How to Get Your Horse Active in the Canter

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Creating jump in the canter is an essential prerequisite to nearly all the canter movements such as pirouettes and flying changes. If you want to work on any of those movements, you need to first work on collection and achieving a nice active, jumping canter.

In this week’s video, I will give you a few tips to help you get your horse’s canter active and jumping. But, before we get into the tips, I wanted to remind you about my Free webinar on Pirouettes that’s happening on March 3rd at 12:00noon PT. We’ll be covering walk pirouettes up to canter pirouettes, how to begin introducing them, exercises you can work on to improve them, and more!

Okay, back to the tips. Firstly, let’s talk about the aids for achieving activity and jump in the canter. When we’re working on developing an active, jumping canter, we want to think about:

·       Using our legs - When you are in the canter and want to use your leg, make sure that you use it in canter position (inside leg at the girth, outside leg behind the girth). If you have a lazy horse, give a quick leg aid to help them quicken their stride and get more jump.
·       Following with our seat – After you give your leg aid to send your horse forward, it’s super important that you are ready to follow with your seat. Remember, your seat is the translator and if you don’t follow with your seat, then it makes it harder for your horse to come through with their hind end.
·       Half-halts – As you are following with your seat, you then want to give a few half-halts to get your horse to collect back on their hind end. While we do want them to be more forward, we want more jump in the canter, and your half-halts are what help to balance the forward energy back on the hind leg to create that active jumping canter.

So in summary, to create activity in the canter, we first want to use our leg to add energy, then our seat to follow the swing, and lastly our rein to half-halt and bring the energy back to the hind end. A great exercise to help you work on this is working on a little forward and back within gait. Try sending your horse forward for five strides, and then half-halting to bring them back for five strides, then forward for five strides, and collect for five strides, etc.

Another great exercise to help you start working on collection and getting more activity in the canter is walk-canter transitions. Walk-canter transitions are a prerequisite to nearly all the canter movements such as flying changes because they introduce collection to your horse and also because the aids for walk-canter are the foundation for those higher-level movements. Therefore, as a Dressage rider, it’s important to practice millions of these transitions! As you practice, really focus on feeling the hind end come through behind the saddle and having your first stride in the transition be a nice active canter stride.

I hope these tips help you work on getting your horse’s canter more active! Let me know in the comments below if you enjoyed these tips!

Happy Riding!
Amelia
 
00:00 Introduction/Importance of Activity
01:16 The Aids to Get Activity
03:36 Rubber Band Exercise for Activity
05:46 Walk-Canter for Activity
09:47 Outro