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The Rider |
Cantering On - A beginners guide to speed |
Virtually Horses |
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Cantering, the first
holy grail of the adult beginner. Your instructor or riding
friends tell you how easy the canter is; "Its like floating", "Its much
smoother than trotting" and you see the little kids cantering around the
other end of the arena on (what appears to be) their second lesson.
But when it comes time
for you to canter for the first time... your quiet schoolmaster becomes
some sort of bizarre whirling dervish with three legs. Instinct
takes over (not in the least bit helpful on a horse) your arms come up,
you stiffen your torso and depending on your natural faults, your legs
either stick out the front or 'grip up' with lower legs curled
back (like mine in the photo right, urrggh!). After a mere
few canter strides your horse sensibly reverts to a slow trot or slows
down to a walk. You are wrapped untidily around his neck, or
slumped at a peculiar angle in the saddle less one or more stirrups, or
worse ...looking up at your mount from the ground.
Welcome to cantering! OK. So that's a first attempt and you're still alive. Now your brain is feverishly trying to work out why everyone else says this is so easy, but you feel like you've just ridden an out of control washing machine. Obviously, it didn't help throwing your hands up (maybe you even threw your reins away*) but what the heck happened to the easy floating motion? |
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Cantering Dressage Magazines Tell Us Your Tips! |
My own canter is far
from perfect but I'm heading in the right direction and now find it fun.
While the horrors are behind me, they are still close enough that I can
vividly empathise with every story of cantering blues that I hear of or
read about from others. I've named each of the 3 following sections
'secrets' because that's the way they seemed to me when I discovered them.
My instructors had probably told me all these things but I didn't take
them in. They're those little gems that seem so clear when you
finally make progress on something that's been eluding you for a while.
I hope that they may help someone else.
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Its OK to Bounce Being Positive Transitions A Final Word Use Photos for feedback |
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| Secret Number One: Its OK to bounce | |||||||||
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This is the really big
one. Its ok to move around in the saddle a bit! Sounds
strange, but its a huge psychological barrier - 'I'm bouncing/moving
around, I must be going to fall off'!
You're learning and
you are going to bounce around at first. You have to accept that
this is 'ok' . It's also surprising how little movement makes you
feel like an out of control sack of potatoes and how much you can
recover from as long as you don't tense up.
If you can feel ok with some movement then you will be able to relax more and start to do all the things that you know you should be doing; stretching your legs down and around the horse, sitting up tall and straight and keeping a soft contact with hands low. Its really easy to say this when safely on the ground, and to accept it in principle but it is quite hard to put it into practice when you get that first lurch in your stomach, or when the nerves start to get to you as you ready yourself for the transition. My attitude breakthrough came on a trekking pony, after a couple of attempts to canter in the school. On unschooled trekking ponies there's none of the tension of getting your horse into canter - its kick on and go like the clappers. I was very nervous about the attempt, I thought of being unceremoniously dumped in front of the rest of the group, but I didn't have a chance to worry about any of the usual stuff, suddenly we were belting down the grass strip and I was staying on and feeling fairly secure. I was certainly bouncing around a bit but I wasn't in any danger of coming off! This was like a bolt from the blue - secret number one! Instructors had always concentrated on not bouncing, which is certainly the goal but it also subconsciously built up the impression that any movement would lead to a fall. Once I could accept a certain amount of movement without terror I was able to start working on the things that would eliminate the dreaded bounce. |
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| Secret Number Two: Being Positive even when you're not | |||||||||
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Your nervousness makes
it worse. No big revelation here! But it works on two levels, the
first is obvious; if you're nervous, you're tense and stiff, but the
second may not be quite so obvious. If you are unsure about going
into canter your horse will pick up on this and also be unsure about it
and the period of transition will either lengthen out or you'll go
through a whole lot of nervous energy and not even get to canter!
Let's look at this. In
order to go into a canter you must sit in the trot and then signal your
horse to canter on. If the sitting trot part of the transition is
longer than you really want, because your horse is receiving mixed
signals, you will now be performing a fast and possibly bouncy
sitting trot. The longer this goes on before you begin to canter,
the more off balance you will feel. Its a downwards spiral.
Once you feel out of control at the trot you wont want to push on to the
canter and so on. Worse, next time you'll remember the whole awful
ordeal and it makes it that much harder not to repeat the problem.
One trick that has
worked for me on some horses is to use your outside hand to hold onto
the saddle when you are ready to canter.
Using your outside hand in this way you aren't doing things 'properly' but you've made the first step.
