Horse Rider UK – Spring 2026

Summary

Five-star eventer Alex Bragg, third at Badminton in 2024, coaches readers toward the MARS Grassroots Championships in Horse&Rider UK's Spring 2026 issue (No. 682), which also carries a £78 free British Eventing horse registration offer and nine-pole schooling plans from Warwickshire coach Nina Gill.

The Spring 2026 issue of Horse&Rider UK is built around the start of the competition season, opening with a two-part grassroots special: a directory of championships amateur riders can actually qualify for — LeMieux Quest, Petplan Area Festivals, SEIB Trailblazers, SEIB Search for a Star at Horse of the Year Show — followed by Alex Bragg's preparation masterclass for the Badminton BE90/BE100 Championships, complete with heart-rate targets, course-length figures from 2025 and a two-run competition schedule.

Training content dominates the middle: Nina Gill's nine-pole layout targets straightness, responsiveness, elevation and bend; Gemma Stevens schools skinnies and corners in the arena; a lateral-work primer covers leg-yield through half-pass; and Lucy Chester explains liberty and clicker training with step-by-step ball-nudging and mat-standing exercises. Horse care gets equal weight, with vet Grace Twitchett decoding skin lumps from hives to sarcoids and a six-step gastric-ulcer prevention plan noting that a third of horses are affected.

Regulars include mindfulness coach Angie Jones-Moore's winter-to-spring confidence reset, Dr David Marlin's interview on the Welfare Stewarding Group he now presides over, and a Dengie-sponsored Q&A where vet Freya Wood links tail-swishing to ulcers and kissing spines. A British Eventing collaboration gives new members a free 2026 horse registration worth £78, and the issue also teases 17 fiction picks, gilets on test and a wheelbarrow buyer's guide.

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Content Guide

▸ Cover Story

p.26 · Going for grassroots

Alex Bragg — 3rd at Badminton 2024 with Quindiva — preps readers for the BE90/BE100 Championships, where around 200 grassroots riders tackle courses that ran just over 2,800m with 28–29 jumping efforts in 2025. His numbers are usable today: fitness canter work must reach 180–200bpm (a hacking canter only hits 140), and each degree of incline adds roughly 6bpm at the same speed, so hills build fitness with less injury risk. He prescribes two competition runs plus a couple of cross-country schooling sessions, and says to keep practice fences at 80–90cm.

p.20 · We are the champions!

A directory of grassroots championships across every discipline, each with concrete qualification routes. Dressage riders can target LeMieux Quest (top 12 on regional leaderboards) or Petplan Area Festivals (three scores of 63%); eventers have the Aspen Cooling BE80 Championships, Bates Arena Eventing finals at Aston le Walls and the LeMieux Grassroots Championship at Badminton in May; showjumpers get the KBIS Insurance Club League (top 20 of eight regional leagues) and National Amateur Championships at Aintree; SEIB Search for a Star finalists ride at Horse of the Year Show. Use it to pick a realistic 2026 target today.

▸ Riding & Training

p.34 · Polework patterns

Part two of Nina Gill's series (she owns the Polework Patterns app and Fancy Footwork Equestrian in Warwickshire) builds one nine-pole layout that trains four skills on separate lines: straightness over the triangle points, responsiveness through turns, elevation and bend. Set the parallel poles at 1.2–1.7m trot distances, ride a square turn onto each line, then soften the rein once straight. Each line gets a 'why it matters' box and a problem solver — if your horse drifts, check rein tension before adding leg. Copy the diagram into tonight's schooling plan.

p.40 · Cross-country connections

Gemma Stevens — 2025 Hickstead Eventer's Grand Prix winner with nine 5* top-10 finishes — recreates technical cross-country questions in an arena. Her layout uses skinnies with ground-pole tramlines plus a corner fence; allow four strides (17.4–18.3m) between elements for turning time. Key pointers: find your line early so hindfeet follow front feet, keep shoulders facing forwards over skinnies, and place a wing in the wide part of the corner while learning — then train without it, because it won't be there on course. Introduce skinny newcomers by trotting through wide wings first.

p.46 · Step aside

A lateral-work primer that takes leg-yield, shoulder-in, travers and half-pass in sequence, on the logic that half-pass is simply travers on a diagonal line. The fixes are specific: end leg-yield on the inside track so the horse isn't just falling towards the fence; ride shoulder-in off the track to force proper outside-rein control; refresh impulsion with a forward lap if he dulls mid-movement. A 15-minute add-on has you riding shoulder-in for a few strides, then a 10m circle on the three-quarter line, on both reins.

p.52 · Hacking heaven

Five ways to refresh hacking — new routes (forest trails, bridleways, horse-friendly beaches), faster rides, schooling movements out on a hack, natural obstacles and terrain, and mindfulness — each with a three-day action plan. The planning advice is practical: start from Ordnance Survey and Google maps, check tide times for beach rides, download the route to your phone and charge it fully before setting off. Set one specific hacking goal for the year and the feature promises visible change within days.

