Cantering - what's the big deal?

[RockingJ]

I’ve ridden mostly regularly (once a week) for the past two plus years, with a short break last winter. But this is after a LONG break. I’ve ridden at a couple of different barns before I found the right fit.

At Barn #1, we did some work at the canter, but it was limited. At Barn #2, we never cantered. I’m not over-inflating my riding ability (though I recognize I needed to get some strength back), and all the horses I rode were totally sound and more than capable of cantering, it just wasn’t a part of the lessons. It’s not like I want to just tear around and canter non-stop for the whole time, but I think this should be a part of most lessons.

At Barn #3, we canter, and things are finally starting to click, I feel fearless like I used to and ready for the challenging horses. I’ve also ridden lesson horses that picked up bad habits because they were leased/had a long-time rider that was afraid to canter, etc. I feel like cantering is sometimes built up to be this big, scary thing when it should be no big deal.

[Denali6298]

The majority of people I know who are afraid to canter, kids and adults, have had a fall at the canter. When I was just starting out as a kid I fell at the canter. It was my second or third time cantering. Took me a while to try again.

[Groom_amp_Taxi]

From my perspective as an adult re-rider and keen observer of lots of lesson situations, the big thing about the canter as compared to walk and trot are that if things do go sideways, they go sideways at a speed that tends to exceed the less proficient rider’s ability to react and get the situation back under control. Canter may be no big deal on many horses, but on a horse that may have the tendency to test or take advantage of the situation, probably better not to canter until the instructor is confident that the rider can handle whatever the horse might attempt. So highly situational.

[CPL713]

I agree with the previous 2 posters. I don’t think cantering should be made into a big scary deal, but when I’m teaching someone in a lesson, if I see any issues at all with balance, base of support, strength, reaction time, etc. at the walk/trot, we aren’t cantering until I feel we have adequately addressed them. Because of what Groom&Taxi said. I’d prefer to keep someone away from the canter until I feel confident enough that they aren’t going to fall off at the canter because if they do then we’ll have a bigger issue to fix.

Whether or not that was what was going on in your case, though, I cannot say. Could be that the instructor was emotionally scarred when it comes to teaching the canter for some reason unrelated to you, or the horses you were on had some issues you didn’t see (like having a tendency to throw weaker/less balanced riders off as they step into the canter – my first fall as a kid was from a horse like this and I was terrified for a long time after that lol). Or they could have just been a real stickler. I took lessons from a dressage instructor once who didn’t let us even trot for the first several weeks.

I’m glad you’re getting what you are looking for in your current situation!

[joiedevie99]

I don’t want to teach someone to canter until I’m relatively certain it will go well. I think posting without stirrups is a good test. It means the rider has developed enough strength, coordination, and balance to right themselves if things start to go sideways.

[Bluey]

Riding lessons on the longe line can take the mystique out of cantering.
It helps learn balance at the canter without also having to guide a horse and control speed.

[mswillie]

I once watched part of a lesson and I knew, well before it happened, that the rider was going to fall. Rider was an adult gentleman, quite tall and not fat at all, but heavy just due to his height. The saddle was too small, irons too short, rider unbalanced.

Sure enough, at the canter the rider started to lean toward the inside shoulder. The horse, trying to maintain his balance cantered faster, rider leaned more to the inside, horse is galloping at this point, and finally the rider winds up going off driving his shoulder into the dirt at speed.

The students of this particular instructor had an inordinate number of falls. She didn’t stick around long fortunately.

The student who fell thought he was ready to canter, he wasn’t.

Student ultimately was OK but he was sore for a couple of weeks.

[quietann]

I do agree that things can go wrong more quickly at the canter. Horses buck, bolt etc. and it seems much easier for them to do it from a canter. And there are riders who simply don’t want to canter, for whatever reason.

I got scraped off against a jump by a cantering naughty pony when I was 11 and fairly new to riding, and refused to jump or canter for months afterwards. I actually had pretty good balance and this truly was just naughty pony turning left, sharply, right before a jump. In fact, things were probably worse because I did not just fall off… He had to scrape me off. Little sh*t. I had lovely scrapes and bruises up and down the back of my right thigh.

My instructor had a fix … took us all out on a trail ride, got the horses cantering, and the pony I was riding just did it (It was not the naughty one, who to be honest was probably a bit green to be in a lesson program, but a very trustworthy old mare who’d been a school horse since forever and had nearly perfect “sense” of what was OK for a beginner rider.) And it was fine. Maybe not the best way to go about it, but it worked.

I always did, and always have. I’m lucky because my mare warms up much better at a canter than a trot. But she has really comfortable “bouncing ball” kind of canter.

[blumchen]

I didn’t have many issues cantering until I was riding a horse that tripped badly at the canter and I went flying over her shoulder. As other posters have mentioned, since the canter is a bit faster, the whole thing happened rather quickly and the stumble was so significant that I barely stood a chance of staying on. It probably didn’t help that this was when I was just getting back into riding and I wasn’t in top riding condition…

After that, it took me some time to get back in the groove where I could canter every ride. Now I can, and it is liberating and fun, but if I even feel the slightest misstep… I become very nervous. A year later, still getting over that fall!

