Schooling problem

[colourednut]

Hi
Any suggestions welcome. I have a problem with one of my horses. Our transitions from walk to trot, trot to walk at absolutely fine. If fact the transition from trot to canter is good. I have a problem when in canter, he gets much stronger and is very reluctant to come down from canter to trot. So in my mind I go back to trot/walk/walk trot transitions to try and regroup but it doesn't seem to work. I've stopped letting him canter around and around but make sure we do plenty of transitions up and down. Any suggestions or excercises gladly received

 

[helencharlie]

I have a similar problem. Lots of canter work, makes Charlie very strong and reluctant to come back to trot, even producing a lovely collected canter, I hadnt asked for. My solution was to keep him cantering around. When he begins to tire, I just keep encouraging the canter forwards.Charlie usually gets strong in trot post canter, I just do lots of variety, transistions, circles, serfepentines etc. I usually get a good quality trot. I also have some schooling sessions in walk only, and take him for regular gallops. You also try lunging. I dont know if this is of any help.

 

[K27]

Transitions are fab for balancing them- pherhaps he just needs to be stronger behind and take more weight onto the hindlegs, so that he doesn't feel so strung out and strong in the hand.

You could try lots of walk -canter- walk transitions on a 20metre circle, and gradually once he is feeling lighter in the hand and working over the back you could try to start going large.- I'd keep the canter on a large circle for the time being as you've been doing.

One of mine was a bit like this too when he was young and unbalanced in the canter, and I just had to make sure that I kept my hands really soft and allowing when he was soft so that he couldn't take a hold, and used my legs really strongly so that he couldn't run away from the leg contact too.

It can take quite a while but you'll def get over the problem!
Gd luck!

 

[lifeslemons]

[ QUOTE ]
Transitions are fab for balancing them- pherhaps he just needs to be stronger behind and take more weight onto the hindlegs, so that he doesn't feel so strung out and strong in the hand.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ditto. An exercise I have recently been taught, and which I also used today when teaching, has proved invaluable, since it gets the horses responding to the aids and sitting on their back end, as described above.

Basically, on a twenty metre circle, place on each of the four circle points a small cross pole/verticle. It need only be 30 cm high. The aim of the exercise is to have the horse keeping a consistant rhythm in the canter and for them to be meeting the fence consistantly in the correct place, so that the small fence can literally be taken as part of their canter stride. To achieve this, the rider obviously has to think and react very quickly, and work hard, which will eventually get the horse very responsive to the aids. By the end of the excercise the horse should hopefully need only the most smallest of adjustments (collection/lengthening) in front of the fence.

Crucially, this exercise not only gets the horse 'off the aids' but also ensures the canter has more lift or 'jump' and that the horse is using its hocks, (which the basculing, even over the tiny jump, helps.) If you think you will struggle to start with, you could try using just two fences on opposite circle points.

To extend the exercise and introduce more collection, you can aim to place more and more strides in between the fence. In a arena with a short side of 20m, usually there are three strides between the wall and the fence, and back from the fence to the wall (on a big horse.) However, once the horse becomes used to the excercise and more supple, you could try anything up to six strides between the wall and fence, and visa versa!

Once you are able to make adjustments within the gait with exercises like this, hopefully you will be able to have more success with transistions themselves!

Good luck!