Biomechanics of Canter -- Weight bearing leg and picking up wrong leads

[RainWeasley]

I’m posting this in dressage, it seemed like the best place since so much of dressage involves how the horse moves and it’s primarily what I’ve been focusing on lately thinking about these things, but if it should be in Off Course I’m sorry.

I’ve had this question for a while and haven’t been able to really get a good answer on it. During the canter, what leg is carrying the most weight (or should be carrying the most weight) or pushing the most, inside hind or outside hind? Or, my real question, for horses that prefer one lead to another, what problem could that indicate?

Example: I have a friend whose horse struggled to pick up the right lead. He otherwise seemed very sound, but it would take many tries both under saddle and on the ground before he would pick up his left lead. Eventually he got stronger and has no problem with it now, so I’m not sure if it was actually anything hurting him or just balance/strength, but if you were looking for something to be physically hurting, would that indicate more of a reluctance to use the right hind or the left hind (specifically for not picking up the right lead)? And would that point more to a specific part of the leg (stifle vs hock vs hip vs whatever), or that leg in general? And for horses that do tend to want to pick up one lead over another, at least on the first attempt, is that ALWAYS a sign of something hurting them or can it really just be a strength or stiffness or balance issue?

I know technically if there is unsoundness the trot is better to pick up on it, but this is assuming the horse IS in pain and isn’t showing (obvious) signs at a trot.

[joiedevie99]

The outside hind does the most work in canter. It strikes off first, and propels the horse forward. It is the only leg on the ground doing the pushing in the initial phase of the stride. The inside hind works hard too, but it is on the ground at the same time as the outside front, so isn’t solely responsible for the stride at any point.

Horses with stifle/hock/hind suspensory issues will often not want to canter when the bad hind leg is on the outside. SI issues are often seen in the canter as well, but differently - bunny hopping, less separation in the hind legs in the canter, etc.

[SuzieQNutter]

When training a horse originally they have a good side and a bad side. As they get stronger these even up.

On an educated horse that starts not wanting to canter on a certain lead it can be pain in the back or the legs.

[Pocket_Pony]

Keep in mind the issue could be related to the rider’s own imbalances or body issues, which could be related to saddle fit.

I say this based on my own experience with a saddle that was just a bit too wide for me. Combine that with hip issues and not being able to properly use my left leg, and I had a hard time with the right lead canter .

To some extent it was an issue with the horse’s strength, but when I got a saddle that fit me better the problem of picking up the right lead canter was no longer a problem.

[TMares]

The outside hind does the heavy lifting

[Wanderosa]

When the right lead canter starts going to heck we know it’s time for my leased guy to get his hock injected! (Left hock.)

The canter is so fascinating. My day job is musician/music teacher; naturally, all riding is accompanied by my mental soundtrack. I’ve never been able to feel the canter in three. Only in one. I’m not totally convinced that it’s a even 3 beats. Especially given that a very slow or very quick canter is 4 beats. No one else seems to think the same, though. I feel like a crazy conspiracy theorist! Lol

[SuzieQNutter]

@Wanderosa

When the right lead canter starts going to heck we know it’s time for my leased guy to get his hock injected! (Left hock.)

The canter is so fascinating. My day job is musician/music teacher; naturally, all riding is accompanied by my mental soundtrack. I’ve never been able to feel the canter in three. Only in one. I’m not totally convinced that it’s a even 3 beats. Especially given that a very slow or very quick canter is 4 beats. No one else seems to think the same, though. I feel like a crazy conspiracy theorist! Lol

They count the legs contacting the ground. Outside hind. Diagonal together. Leading leg. You can add 4 for the moment of suspension.

The lope is 4 beats.

So are a lot of upper level dressage horses, however this is incorrect.

[Wanderosa]

@SuzieQNutter

They count the legs contacting the ground. Outside hind. Diagonal together. Leading leg. You can add 4 for the moment of suspension.

The lope is 4 beats.

So are a lot of upper level dressage horses, however this is incorrect.

I understand that. However, I don’t get the feeling that all 3 footfalls are of even length, if that makes sense. They seem syncopated.

Are you familiar with Franz Schubert’s “Erkonig”? He uses this relentless, even triplet pattern in the treble to portray the hoofbeats of the father’s horse. It’s absolutely incredible (albeit the bane of accompanists’ existence for 150+ years) but it sounds nothing like a horse. Sorry, Schubert!

[SuzieQNutter]

@Wanderosa

I understand that. However, I don’t get the feeling that all 3 footfalls are of even length, if that makes sense. They seem syncopated.

