Cantering With Still Legs

[mazda]

When I canter or even gallop on hacks im fine with my legs, I keep them still with my heels down. But as soon as I canter in the school everything goes wrong. When cantering the full circuit in the school I am mainly OK, but when I canter 20 metre circles I lift my knees up so my foot wiggles about in the stirup. I think this is because I am concentrating too much on getting the horse to bend and go on the bit. Is this why? Please help because its driving me mad!!!

[Colorado Sunset]

Hi, I have the same problem, have a look at this thread:

http://www.newrider.com/forum/showthread.php?t=52317

Jo

[Dizzy]

I'm sure you right, when we canter in a straight line, we can relax and enjoy the ride, when we canter large in the school, we have time to think about and execute or aids - on a smaller circle, that time is condensed, and though we may know what do, because we are trying to everything correctly, we tend to tense, lose our spontenaety and relaxed position, and try too hard, which makes our aids hard for the horse to read, so they don't respond accordingly, making us try even harder. Which creates a vicious circle.

I had this exact problem today, I had a workshop lesson on my horse, in a small indoor school, with quite a few folk spectating. Our trot work was OK, but our canter work was very hard work for us both. My horse was a star, and tried hard, but she's not very balanced in small schools and my riding let her down :(

The best advice I can give is, if you feel things aren't going to plan, go large, relax and regain a relaxed rythm, with your horse listening to you, and accepting the rien, before you try again.

Don't concentrate on heels down, that creates tension in your lower leg. Instead let your weight fall through your heel, practise in sitting trot, absorb the horses movement through your seat and lower back, use your tummy muscles to support your seat, check that your lower leg is relaxed by wiggling your toes and flexing your ankles.

I think heels down is the most damaging advice anyone can give, if you look at top dressage riders, they don't have thier heels down, their feet are usually parallel to the ground, showjumpers, as do jockeys, do tend to have thier heels down, but they ride in much shorter stirrups. This happens because for thier centre of gravity to fall into thier heel, and because thier stirrup length restricts their leg length, thier heels drop, plus the fact they use the stirrup to brace against for security.

But for general riding, we should just let our wieght fall through our heels, and our feet should rest on our stirrups - not be supported by them.

Riding without stirrups will sort out any problems, and help you to define your leg aids.

[jUmPingIsLifE]

i definatly have that problem! the second i put myself cantering on a small circle my leg seems to just loose it and starts to swing. its gotten better over the past year or two but every once in a while i will be cantering on a small circle and relize im doing it again. for me it was just having someone yell at me and making a real effort to nip it in the butt. i started by letting the horse go a little bit and not worrying so much about him as me and once i steadied myself i started by getting the bend i wanted then asking for the horse to really round then really think "LOWER LEG" and that kind of fixed it for me.

i still catch myself doing it once in a while though.

[ColouredChaos]

Ride without stirrups more, you'll soon learn to relax the leg more to gain a deeper seat and once the seat is deep you legs will steady.

[mazda]

Hey I've sorted out my ploblem! It was simply that I was concentrating on everything else I was suposed to be doing and my legs were escaping that list! Now i alost do it naturally thanks for the tips xxxxx