▸ Confidence & Bond

p.58 · Free to choose

Lucy Chester, an ABTC-registered animal training instructor, distinguishes liberty from free schooling: the horse stays calm, engaged and free to walk away. Her clicker mechanics are the actionable core — always take food to the horse rather than letting him mug you, keep the treat pouch away from him, use the lowest-value reinforcer (hay or grass pellets, not tasty treats), and never click without treating. Exercises progress from matching footsteps on a loose leadrope to nudging a ball and standing on a mat, a skill that transfers to weighbridges and mounting blocks.

p.64 · Yes, you can!

Mindfulness practitioner Angie Jones-Moore targets the end-of-winter motivation slump. Tools include goal-setting rules (be flexible, track progress in a journal or app, lean on discipline because motivation comes and goes), a seven-day pleasant activity schedule that puts one positive task with your horse into every day — a deep groom, a slightly longer hack, trailer familiarisation — and the STOP technique (Stop, Take breaths, Observe, Proceed, with a three-strike rule before switching approach). Her reminder that riders project nerves onto horses through body language deserves a place on the tack-room door.

▸ Horse Care

p.70 · Skin deep

Rossdales vet Grace Twitchett BVetMed MRCVS sorts skin lumps and bumps by appearance and urgency. Hives usually resolve within 48 hours — cold hose, and rule out bedding or feed sensitivities if they recur; haematomas from kick injuries should mostly be left to reabsorb rather than drained; abscesses need lancing, flushing and pain relief; saddle sores call for clean pads and girths plus fit checks whenever body condition changes. She also covers sarcoids, the commonest skin tumour, and advises photographing lumps over time to track growth. Run your hands over your horse at tonight's groom.

p.88 · 6 ways to support gastric health

Gastric ulcers affect around a third of horses, and many show no obvious signs. The six steps: keep forage supplies up (horses going six-plus hours without forage are significantly more likely to develop squamous disease), minimise stress by maximising turnout and keeping herd mates together, take behaviour changes seriously — girthiness, reduced appetite, mild colic, teeth grinding — then monitor weight, overhaul management and watch water intake. Good-doers can have hay soaked an hour to cut NSC or use straw to extend eating time. Audit your own yard routine against this list today.

▸ Regulars & Reads

p.75 · Your questions: answered

The Dengie-sponsored expert panel fields real reader problems. Vet Freya Wood unpicks tail-swishing — flies first, then tack fit, then gastric ulcers (diagnosed by gastroscopy) and orthopaedic issues such as kissing spines or proximal suspensory desmitis. Behaviour consultant Kelly Taylor points owners to the free resource 24 Behaviours of the Ridden Horse in Pain and pairs tail-swishing with facial changes like triangulated eyebrows. Further experts cover flu versus tetanus vaccination courses, whitening a grey's yellow tail and building topline.

p.10 · For the good of horses

Equine scientist Dr David Marlin, newly appointed president of the Welfare Stewarding Group, explains how the volunteer body grew from four events in 2023 to 15 in 2025. He argues rider weight should sit nearer 17% of horse weight than the oft-quoted 20% — a 100kg rider is better matched to a 600–650kg horse than a 500kg one — and stresses welfare also covers saddle weight (heaviest seen: 12kg), bit type, spur use and soundness. His social-licence framing is blunt: the sport must visibly do right by horses to survive public scrutiny.

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Editor's Take

The grassroots double-header is the strongest thing here: the championship directory names exact qualification criteria, and Alex Bragg's masterclass is unusually numerical — heart-rate bands, incline maths, 2025 Badminton course statistics — where most magazines settle for platitudes. The expert bench (Stevens, Gill, Chester, Twitchett, Marlin) gives the training and vet sections real authority. The weakest material sits at the edges: 'Yes, you can!' and 'Hacking heaven' recycle generic goal-setting and route-planning advice, and the interleaved supplement ads — Dengie, hoof boosters, gastric feeds — repeatedly blur into the editorial beside them. This issue is for the amateur adult rider mapping a first championship season, not professionals or leisure-only owners; for that reader, pages 20–33 alone justify the £4.99 cover price.

Strengths
• Bragg's masterclass quantifies fitness with heart-rate and course-length data
• Championship directory lists exact qualification routes for every discipline
• Named experts throughout: Stevens, Gill, Chester, Marlin, Twitchett

Weaknesses
• Confidence and hacking features recycle generic goal-setting advice
• Supplement ads sit so close to editorial the boundaries blur

Verdict: Recommended — Grassroots prep content is genuinely actionable; only the lighter wellbeing features dilute it.