Are you familiar with Franz Schubert’s “Erkonig”? He uses this relentless, even triplet pattern in the treble to portray the hoofbeats of the father’s horse. It’s absolutely incredible (albeit the bane of accompanists’ existence for 150+ years) but it sounds nothing like a horse. Sorry, Schubert!

No sorry. I did play a recorder in school but that is the extent of my musical knowledge.

[Wanderosa]

@SuzieQNutter

No sorry. I did play a recorder in school but that is the extent of my musical knowledge.

Hey, the recorder is hard! My kids both play an instrument pretty well for their age and both of them made the cats cower in horror when they brought the recorder home.

Anyway, in the Erkonig, Schubert uses a triplet pattern that divides each beat into three even parts to represent the horse. The first line of the song translates roughly “Who rides so late, through the night and wind?” So, we know there’s supposed to be a horse. But because of the even rhythm it just sounds like a massive thunderstorm with occasional lightening strikes and a creepy woodland creature sneaking around, though. Rossini, on the other hand, must’ve spent more time around horses because the William Tell Overature is spot on. He used a long-short-short rhythm.

[SuzieQNutter]

@Wanderosa

Hey, the recorder is hard! My kids both play an instrument pretty well for their age and both of them made the cats cower in horror when they brought the recorder home.

Anyway, in the Erkonig, Schubert uses a triplet pattern that divides each beat into three even parts to represent the horse. The first line of the song translates roughly “Who rides so late, through the night and wind?” So, we know there’s supposed to be a horse. But because of the even rhythm it just sounds like a massive thunderstorm with occasional lightening strikes and a creepy woodland creature sneaking around, though. Rossini, on the other hand, must’ve spent more time around horses because the William Tell Overature is spot on. He used a long-short-short rhythm.

Well some in history believed that the thunder was the horses hooves pulling the Sun across the sky, or something like that.

[Scribbler]

The canter absolutely has 4 beats if you take the moment of suspension as an empty note or whatever that’s called (been 45 years since I flunked out of music theory). And I agree it isn’t 3 equal beats, but I can’t say off the top of my head which ones are faster. Now the trot should be a clean two beat of even rhtymn clop clop and the walk really is clip CLOP clip CLOP unless your horse is lame.

Maybe I don’t get to listen to horses canter on hard ground like I do walk and trot. I have a kinesthetic muscle memory of cantering today but i need to listen more closely!

[Edre]

Reluctance to pick up a specific lead absolutely can be pain related, and as others have mentioned above it can often relate to which leg is the outside hind/that has the job of the drive/propulsion.

However, there are many (many) horses that I have met who are an absolute pain on one lead vs the other. I have found it especially prevalent in OTTBs who did not have very good letting down circumstances - they got off the track, fell into bad hands somewhere along the line and lost condition/weight/etc and end up very one sided. Some horses’ preference for one lead over the other is so strong that the rider needs to be impeccable to get the non-favoured lead. (I think everyone can probably think of a school horse or two like this as well.) It’s not necessarily a pain issue with these horses, but can absolutely related to conditioning, balance, and flexibility.

With my older guy, the first sign that he was due for his hock injections was a general struggle to pick up the canter cleanly. He was equal on both sides, but if you have a horse that has changes in one hock and not the other, it can display in picking up the canter lead because the outside hind that has to take all that weight and really push off with it can be very uncomfortable. That said, general hock-iness is far from the only thing you could talk about being an issue with a pain-related reason why a horse favors one side over the other, so from a diagnostics perspective it’s not so helpful I think.

[merrygoround]

OP You answered your own question when you said the problem ended when the horse got stronger.

As people are born left or right handed, so are horses.

As riders our job is to make horses straight,ie; equally strong on both sides.

The purpose of the exercises such as S/I and H/P are to make both sides equal.

With the canter repeated transitions on the difficult side will help strengthen the weak side.

All of this is dependent on the knowledge and skill of the rider/trainer.

[sascha]

@Wanderosa

I understand that. However, I don’t get the feeling that all 3 footfalls are of even length, if that makes sense. They seem syncopated.

Are you familiar with Franz Schubert’s “Erkonig”? He uses this relentless, even triplet pattern in the treble to portray the hoofbeats of the father’s horse. It’s absolutely incredible (albeit the bane of accompanists’ existence for 150+ years) but it sounds nothing like a horse. Sorry, Schubert!