[Amber_M]

I don’t think the canter is a big deal, but I really wish someone would read this thread to my horse :lol:

[Edre]

I think the other thing about the canter is that it’s harder for people to manage the kinesthetics of. Trot is easy - the one two/balanced/mirror of itself (it’s always a pair of diagonals), and the walk while maybe a bit indistinct and challenging to feel at times, isn’t really going to move the standard rider around much. Canter, with the three-beat and the lack of uniformity, can leave a lot of riders sliding around the tack or feeling insecure (where bad habits start to creep in - foetal position, waterskiing posture, clutching the reins, etc). This is one of the reasons I think some lesson programs can be very slow to develop riders to the gait - work on the basics and the muscle memory at the walk and the trot to set everyone up for success once the canter happens.

[Chall]

I’m re-rider now and have nice balanced trot and completely fall apart at the canter.
Back when my horses were alive I cantered without ever sitting it (TB had a sensitive back).
I think IM not putting wieght in my outside leg.
INstructor asks for it from the trot, which gets messy(faster and faster).
When I was a kid, we did canters from a halt or a walk. IS this not done anymore?

[technicolorpoetry]

What I see a lot of is folks being afraid to ask for the canter - they aren’t cueing the horse clearly or strongly enough so they just end up trotting faster and faster until eventually they break up into it.

[Bluey]

Reining horses you cluck to them and they “lope”, easy peasy.

Newcomers to reining some times do that kicking more and more and horses just trot faster, until someone tells them just stop, cluck and let the horse lope.

[NC001]

The canter is faster so falls are usually higher speed too and therefore greater impact. The canter requires some fitness to keep it going and people get tired quickly and are more likely to fall as a result. Ive seen kids fall off trying their first canter and Ive seen them fall off because their legs tire and they slip off. Plus if you cant control the horse well at the trot you are unlikely going to be ready for it at the canter.

[TheHotSensitiveType]

Another thing to consider is if the footing is not awesome, cantering really isn’t safe. It isn’t like walk and trot where you have more than one foot hitting the ground at same time, in 2 of the 4 stages of the canter only one leg is on the ground! If the footing gives at those points, the horse can slip, stumble or fall. Then there is the balance a newer rider is figuring out so they can be accidentally throwing the horse off balance too.

[QUOTE=Chall;n10250490]
… When I was a kid, we did canters from a halt or a walk. IS this not done anymore? /QUOTE]

The horse needs to be pretty fit in order to perform those moves properly, and most lesson horses are not going to be getting the level of riding necessary often enough to keep those movements tuned.

[mswillie]

@Chall

I’m re-rider now and have nice balanced trot and completely fall apart at the canter.
Back when my horses were alive I cantered without ever sitting it (TB had a sensitive back).
I think IM not putting wieght in my outside leg.
INstructor asks for it from the trot, which gets messy(faster and faster).
When I was a kid, we did canters from a halt or a walk. IS this not done anymore?

The instructor where I board will have her students canter from the walk or halt once they are advanced enough. I do sometimes wonder about the (in the US) typical progression for lessons. In my admittedly limited experience I see beginners started with just rein aids. Legs, beyond heels down and kick aren’t mentioned until later. Most beginner canters start from the trot and just get faster and faster until the horse finally breaks into it.

I don’t teach but that’s how I learned and how I see most beginners started. Again I’m not qualified to teach, nor am I being critical of how people teach, I’ve just wondered why leg aids aren’t introduced earlier in the process.

[quietann]

I’m actually the opposite, I learned leg aids (outside leg “sweeps back” while inside leg supports at the girth) before rein aids to start the canter. But part of the problem is that there are a lot of different types of leg aids depending on the horse’s training. When I was trying out a horse, I quickly learned to ask what canter aids the horse had been taught. E.g. Morgan ex-show horses wanted to canter from a walk, not a trot, and the aids were different: turn neck (or sometimes the whole horse!) to the outside, and use the inside leg to ask for the canter.

On the walk to canter: I actually think this one is easier for rider and horse. It may not be a “dressage-correct” transition, but going from a 4-beat to a 3-beat gait seems easier. And I’ve very rarely had to “run a horse into the canter” doing this. (I may be biased, though, because my horse is much easier to get cantering from a walk than a trot.) As above: in some breeds canter from a walk is the norm in rail classes, and you see a lot of canter from the halt as part of equitation class patterns, especially in saddleseat.

[Edre]

Trot to canter is one of the hardest transitions out there (and canter to trot - there’s a reason this transition is still in the Grand Prix dressage tests). To perform correctly, the rider must keep the horse’s impulsion, cadence, and balance. There are so many evasions - get a slower mincy trot, race/jackhammer trot, dive with the shoulders, hind end falls behind or out, drag down onto the forehand… ultimately keeping trot to canter on lesson work is a great opportunity for riders to work on all of these things. (Likewise, many people have a hard time “feeling” when to cue the canter from the walk. They sort of shuffle around in the saddle and shove when they want th transition rather than when it’s appropriate in the gait to do so. There is much less ambiguity in the trot.)

[TequilaMockingbird]

I had a bad fall while cantering on a lesson horse nearly 10 years ago. I hit the ground hard enough right on my kidney / pelvis that I couldn’t walk for almost 2 days. It took 2 weeks before my pelvis stopped hurting.

After that fall I simultaneously loved to canter and was terrified of it. I loved the feeling but I froze up. I still have some underlying fear if I do it without stirrups. I’m only willing to do it without stirrups on the lounge line and even that takes some psyching up first. It’s a mental block and has nothing to do with my ability as a rider. It’s like a giant shot of adrenaline.

I’m still weary of cantering on strange horses. One of the reasons I bought my horse is she was the first sale horse I got on and felt totally safe cantering. She has a nice, uphill feeling canter even when she is on the forehand.