Training more acceptance of the leg - bigger, not faster.

[YoungNag22]

Hi All!!

Hoping for you knowledgeable lot to hit me with some helpful tips and exercises!

I have a 9 yr old ex racehorse I've had for 2yrs and we are now starting to train Novice level flatwork at home. I'm finding i now really need to be able to get some gear changes within the paces without him getting faster and bringing tension in so need to train more acceptance of my leg and start to find some bigger/more uphill movement rather than rushing particularly in the trot which naturally he isn't as balanced in compared to his walk and canter.

He is very much naturally on the forehand so i am constantly trying to work on getting him uphill and into self carriage which is slowly improving as he has a tendency to get heavy in the hand but now feel if i could get that bit more leg on and get a reaction that isn't faster this will be our lightbulb moment for our next stage.

I regularly use transition work, leg yielding on the circle, polework, hillwork etc but hoping for some more useful tips and exercises to help with our schooling.

Thanks in advance! x

 

[be positive]

If he finds canter easier than trot then I would use more canter work to get him accepting the leg and find an extra gear or two, if he gets that he should start to sit a little more and while it may not actually impact much on the trot it should help with him understanding that leg means more power not more speed and will translate into his work generally.
I would do plenty transitions, in and out of canter as well as within it and keep the intensity of work within his comfort zone while looking for short periods of quality trot to develop, the heavy feel in your hand may get worse before he truly lightens up so don't try to fix everything at the same time.

 

[White Horse2]

Also have similar challenges, trainer advised to bring the horse back and make the movement smaller, then go to where we were before, I'm not a trainer, does that make sense, then go on from that.

 

[paddi22]

I found doing lots of canter to walk transitions every 5 or 6 strides up steep hills really helped mine. then when I changed them to canter to trot they were automatically doing a more balanced trot taking more weight behind. apart from that it's just tons of half halts!

 

[Teaboy]

How is his suppleness? Without that you won’t find bigger.
If that’s ok I would be bringing him back thinking about collecting then asking to working trot/canter again and so on, short and sweet really get him listening to your seat. Theres quite a few other exercises you can do but for me I would work on lateral work first as that will help his suppleness and as such his stride length - it will also get him listening more to your aids.

 

[Equi]

Use all as above but also remember to praise with pressure and release. If he give even one or two strides of "good" work let him go and lots of praise. Pick up and try it again.

 

[Cragrat]

Use all as above but also remember to praise with pressure and release. If he give even one or two strides of "good" work let him go and lots of praise. Pick up and try it again.

I had it explained as an un-fit human doing burpees. If you ask for 10 continous minutes staight away, they will get tired, stiff, lose form, get grumpy. So ask for a few seconds, relax, praise the effort even if it's not perfect, and build over months, not expecting sustained perfection too quickly.