Musically it is not 3 beats. I ride it in 2. Feet hitting the ground is beat 1. The suspension is beat 2. If I can’t ride it in 2, the horse is young/green/on the forehand/lame/earthbound/running away, etc. I gave up the idea of music as a career, but studied it in uni, so I hear where you are coming from. Also, omg, sometimes the (dressage terminology) rhythm versus (music terminology) rhythm thing still makes me crazy lol

[atlatl]

@sascha

Musically it is not 3 beats. I ride it in 2. Feet hitting the ground is beat 1. The suspension is beat 2. If I can’t ride it in 2, the horse is young/green/on the forehand/lame/earthbound/running away, etc. I gave up the idea of music as a career, but studied it in uni, so I hear where you are coming from. Also, omg, sometimes the (dressage terminology) rhythm versus (music terminology) rhythm thing still makes me crazy lol

If you think dressage’s interpretation of music concepts is crazy, try having an engineering/physics/math background and wrap your head around no impulsion at the walk. How the heck is the horse moving if there is nothing pushing it forward?

I do not at all feel the canter 3 beats as similar to a musical triplet. Granted there is the moment of suspension, but I count canter footfalls as 1-2-3, 1-2-3. A triplet is 3 notes in 2 beats, so one-trip-let etc.

[sascha]

@atlatl

If you think dressage’s interpretation of music concepts is crazy, try having an engineering/physics/math background and wrap your head around no impulsion at the walk. How the heck is the horse moving if there is nothing pushing it forward?

I do not at all feel the canter 3 beats as similar to a musical triplet. Granted there is the moment of suspension, but I count canter footfalls as 1-2-3, 1-2-3. A triplet is 3 notes in 2 beats, so one-trip-let etc.

A triplet is a group of 3 equal notes crammed into the space that one note would take up. That note could it be anything from a single quarter note to a 16th note to a pair of tied quarter notes which is I belive what you are thinking. 3 over 2 is notoriously difficult. Too difficult for dressage, even though it’s a NICE CUPpa TEA … or NICE cuppA tea depending on which way you’re counting it

The impulsion thing - oh yes! Broke my brain on that several times over the years.

[sascha]

@SuzieQNutter

Well some in history believed that the thunder was the horses hooves pulling the Sun across the sky, or something like that.

Love that!

And we need to remember when those crazy composers were mimicking horses cantering or galloping, they were going for groups of horses, not a single horse with perfectly clean gaits. Listen to a bunch of hooligans running around a field and it is certainly rhythmic in its own cacophonic way but also much closer to the thunder of hooves we might hear in music .

[atlatl]

@sascha

A triplet is a group of 3 equal notes crammed into the space that one note would take up…

Not to be overly pedantic:

From musictheoryacademy.com: (emphasis mine)
[h=2]WHAT DOES A TRIPLET IN MUSIC LOOK LIKE[/h]
A triplet is written by putting a “3” over the top of the notes to show that 3 notes should fit in where there would normally only be 2. So in this example the “3” over the top of the crotchets means that 3 crotchets adds up to 2 beats instead of 3.

[Wanderosa]

@atlatl

If you think dressage’s interpretation of music concepts is crazy, try having an engineering/physics/math background and wrap your head around no impulsion at the walk. How the heck is the horse moving if there is nothing pushing it forward?

I do not at all feel the canter 3 beats as similar to a musical triplet. Granted there is the moment of suspension, but I count canter footfalls as 1-2-3, 1-2-3. A triplet is 3 notes in 2 beats, so one-trip-let etc.

Notes are normally subdivided into even parts. Pretty much like the measurements for baking. (I actually use measuring cups to teach note values to my younger students!) My quarter note is one beat. If I subdivide once, I get two eighth notes. If I subdivide an eight note, I get two sixteenth notes. ( I can have 1/32th, 1/64th, and even 1/128th notes. I hate those!)

A triplet typically divides a quarter note by 3 instead of 2. I count them by saying, “tri-pu-let, tri-pu-let”. I can also divide a half note lasting two beats into a triplet. That’s where I personally would use your “one-trip-let” style count.

Now, all you crazies across the pond with your crochets and semi-quavers and Demi-semi-quavers; I don’t know how you explain subdividing the beat. :lol:

ETA: One of my favorite versions of Der Erlkonig

https://youtu.be/5XP5RP6OEJI

EATA:

I love me some of that wild Welshman Bryn Terfel. Plus, the accompanist does a particularly nice job capturing the instant that the father realizes something is terribly wrong and frantically spurs his horse as fast as it will go (around 3:35) That, for me, is the only point at which I really “feel” the horse.

https://youtu.be/lehVBocGEDA

To add more controversy, the father is galloping through the woods, in the dark, with his small child perched on the saddle in front of him and neither one of them is wearing a helmet. He apparently has diligently desensitized his horse to murderous woodland trolls because it never spooks despite the thing chasing them and jumping up to grab the child’s soul. :eek: