when you apply this specific cue, it needs to move its hindquarters away, improving responsiveness and reinforcing that you control the space around you.

Additional Resources for Groundwork

Groundwork can be very technical. We’re not used to communicating primarily through body language, while horses rely heavily on it. This can make it difficult for humans to grasp these exercises quickly. To help with this, I’ve created a comprehensive course to help fast track your training. My Gain & Maintain Your Horse’s Respect course is designed to help you end your frustration and maximize your time by showing you how to gain and maintain your horse’s respect through proven groundwork techniques. You can check it out on my course website here. 

Groundwork Exercise 4 – Yielding the Shoulders

Now that you know how to move the horse’s hindquarters, it’s time to work on moving the front end. Yielding the shoulders gives you control over the horse’s direction and movement. By teaching the horse to move its shoulders away, you reinforce proper boundaries and make it clear that you can dictate where the horse goes.

How to Introduce It:

• There are several simultaneous parts. First, start by standing near the horse’s head, slightly to the side, and use a pushing motion with your hand near the horse’s eye to get it to move its head away.
  If the horse ignores your hand gesture, you can place your hand on the halter and gently push the head away. Before asking for a full step, just get the horse to move its head without taking a step.
• Once the horse will move its head, take the next step: push and then walk toward where its head was, as if you’re going to walk right through it. This encourages the horse to move its shoulders over. The horse should step its front legs one in front of the other, moving sideways and away from you.

Many horses try to back up or lift their head to escape this cue at first. Use your lead rope to block them from stepping backwards or out of position. Keep your hand at eye level if needed to create a visual block. Over time, with consistent cues and releases, your horse will understand to move its shoulders away softly and willingly.

After your horse gets comfortable with the basic idea, you can ask from a slight distance. Position yourself slightly in front of the horse and to the side, direct your belly button and eyes to the shoulder, and move towards it. Eventually, you’ll just need subtle body language to get the horse to yield its shoulders smoothly.

Groundwork Exercise 5 – Lunging

Lunging puts all these groundwork exercises together. When lunging, you want to control the horse’s movement, speed, and focus. It’s great for letting the horse burn off some energy or for fine-tuning respect and responsiveness. To lunge effectively, your horse needs to understand the concepts we’ve worked on so far: following pressure, backing up, yielding the hindquarters, and yielding the shoulders.

How to Begin:

• Make sure your horse can respond correctly to pressure, step forward, move hindquarters, and move shoulders.
• Use the “following pressure” exercise to ask your horse to step up and out onto a circle. Many people struggle to get the horse to pass by their shoulder, but if the horse knows to follow forward pressure, it’ll step out onto the circle more readily.
• Use the concept of yielding the shoulders to direct the horse onto the correct track around you. If the horse tries to stop or turn in, you can move its shoulders again to guide it back out.
• To stop or change direction, yield the hindquarters. By looking at the hind end and applying the appropriate cue, the horse steps its hind legs over and comes to a halt or prepares to reverse direction.

Lunging is essentially piecing together all of the previous exercises. You start by backing the horse up to position it, then ask the shoulders to move, the horse goes around you, and when you want to stop, you disengage the hindquarters. If you want a detailed, technical walkthrough of these steps or help troubleshooting common problems, my Leveled-Up Lunging Course covers everything in depth with step-by-step video walkthroughs.

Conclusion

These five groundwork exercises—following the pressure, backing up, yielding the hindquarters, yielding the shoulders, and lunging—create a comprehensive toolkit for improving your relationship with your horse. Each exercise supports the key goals of control, communication, and boundary setting. By practicing them, you’ll help your horse understand what you want, learn to respond rather than resist, and establish a respectful partnership built on trust.

If you’re looking for a structured, in-depth approach to mastering these exercises and more, don’t forget to check out my online courses here! Incorporate these techniques into your routine, and watch as your horse becomes more responsive, respectful, and enjoyable to work with.