It is important to
remember that although I'm emphasizing the outside rein, you can't just
throw away the inside rein but you'll find that they work as a pair
pretty much automatically. If you start with the saddle hold
technique, do make sure that you try to move into the next stages as
soon as possible or you may find that you use this as a 'safety blanket'
and can only canter while hanging on to the saddle.
Otherwise I
don't have any great suggestions for this one, you just have to stick to
it and tough it out. Recognise the signs, when you are defeating
yourself, then be brave and ride positively at the next attempt. Try not
to repeat a pattern too often, do you normally attempt to canter on a 20
metre circle or start in one particular corner of the arena? Do
something different, so that your subconscious worries don't defeat your
efforts. This also
stops your horse from repeating patterns too!
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| Secret Number Three: The Strike off (getting the right horse to learn on) | |||||||||
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With some horses the
strike off (transition) to canter is going to seem very abrupt due to
the way that a horse changes stride and you won't have enough experience
to have your horse collected yet. This is particulary a problem
with horses who are a bit bouncy at the trot, because if you don't
really sit those few trot steps deeply, your horse will be uncomfortable
and may hollow out his back and/or throw his head high to show his
disapproval at your trotting style.
That makes the canter
transition even more of a lurch. The first canter stride feels
like an exaggerated rocking motion. If you are not really secure
in the sitting trot you will find this first stride puts you off
balance. Its really just an extension of the whole transition
problem. If this is your major problem, try another horse.
Some are a lot easier to learn to canter on than others! If you
are using school horses, ask to try a different horse. Don't assume that
the instructors know best on this one, not only will they have their own
favourites, but they will be riding at a more advanced level and have
the horse more collected than you will making the transition 'easy' for
them and they are used to the speed and power of the canter.
The most well schooled
horse isn't necessarily the best horse to get your confidence on either.
A well schooled horse will use its hind quarters more, therefore the
trot will tend to be both more bouncy (elevated) and the canter will be
more uphill and bounding, the transition will be smooth but powerful and
power can be quite frightening. Some horses will have fabulous huge bounding
canters -that can feel like you are about to take off. Plus a well
schooled horse will often only accept a correct aid for the canter
transition, if you're learning you may not get it right.
When you're more
advanced these attributes will be a pleasure, and the type of paces you
are trying to achieve with every horse. However as a complete
novice it will can be a blessing to be on a horse that has a flattish
trot and is happy to canter on the forehand - after all you're learning
to ride, not schooling their horses for them! There's plenty of
time to work out how to ride different styles of horses when you've got
your confidence and mastered the basics. Mastering transitions
will be something that you tackle as you have more confidence in the
canter and schooling horses to canter in the correct outline will be
much further down the track.
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| A final word or two... | |||||||||
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Don't worry if you
have the odd 'bad' lesson. You may feel the old horrors
creep back on you or you just seem to go back to your old uncoordinated
sack-of-potatoes riding after making good progress. Sorry, I don't
have any answer to this, it seems to hit me every couple of months or
so. Put it behind you and try again. If possible try to end
lessons on a good note, even if you have to do something that's a little
easier. You may have to ask some instructors for this, as some
seem reluctant to push a student who's not having a successful day.
Personally, I'm really grateful for an instructor who 'forces' me to
retry an exercise that I'm having trouble with so that I don't go away
from the lesson stewing about my 'failures'.
Finally a word of
warning, if you've only ever ridden in an arena, at your lessons, don't
think that this means that you'll handle all conditions out hacking or
during a trek. Cantering in the school is going to be a much more
controlled affair than out in the wide open spaces, and you won't have
learned how to handle sloping ground, obstacles (you'll be REALLY
grateful for that helmet when you crack your head on a low branch the
first time) or your horse shying underneath you (or getting into some
fight with the horses it's running with)
Dealing with your
initial fears is not the end of the journey. Once you are stable
you can really begin to work on your canter position...
I don't know about
you, but I often find it hard to picture what an instructor wants, or
how I should change myself. Photos and videos are fabulous!
Suddenly you can clearly see all your faults (leave whatever pride
you have left at the stable door, it'll be shattered by seeing yourself
on film unless you have really high self-esteem). Just to
really embarrass myself, here are a couple of training photos taken of my
canter to help you see the changes that need to be made to feel secure
in the canter. Hopefully I can post more with each improvement (yes,
there's always MORE improvement to be made).
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| Copyright Virtually Horses 2005 - last updated 02/09/2006 22:49:38 +1300 | |||||||||
Note for anyone reading this in Europe, working beginners on a lunge
often isn't done here. It is certainly not done as a regular
method for starting people on a horse. So you're trying to
work all the controls at once...
