canter/tense. any excersises, advice needed

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morgan4eva

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hey,
my pony morgan is extremelly tense in his flat work, this could be caused by me. His canter is very unbalanced. He bends to the outside, rushes round corners. That lets him down in my eventing tests, but because his canter is sooo unbalanced it ruines his showjumping. He starts to role poles. Has anyone got any USEFULL advice to help me and morgan to relax and for morgan to become more supple and balanced in his canter?
XX M4E
 
Hi there as an equine therapsit I'll try and give you some useful advice. Without looking at your pony it is hard to say why he is doing it. THe majority of the ime it is either due to muscle inflexibility or pain. You would have to get an equine body worker out to see whether he is ok in terms of muscular discomfort. Otherwise it sounds like he may benefit hugely from a basic stretching routine. Don't underestimate how much stretching will benefit your horse. The effects will be noticed within 2 weeks, so if this is the problem you should notice a vast improvement straight away. There is a stretching routine with pictures provided by a therapsit on the riaflex web page. It should come up under riaflex-equine in a search engine.
Hope this helps,
Good luck!
 
You've correctly identified the problem which is he is unbalanced. You need to get back to basics. Support your horse on the outside rein & use the inside leg and consentrate on him moving straight. Keep a good contact. Ride him around the school keping his head & neck straight. Do not let him bend his neck. You must teach him to bend through his body.Leg yielding will greatly improve his balance, it teaches him to bring his hocks underneath him which gives better balance & his canter. Stretching exercises are fine but these alone will not sort out the balance problem. Gradually his balance will improve, he will engage his rear end properly, produce loads more power, loosen through his back & carry himself in a correct outline. When his back loosens you will be able to comfortably sit in trot without bouncing & feel the power coming through from behind. When this balance is established you will be able to approach jumps at a steady balanced rythm & on landing you will maintain the rythm & not charge away. He will also make a better shape over a jump. This is in brief but it will take some time. Good Luck.
 
thank you all,
i have been doing lateral movements like shoulder in, leg yeild and i also increase my circles and then push him to the outside with a stronger contact with my outside rein and move him sideways back to the track with my insidse leg. He performs the lateral movements well, but again, he gets increadibly tense and stressed. He starts to sweat and chomping his bit. He is not in pain, we had a back thysiotherepist come and she loosened his muscles, she also said that he is in no muscle discomfort. i have tried cantering him on the lunge to improve his canter but he just gallops round in circles and brings all the sand up the arena! Before we got him he had been doing BSJA only. The owner bred him for showjumping. Whenever he got in an arena, he'd have 10 mins warming up then get straight to jumping. He'd have 1/2 an hr of jumping. EVERY day! Maybe that is causing his tenseness in the arena! He had been overfaced as well, and started rearing before entering the ring. We luckily solved that but he is so stressed and tense it make you quite upset to see, because he tries soooo hard. i would really love to solve this problem as well, because he has a smashing comformation, and could perform a delightful test.
XXM4E
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Hi:) On the yard that I used to work we got to school a horse with similar problems. Maybe some bits and pieces of his training programme will be usuful for you. We decided to take him back to basics which might not suit you.

Here is the simplified description of a programme that we followed for 4 months with that horse:
First month – I hacked him in a walk and trot only for one hour (lots of hill work on the contact so he had to push from behind rather than pull himself up with his front legs), then he went on the lunge for 20 minutes working on a chambon (4 changes of direction).
I rode 5 days a week and he had an off time at weekends. On Mondays I rode 40 minutes walk and 20 minutes trot (trying to get him stretch down as much as possible).

Second month – I still lunged him for 20 minutes on a chambon before every ridden session. This time we added trot poles on the lunge and I started riding in the arena. He was moving in much better rhythm already, didn’t fight the contact every minute of a ride and didn’t charge forward every other stride.
I rode about 45 minutes on top of the lunging time but still only in trot. I had four poles on one wall and three poles on the other wall and rode him through it every so often during the session. This was done every day apart from weekends. I also practised several loosening exercises: 1)A LOT of transitions from a working trot to a very very slow trot. This exercise is proved to have a softening effect on the horse’s body especially working well with stiff horses (you basically go large in walk keeping your horse straight along the wall, after 10 strides of walk you ask for a transition to a very slow trot; after 4-5 strides you ask for a transition back to walk). This would need to be repeated for 10-12 minutes every day (after a while your horse should be soft and smooth when making transitions) . 2) Neck loosening – bending from one side to another (without pulling on the reins), 3) walking ground poles 4) turns on the haunches and forehand 4) a lot flexing and counter-flexing on big circles in walk and trot 5) serpentines and all sorts of arena figures requiring frequent changes of direction 6) walking and trotting over ground poles (stretching the topline) 7) shoulder-in 8) lots of walk to halt transitions (about three strides of walk and halt and again and again – for about 10 minutes every day).

