The ability to lengthen a horse’s paces is crucial even if there is no intention on doing a Dressage test in your life.
Before beginning to lengthen the canter, start at the trot.
Whether your horse is green and is just beginning to perform lengthened trot or is more established but needs to improve suspension and reach, these tips can help to improve it.
When your horse is first learning, it can take quite a lot of space to get your horse to lengthen his trot.
By doing it outside on a hack or in a field, you can make sure that you give your horse enough time for the penny to drop without having to bring him back to a slower trot for a corner or the end of the arena.
You might get very fast steps, but if you feel your horse starting to rush on the forehand, becoming uneven or trying to break into canter; you’ve lost the balance in the lengthened trot.
If you feel the beginnings of any loss of balance, half it if necessary, ride a small circle before attempting to ask for lengthened steps again.
It can be hard to tell the difference between bigger, lengthened steps and faster steps.
Mentally, it can help you to think of walking up steps; if you walk up a staircase going one step at a time then that’s a working trot.
If you go two steps at a time, that’s your lengthened trot. Your steps are bigger and more ground covering, but you aren’t running up the steps and rushing.
Before you ask for the lengthened steps, it’s important to make sure that you engage your horse’s hindquarters and shift the weight backwards.
If you want to lengthen down the long side or across the diagonal for instance, half halt around the short side and corner before you want to ask for the movement. You need to think about containing the energy and winding it up before allowing it to be released in the extension.
Trotting over poles can help to improve suspension in the trot, and also helps to regulate the rhythm.
In order to do this, you want to have a ground person with you. Start with the trotting poles at a comfortable distance for your horse, and trot over them a few times in a rising trot, allowing the horse to soften and lift the back over the poles.
Gradually, have your helper increase the distance between poles until the strides are noticeably longer. It’s important that as you do this you give your lengthened trot aids, so that eventually your horse will be able to perform this without the poles to help.
Text by Sophie Baker
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