How to teach flying changes

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MissJessica

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Today we did our first planned flying change.
It took many failed attempts, my boys canter can be fast & enthusiastic & I started by riding a figure of 8 doing simple changes eventually reducing the trot to nothing.
We got many disunited changes, front end change only.
The times he didn't understand he ran away from my leg, thinking I was asking for forwards.
We did one perfect & ended.

I want to build on this, yes they're ugly, rushed & fast but I'm sure we can control later once the understanding is there. What other exercises do you a all use?

Thank you.
 
Has your horse got the strength to do them? It takes a long time to get them to the point where they are strong enough to do a clean change. Mine is a greener than green HW cob and he will offer changes, but he has to do a giant humping leap to do them. Hes not being asked to do them in any shape or form, but like I said, hes young and green and trying very hard to do the right thing, and that quite often ends in the wrong thing :lol:

The fact you say he is strong and enthusiastic sounds like he is rushing,, and no horse can do a clean change when its rushing. What does your instructor say?
 
A horse has to be properly balanced, so ugly transitions and uneven gaits just tell you that more schooling is required, it not about some particular event, its about building strength, balance, cadence etc etc, when these things come together you just need to "think" , and apply light aids.
Look at the McCoy dressage video: in the right hands, that schoolmaster dressage horse would have looked elegant, instead what we got was rather painful.
 
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It sounds like you need a more collected canter. Could you perhaps work on collecting the canter and establishing at least a few strides of counter-canter first (over several/lots of sessions of course) ?
 
The act of teaching through simple changes is correct BUT a simple change is canter to walk and then walk to canter not through trot. You need a good established correct simple change and then slowly reduce the walk strides.
 
shortstuff99 said:
The act of teaching through simple changes is correct BUT a simple change is canter to walk and then walk to canter not through trot. You need a good established correct simple change and then slowly reduce the walk strides.
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Ditto this, flying changes should be tight through the walk not the trot.
You need the work on your walk to canter transitions and your canter to walk transitions (for me these are the harder of the 2)
Only when you can go from a nice well balanced canter to a nice well balanced walk with no messiness in between can you even start to think about flying changes
 
I taught my horse for fun - at the level we are at we don't need them.

I found ground poles useless - either he was reaching for them or couldn't work out to switch over the pole. Plus I was riding to the pole rather than the horse.

I work on collected canter anyway and simple changes (walk to canter) at home to gather him up (big horse!) so all it took was being very obvious with my aids and a very obvious turn across the middle of school (a 2 loop serpentine really), gather up into my seat and make an obvious switch of aids.
This worked really well for us - I've never actually ridden a change (ie. Asked for a change) in my life other than natural changes when jumping.
Our instructor was very impressed!! Once he understood the change aids they are now less obvious and straighter, we can do 3 time on the centre line! :D

OP it sounds as though you need to get your horse more off the forehand and gathered up, and practice walk canters first :) but it does come together! :)
 
Can you do walk to canter to walk?

pick up either leg from walk on a straight line or circle?

ride counter canter both on straight lines and 20m circles with INSIDE flexion and no loss of balance?

ride counter canter leg yields with no loss of balance?

Go from collected to medium to collected canter with ease and no loss of balance?

if you cant do lal those you arent ready to be teaching flying changes.
 
Prince33Sp4rkle said:
Can you do walk to canter to walk?

pick up either leg from walk on a straight line or circle?

ride counter canter both on straight lines and 20m circles with INSIDE flexion and no loss of balance?

ride counter canter leg yields with no loss of balance?

Go from collected to medium to collected canter with ease and no loss of balance?

if you cant do lal those you arent ready to be teaching flying changes.
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Prince33Sp4rkle out of interest if I can do the above on my horse, what would your suggestion be? I only ask as We are competent of the above and are at the next stage and need to incorporate a flying change for my Eventing tests next year...sorry to hijack the post.
 
I have asked a couple of times but the response is varied from not at all, to changing just the front end. He can be a lazy toad so I'm wondering whether I am missing the power behind sometimes
 
ok so the best exercise i have found:

turn down the centre line in eg right canter. Then LY back to the track off your LEFT leg(so you are effectively doing a counter canter LY). You should have left bend.

ask for the change as you hit the track.

you could experiment with touching the horse with a whip behind your leg as you ask to encourage him to jump through. dont punish a leap or a buck as long as he changes...sometimes they just need to know its ok to jump up a bit to get their legs sorted :)

if he is lazy lots of on/back to compress the canter and get the hind leg jumping before you start the changes work.
 
Prince33Sp4rkle said:
ok so the best exercise i have found:

turn down the centre line in eg right canter. Then LY back to the track off your LEFT leg(so you are effectively doing a counter canter LY). You should have left bend.

ask for the change as you hit the track.

you could experiment with touching the horse with a whip behind your leg as you ask to encourage him to jump through. dont punish a leap or a buck as long as he changes...sometimes they just need to know its ok to jump up a bit to get their legs sorted :)

if he is lazy lots of on/back to compress the canter and get the hind leg jumping before you start the changes work.
Click to expand...

Thank you PS - very interesting :)
 
Under-the-radar said:
Thank you PS - very interesting :)
Click to expand...

This is the exercise I used to teach mine. It did take a long time for the penny to drop but now it has he's getting 7's at Advanced Medium for them and we have our 4 time and 3 time changes at home too. He always used to just change in front but a lot of work on the quality of his canter and just repeating the above exercise and eventually he got it.
 
Thank you PS, I gave your advice a try today.

He actually got the message 'hallelujah!' A bit late behind a couple of times but I think that is him being lazy. I think perhaps best not to force the issue with him by doing it too many times, but I will certainly use that exercise again and maybe ask for some forward and back before to get him properly engaged.
 
....then if you have one like we have, when trying to work on counter canter (which he can do), he tries to anticipate a change back to true canter when he thinks it's a much better idea to be on a balanced (easier) lead ... The joys of trying to re school older horse after years of letting him change without even asking when jumping.

He thinks he's being a good boy changing automatically, so it's been a lot of work rewarding him for listening to ME and letting ME decide which leg we should be on and stay on!

Lesson learned by me - I allowed it to happen in the first place :-/
 
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