Canter is a lot more complicated than I thought!

[piftisha]

I've been cantering happily, if a little bouncily, around the school for awhile now, and now the RI has decided he is going to perfect my position and start teaching me how to make the horse under me go correctly and balanced as well as having a correct position.

Boy is there a lot going on that I hadn't realized! Shoulders back, connect your hands to your seat, strong in the upper body, sit down, sit deep, outside rein, slow the front of the horse and get the back end to engage...and on and on...

Does anyone have any tips for this? It seems like so many little bits that have to fit together! Canter is a lot more nuanced than it looks, and feels to a novice rider.:o

[Hannah.Horsie]

To me a perfect canter is not falling off! I'm so thats the only advice i can give you im a novice :o

[Skib]

Two different things here: "perfecting your position" and helping the horse go well.
The first is (in my opinion) unachievable as few riders have perfect bodies and concentrating on forcing ourselves into the correct textbook shape will stiffen us and impede the horse. Thus defeating the second objective.

The second objective to support and balance the horse is a good idea. But only when you are ready and secure enough in canter to adjust your legs, hands, back etc as you ride.
My suggestion is to concentrate on altering just one thing at a time. So you could ask the instructor to break it down into small steps.
If you are bouncing a bit in canter, he may be thinking that steadying the horse might give you a smoother ride. But if in my experience, if one starts to worry about cantering it will probably make things worse.

[cvb]

The problem with any riding as that we're all connected - so if you adjust here it affects there and then you end up with a new adjustment to make :rolleyes:

Often what we need to do is make small adjustments in the right direction and let ourselves and the horse adjust to that new equilibrium before adjusting again.

This can sometimes be frustrating when you've done what the RI has asked, and then they tell you its still not right ;)

What can help is to ask for feedback of when it is better/right, and think about how "right" (or "better") FEELS. Through the whole of you.

I've been working with my mother (my main "victim" ;) ) yesterday and today on cantering in a half-seat. I gave her the ingredients to work with and some exercises in trot to play with (we were out on a stubble field so could practice on quite lengthy straight line trots or canters :) ). And she added it up and put it together.

(that and she worked out that a new girth was making the saddle less stable, affecting her balance, and hence affecting the horse !)

[piftisha]

I think I will try to get him to break it down a little more tomorrow. I am stable enough now to move things around quite a bit, and we've done canter w/no stirrups, and canter on the horse that has a tendency to stumble, so I think he's doing this because I'm really stable now.

We'll see what happens tomorrow - its a group so I'll have a bit of a chance to work on things without the spotlight being on me.:)