Are you struggling to develop a beautiful and lofty medium trot or trot lengthening? As you move up the levels, you must develop different “gears” in your horse’s trot to where you have a “lengthening” and a “medium” version of the gait.
In this week’s video we’re going talk about how to ride both these gait variations in the trot to help you improve your scores in your dressage tests this summer!
The trot lengthening first appears in 1st level, and then medium trot is asked from 2nd Level to Grand Prix. The difference between these is the amount of collection and uphill balance required. However, the basic idea is the same: longer, but not quicker strides!
In order to achieve this length without increasing the speed, the horse needs to be supple, round, and loose through the back.
Here’s some tips to help you execute the trot lengthening and medium trot:
- Start on a 20m circle and pick up the trot establishing contact, tempo, and frame on an accurate circle.
- Using your calf, start asking the horse for a bigger trot 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.
It’s important to note that this is tough work for your horse, and they need to build muscle to be able to do it correctly and comfortably, so don’t drill this sort of work daily. Instead, work on the suppleness, and basic roundness & throughness of your horse as this builds the foundations from which you can scale up to the stride development work.
Once you are comfortable with this on the circle, you can try it on the diagonal. Here’s the steps to really perfect the trot across the diagonal:
- Ride a really good corner.
- Get the bend off the leg and then take the time to ride them straight and uphill.
- Once they’re in an uphill balance, push on with your leg and develop the medium trot down the diagonal.
- If they get strong and you feel a half-halt won’t be enough to bring them back from the medium trot strides, do a circle.
- The MOST important thing in the medium trot is the beginning and the end. Go through the corner, get bend, then get them straight and uphill, develop the strides and successfully finish with the half-halt!
Watch the video where I demonstrate this on Mercurio. He has some lovely clearly demonstrable trot 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!
