Get perfect trot to canter transitions

 Mannn… we have been taught some stuff about riding that makes it so much harder than it needs to be.  So it makes me laugh when I put something in the category of “horse training articles”, because invariably it’s not the horses we’re training. 

Take trot to canter for example.  Depending on how you were taught to ride, you might have been taught to kick your horse to go faster, or to squeeze them, or maybe you were taught the more precise put one leg on the girth and the other behind the girth or even to rotate your body.

99 times out of a hundred, all of these ways of getting a horse to go faster are what I call “over-riding.”  They disconnect your riding seat, which disconnects you from your horse.  That’s why sooo many people have trouble with their trot to canter transitions.  A disconnected transition like that means a crappy canter too. 

It has your horse falling on their front end, which has all kinds of behavior and health repercussions from the jarring in the their front end.  Depending on what kind of personality they have you’ll get different reactions to them falling on their front end:

• A Flight horse will run faster trying to catch up to their front legs (which means you’re trying to stop them from going faster with the reins.)
• A Caretaker Horse won’t want to go forward properly or at all because they think you’re not safe being so disconnected from them and they’re busy trying to stay underneath you.
• A Fight horse who gets p’ed off enough is going to pigroot or buck.  Actually they don’t need to be a Fight horse to pigroot or buck, there’s all kinds of reasons for that behavior that are addressed with the simple technique that I ‘m talking about further down.
• And I haven’t figured out the Fidget, Faint or Warrior horses off the top of my head.  I’ll think on that and maybe talk about it later in the comments.

Have a feel of this for yourself.

A chair is a great place to focus on the feel of something before you add the distraction of your horse.  Sit facing the back of the chair, straddling it as per Donna in the picture here.  Wriggle around until you feel your seat bones flat on the chair. 

• Now put one leg in the position it would be on the girth and take the other leg back.  Can you feel that your seat bones are no longer flat underneath you and there’s a twist in your body?   First of all it actually unbalances you and it’s also confusing for a horse.  Some of them have figured out what the people mean when they signal like that, but that’s down to their mind reading skills not the physical riding position.  If you really need convincing, stick a couple of books under the chair leg – you’ll get the same result.
• Try another one – lift your legs a little for a kick and feel what’s happening to your seat bones.  Apart from the unnecessary rudeness of it, it disconnects your seat doesn’t it?  That means that if the horse does read your mind and go into a canter, then you’re not “together” in that canter.  Does that make sense?
• Now this one – squeeze inwards with your heels, which when you’re sitting on your horse means coming up a little into the squeeze.  Did you feel the disconnect then too? That disconnect directly translates to being disconnected in the canter itself.  Yeah yeah lots of people have brought themselves into the right position with their muscles, but they’re still needing to use the reins to get what they want because they and their horse are not together.

All the super lovely riders make cantering look effortless because a good canter IS effortless.

Try this technique for a perfect trot to canter transition.

When you’re confident that you’re trotting along, nice and relaxed – on a loose rein, so you don’t jab them in the mouth,  just THINK about canter for a few seconds – maybe 5 seconds or so – allow yourself to feel the canter in your imagination.  Nothing’s likely to happen the first time or even the second, so after about 5 seconds, go back to thinking trot and stay trotting for a while, nice and relaxed, ho hum smiling.

Then just THINK about canter again for a few seconds again, allowing yourself to feel the canter in your imagination for maybe 5 seconds or so and because it’s still unlikely that anything will happen this time either, smile a little, start thinking trot again and relax into the trotting for a while.

Repeat this as many times as you need to, to give your horse a chance to catch up to this new way of communicating.  The key to success will be the clear difference between your “ho hum just trotting” thoughts and your “feeling the canter in your imagination”. 

You might need to relax into YOURSELF noticing the difference between the trot and the canter in your thoughts, in which case it might take more repeats of the above for YOU to feel the difference before your horse can get clear about what you’re thinking. 

There’s two things happening here:

1. Horses are the ultimate mind readers.
2.  When you THINK about something you are engaging up to 40% of the muscles used in whatever you’re thinking about. 

