After covering this topic for the trot last week, we’re naturally going to stride straight into the canter this week!
Here’s a link to the trot video in case you missed it!
The canter lengthening first appears in 1st level, and then medium canter is asked from 2nd Level to Grand Prix. The big difference between lengthening & medium canter is that medium maintains collection, but in canter lengthening, you want to show a lengthening of the stride.
The trickiest thing is the transition into and out of the medium canter but here are some tips to help you get your horse thinking about developing their canter, and help you get those all-important points this show season!
- Firstly, give your horse a nice long warm-up before you start working on medium canter work.
- Start on a 20m circle and pick up the canter establishing contact, tempo, and frame on an accurate circle.
- Using your calf, start asking the horse for a bigger canter just for a few strides, before bringing them back again with a half-halt-give repetition.
- Repeat this process and do the same in the opposite direction.
Note! Always ask for your increase or decrease on the uphill part of the canter!
Also important to note is the significance of your seat trajectory. Your seat moves in a circular motion as the horse’s back goes up, level and downhill with the motion of the canter.
For collected canter, we make a circle motion, but to lengthen the canter and make the strides bigger, we swish the saddle in a longer oval from back to front of the saddle
We’re not driving from the hips for longer stride, but using your leg, pressing from the calf and swinging the hips.
Once you are comfortable with this on the circle, you can try it on the long side. Here’s the steps to really develop the medium canter along the rail:
- Ride a really good corner.
- Get the bend off the leg and then take the time to ride them straight and uphill.
- Push on and ride a slower and bigger medium canter along the rail.
- Use a small circle to bring them back from the medium canter strides
- Then go back to the rail and repeat
- You’ll eventually get to the point that the circle is not necessary and a little shoulder-fore and half-halt will bring them back to the collection.
- Don’t over-drill this exercise as it takes a lot of building up. Shorts bursts of quality work will lead to more improvement!
Watch the video where I demonstrate this on Mercurio. He has some lovely clearly demonstrable stride lengthening but as you’ll see in the video, the correct setup is important to nail the development of the gait. Have a look and let me know in the comments if you find it helpful!
Thanks for watching!