Third and fourth month – we started introducing canter in the beginning of the third month. It was strange to canter him again but he was definitely much calmer and better balanced! Initially he was cantered for four strides only and then trot. He got a bit agitated with this exercise at first but settled after a couple of weeks. After about 4 weeks I could go from walk to four strides of canter and to walk again quite smoothly. We did lots of transitions like that to work on his balance.
Exercises that he had ‘in plan’ included:
1) leg-yield to canter (to supple and balance)
2) rein – back (especially in a sequence: walk-canter-trot-walk-halt-rein back and transition to trot straight away – canter-walk-halt-rein back)
3) gear changes in trot and later in canter (it excited him so I tried not to overdo the last one)
4) cantering the ground poles on a circle (ground poles equally spaced around a 20-meter circle)

I also read a lot of ‘schooling for dressage’ books and tried to incorporate all sorts of loosening, softening and lightening exercises.
I AM SORRY FOR THE LENGHT OF THE POST
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Lots of good tips form sapphire girl. When I started to have lessons again, I was told that my trot was unbalanced and hurried and that is why horse was racing round and falling in/out. In the first lesson, all we did was to walk around in straight lines and turns and to trot very slowly. The trot felt very slow but on the video, it was lovely and balanced.
My trainers favourite saying was this:
"If you cannot control the horse in the speed that you are going, then slow it down. If you control the pace, you can control the horse."
This is very true.
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well said. One more popular quote: You cannot improve the bad pace by staying in it.
Slowing down is probably the best thing you can do as a horse has to really concentrate to carry himself. Let's hope morgan4eva will get there in the end:)
 
Thanks for all your really helpful advice, I am trying all these and will keep you posted as to how he improves. I have also read lots of books! Another thing Iam not sure how to progress with is the jumping side of things, some people say dont jump him if it stresses him, others say do a little every time you school to take the excitement away from it. He tends to grab the bit in the last 4 or 5 strides or so and take control of the jumping. He doesnt particulaly throw his head in the air and jumps pretty well, but it is all a bit fast and gets faster if we are doing a course and a bit sloppy. I have been jumping him a couple of times a week, doing grids and poles on the ground to make him look. I have also started to make him halt sometimes, or turn a circle (not too close to the jump!) so that he gets the idea he does not always end up doing the jump and trying to get him to listen to me! What do you think,is this the right way to take it.
 
Hi!
I am very happy to hear you found some things helpful. I will be very interested to hear all about your progress (training horses is my passion and I love to learn!).
As to jumping - I personally never jump horses that have problems with flatwork - as your mare is unbalanced she will find jumping stressful and no fun. Once the basic flatwork is sorted and she is in control of her body (and you of yours) it should all be more enjoyable for her.
I think your approach is very good in principle i.e. gridwork, halts, slowing down. You just need to be ever so consistent and never loose temper and you will get there. I love gridwork and think it's one of the best gymnastic exercises and has hundreds of benefits including calming down hot horses. First of all I would try jumping from trot ONLY for about two months or till she tackles it patiently and carefully without rushing.

I would start with trot poles on the ground - is she getting excited when she sees them? repeat trot poles over and over again till you can circle around the arena and over the trot poles without a single change to the rhythm - it may take a week or a month or half a year - depending on your skills and the horse's will to cooperate.
Try to think what makes her excited - is she afraid? just 'hot'? are you anticipating the jumps?
Be very very steady in all gaits when warming up (concentrate on aligning your body properly and seating well in balance).
Once your trot pole is faultless put a crosspole after four trot poles (avarage distances: 1.45m between trotpoles and then 3.30m from the last trot pole to the low cross-pole; but check if that suits her) and again let the horse learn - trot over the poles like the cross pole wasn't there, let her jump it as quietly as you possibly can. If she rushes don't make a big deal of it, just halt after a fence and proceed again. Repeat 10-15 times on each rein and be very observant. Let her know when she is a good girl:) Finish on the quietest possible jump.
When she does that well, start adding further fences to the grid, related distances and so on but try jumping from the trot only. If she rushes towards the grid make her trot on a 15m (as slow as possible and in a good rhythm) circle as long as she needs to calm down.

Feel free to PM me or email me (email is on my profile page) and I will try give you more exercises to try. I always take notes on various horses I school so will look up my journals when I get home! If any one's programme seem suitable for your mare I will post it for you:)

Keep me updated:)
 
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