If there’s tension in YOUR body when you think about cantering, then you’re communicating tension to your horse which is not useful.  That’s one of my classic Aussie understatements.  Communicating tension makes us think we’re crappy riders when we’re not really crappy at all – just tense, which we can fix.  We’ll talk more about what you can do to fix that further down.

After a few repeats, you’ll FEEL your horse starting to think about about it, questioning “does she mean she wants me to canter?”  Maybe you’ll even feel them gathering themselves underneath you getting ready to pop into the canter or maybe they’ll even flow into the canter sweetly.   Whichever happens, make it clear that yes!  that’s exactly what you’re looking for – appreciate the heck out of them and tell them what an absolute star he or she is.

The canter you’ll get when you get your transitions established this way, will be a canter that comes from their back end where it should be coming from.  They will have lifted their back and they’ll be able to carry you with strength and ease, for a long and happy ridden life.  There’ll be a TOGETHERNESS in it, to be able to ride that canter faster or slower easily, without wrestling with the reins – probably without even touching the reins.

And once you’ve established the transition clearly like this, you can go back to adding the fancy cues that tell them which leg to lead with, how to sit back on their butt more and collect and all kinds of yummy stuff – so long as you’re not disconnecting your seat in those cues!

Before you dash off to your horse to try this, let’s check out this tension thing. Are you relaxed when you THINK about cantering?

I mean right now while you’re still sitting with your seat bones flat on that chair – THINK about cantering.  Did you frown?  Did your body tense up or your breathing get faster or did you in any way feel crappy about the THOUGHT of cantering?

That’s freaking perfect!

If you did, then this is your Inner Guidance system PERFECTLY at work – telling you that there’s something to know or do BEFORE you go and try this lovely technique.  No big deal.  That’s what our Inner Guidance system is for, to guide us to being the better riders that we want to be.

So… think about trotting.  Does your body tense up, your breathing change or did you in any way feel even slightly crappy at the thought of trotting?

If you did, that’s a perfect Inner Guidance system at work too!  And it just means there’s something you need to know or do about the trot.

Let’s drop back to a walk in our mind and see if this is where the problem / opportunity is.  THINK about walking your horse.  Feel the walk in your mind.  IS there any frowning or tension or change in the way you’re breathing or any other feeling of crappy?

If there’s no tension in the walk, then the walk to trot transition wants improvement and you can do something similar to how I’ve described the trot to canter transition.

If there is tension when you think about the walk, that’s freaking perfect too!  It just means that the problem / opportunity lies elsewhere: 

• It could be that your horse is too nervous about too many things yet to be safe with you in the saddle (it makes me shake my head to think that people think it’s normal for horses to be nervy) – that is soooo much easier to fix before we get on. 
• It could be in an unstable riding seat (we teach a magnetic riding seat here), it might be that fright imprint that I keep talking about, where the tension that gets locked into us when we fall off,  means that we’re tense or nervous every time we get on.
• It might be that there’s no clear communication happening with our horse yet and trying to achieve that on their back is a much harder way to learn it. 
• It could be that we’re getting on in an unsafe manner (shockingly that’s 99% of riders). 
• Or a saddle that could pinch if you move the wrong way. 
• There’s lots of possibilities.

Our Fast Track to Brilliant Riding is the only place I know where you get to address ALL those possibilities, step by step, systematically eliminating every source of nerves and confusion, creating a partnership and a bond together that creates soul mates.  Until one day, not too far away, you’ll be cantering down the big open paddock, like Steve on my Oliver in the photo as happy as you please. 

Today’s photo captured a lulu of a moment that makes me burst with pride for them.  Steve is riding Oliver down the taped laneway to the big 5 acre paddock.  The rest of the herd decided to go with them and started cantering past them in that narrow space.  Steve felt Oliver look to him and and ask “can we go too?” Steve said “no not this time” and relaxed his seat.  Oliver relaxed and stayed with him mentally emotionally and physically relaxed as the other (I think there were ten) horses went cantering and then galloping past.  THAT’s the kind of co-operation you get when you work with this super connected way of being with a horse.

Steve and Oliver above and Sandra and Milly below are both examples of the kind of togetherness you can achieve with this Fast Track program.

The Fast Track to Brilliant Riding