Exercises for improving the Canter

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Haflinger

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Blu has a tendency to get a little bit flat and rushed in her canter, so I could do with some exercises that I can do in the school to get her bouncing and get a more steady 'jumping' canter..
Suggestions please
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I'll be interested in the responses you get to this, Coco has the tendancy to go flat when he thinks he's doing dressage and not jumping. Hopefully some good advice will turn up
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At a recent Carl Hester demo he suggested slowing them down and shortening their stride then letting them go forward again. He recommended this exercise in trot and canter. I've certainly seen an improvement in my mare's trot in last 3 weeks!
 
Ah I was on a post about this very subject on mmh webby

A top trainer posted this and I've been trying it with good success it has to be said. I'm on nr too and someone's posted this there too this week. Spooky bit like all the mags who seem to run the same story and all the clothes designers who all have the same styles coming out (how do they all know to design skinny jeans the same year lol).


A good exercise to help your horse to shorten his canter stride is to work the trot-canter canter -trot transition.
On a large circle , make frequent transitions from trot to canter and canter to trot. Gradually decrease the number of trot steps between each transition until the horse feels comfortable doing three to five trot steps only. This may take a few schooling sessions to achieve, but you will start to find "moments" where the horse starts to shorten his stride and frame in canter . When he does , support him with your leg and little by little as his strength and balance improves these "moments" will become more frequent as he starts to adjust his stride length before making a transition. You can then decide how many shorter strides you want to ride , sometimes making the downwards transition and othertimes riding forwards to working canter again.
The best place in the school to lengthen the canter stride is on the long side. Start a twenty metre canter circle at A . On the last quarter of the circle start to encourage the horse forwards with a positive leg aid and leave the circle going onto the long-side with a bigger, bolder canter. On reaching C start another twenty metre circle, use your canter-trot trot-canter transitions to re balance the canter and then go again on the next long side . The transitions on the circle will help to improve impulsion and the horse will start to enjoy opening his canter on the long side.
 
flat and rushed canter, my horse has same tendancy. its down to him dropping onto the forhand, and my hand. as said transitions are good and stops you letting a bad canter get worse by continuing round and round on a 20m circle in hope! depending what stage your at with blu's schooling have you tried counter canter, i find it helps sit them up engage the hindquarters so improves normal canter. i also try riding a corner rather than a smooth quarter circle in the corner of the arena for same reason. ensure you have her working from your inside leg to outside hand contact and accepting half halts for it to work. if she doesnt get too excited good old pole work might help
 
Thank you, will try and do some of that tonight.
marieE - I am going to try and get some poles out in my lesson next week, and have a mess about with those
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We do counter canter, and have just started teaching her flying changes.
 
Ditto to the counter canter. I've been trying that on Beau and not only does it make him more alert he goes better. We usually do lots of Trot -Canter -Trot transitions, but picking up canter on the long and short sides and not corners, then some counter canter - all in a light seat. Then I do canter circles - leaving the track and picking up canter on first stride off track then back to trot at the marker and then do some walk-canter-walk transitions and ride him forwards but slower until he gets a bit more 'bouncy' and in what I would say is a jumping canter then let lengthen him out if we need.

I've been doing this for a few weeks and it does seem to be helping.
 
Oh dear, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, polework? I've just reeled off a big post on it so I won't bore you again but it's here. If you haven't done polework then best to start off slowly but if you have done bits then there are lots of ways to develop a much bouncier, short-striding canter and get rhythmical and balanced whilst doing so. For shorter strides, just carefully add more poles to the exercises described.
 
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