Cueing the canter with spurs

[thecolorcoal]

All these questions today! Sorry!

Alright, so first off I am qualified to use spurs. Second, I have asked my trainer and while no real answer was given she told me she’d help me my next lesson. In between our lessons I ride almost every day and I work very hard improving.

I’ve introduced my horse to spurs. despite being a TB she can be very cold (not necessarily lazy, just needs some forward motivation) and is usually the opposite of hot. I have found that reinforcing aids with the spur has been an INCREDIBLE help. we are bending so nice now, I am able to get her haunches over in our turn on the forehands and our leg yields. I have to be veeeeeeeeeery gentle and veeeeeeeeery careful. She is extremely reactive and I merely just have to touch her sides and we get an instant reaction. With my leg, though, I have to kick and I don’t want to do that. We’ve used the whip before but the sharp sting bothers her. I still carry one, and I am trying to use that as my forward correction instead of my spur.

I must be aware of my leg at all times because we are teaching her contact with the leg is a deliberate request to do something.

Anyway, I have always had a strong canter cue. riding horses that were hard to canter really built up those calf muscles and I tend to over-cue the canter a lot. The other day I got a tail swish and a kick-out when I tried to cue my horse for canter (my bad), and so instead of getting a nice upwards transition I choked and ran her into it instead because I was afraid of spurring her. Not good. She was totally on the forehand and we could not keep our canter. Bad bad bad.

I didn’t try again because I didn’t know how to cue her without accidentally stabbing her. We have super thick and blunt rowell/roller spurs, very short and set below the spur rest.

Does anyone have advice on how to ask for the canter when you are wearing spurs?

[Edre]

Once you start riding in spurs you really need to work on using your seat independently. Especially if you have an over active leg, you should be focusing on how to get the canter with just your seat. And honestly, until you know how to do that with some consistency, I would be very hesitant to work in spurs especially as you talk about over-asking with some consistency. You definitely don’t want to create a bad habit/reaction to the aid if you make that mistake frequently enough to have it stick with your mare…

My horse was hideously touchy to leg contact (and at the same time, would selectively choose to completely ignore aids delivered through the leg) and once I figured out how to ride off my seat instead of relying on my leg and hand, everything became 110% more pleasant (and less laborious).

[thecolorcoal]

@Edre , I had a dressage trainer who really drove that Idea home too. He was a lovely french man. I’ve gotten caught up on the leg-to-hand and so I’ve left the seat in the dust… lol… but I think going back to even the basics of forward using just my lower body may help now that i think of it. I do rely on my legs a lot. She’s no warmblood but can move like one and we’ve trained in some pretty… damaging ways in the past and I don’t blame her about being nervous to seek contact when back in the day it was made to be painful for her… I have now learned how to push her into it with my legs, and I’ve completely forgotten about my seat at all. But i digress. Do you have any special seat-cues you use for the canter?

I also have a habit of nagging and riding with spurs has helped me consciously decide when and when not to use leg. So in that regard it has been a positive experience. Can’t nag with spurs unless i want a rodeo ride on my horse!

[Edre]

A quick note, I definitely think that the idea of “leg into hand” isn’t wrong! But I think that one has to be conscious of the fact that there’s a difference between application of leg and nagging with leg (and then that leg doesn’t necessarily even mean calf: you can drive with your seat just as - if not more - effectively than your leg). IE: “Close the inside leg” is an instruction, to me, that isn’t going to start with applying the inside calf. It really means checking where my weight is in my seatbones, making sure I’m positioned correctly, and then applying the aid (which oftentimes, might not even be necessary if I’ve set myself up with my seat/position/weight).

Honestly, cantering off your seat is really hard to explain in words. I’m typically super happy to try to talk through the process of something but this one keeps thwarting me. It really does come down to feel more than anything. I will say that some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten when riding a horse that wasn’t particularly great in his up transitions was “make the trot so good that he wants to canter” - meaning, make the trot so lovely and nice (which, keep in mind, is generally hard for a lot of horses) that it’s easier and more inviting to just step into the canter than it is for them to stay in the lovely, nice trot.

Other things to check: make sure you’re not carrying tension/stiffness (anywhere, ideally, but as we are human and flawed, make sure especially you’re not locked in your hip or thigh, which can shut the transition off the seat down really fast) when you ask. Hips need to be free and keep swinging.

I know I saw a post recently about you just starting to sit the trot - when you canter, are you sitting the post a few strides prior to asking? Or are you doing something else?

[thecolorcoal]

@Edre, I have some anxieties about sitting my trot, too. As I am sure you know my horse has some past injuries that, while don’t inhibit her now, might throw us a loop in the future? Now I have some doubts flowing into my head and it is hard for me to not just give up, but here I am still hoping for the best. There’s not much that can be done to fix completely what is wrong, it healed how it healed and it’s just maintenance now.

big breath Anyway, “making the trot good” is definitey helping. If our trot isn’t forward, connected, and flowing, there’s never hope for the canter. I’ve started back at the bottom of the scale. Right now we are focused on rhythm, making sure our steps have an even cadence and that we are feeling relaxed, open, and able. Everything is easy. Her extended and medum trot are nearly perfect. She’s never collected before (apart from jumping) in a dressage sense so that’s where we are now and we keep getting a down transition instead of a collected trot. When I ask for the canter I will be 100% honest - I sit, inside leg and outside leg back, and I lean forward (bad habit from hunter days trying to break…), and 85% of the time it doesn’t work. If I sit up and ask the same way I get it 50% of the time. If I mentally obsess about getting the canter I never get it. If i don’t think about it, I get it. It sounds like “well duh then just do that” but it’s not helpful because i am not aware AT ALL how i am getting it when I do.

I do sit a few strides, as I was originally taught back when I was a wee one. But I always get tense in the anxiety to canter, the “we need to canter or we’ll all die” really spooks my horse (i swear she is telepathic). SHE knows the difference in my canter intentions and seems to reward the non-focused request and denies the ultra-focused request.

Does that make sense? I hope I don’t sound confusing…

[Magicboy]

I don’t k ow how to help you but I cue the canter with my inside seat bone —leg is just brushed back a little bit to keep haunches straight. This with or without spurs…

[thecolorcoal]

Hmm, maybe I should try training that!

[Scribbler]

I’m confused. OP says she is qualified to use spurs. Then she says she is over using them, nagging, being too aburpt etc.

In that case I’d say OP maybe isn’t quite qualified to use them yet and really has to work on leg control.

It may be the particular conformation of me and my horse, but I find that in normal riding my heel is nowhere near her side, and for me to use my heel or a spur requires that I change the drape of my leg, point my toe outwards, etc. She’s got a big barrel, and my foot sits off her side. So I’m not sure about other leg/horse combinations, but I don’t think anyone should be using spurs unless they have the distinction between using the leg and kicking with the heel down watertight. Indeed there is not much place for kicking with the heel, even without spurs on. I realize people get into the habit riding the average lesson horse, but the aid should be coming from the leg not the heel, and the heel should be down and not liable to bump the horse when the leg goes on. If that makes sense.

[ladyrider2]

Here are some ideas to think about that may help you.

First of all, it’s actually more difficult to get and time the canter from the trot than the walk, so maybe it’s easier to try that.

Canter cues vary from super refined to more obvious depending on the horse, rider, timing, the specific ride. Ideally, with all of that right, you tuck/tighten the outside seatbone as a signal to prepare (half halt) as well as lighten the inside rein and make sure the outside rein is supportive, and the cue is just a lightening or picking up of the inside seatbone.

If that is not enough, add a support or push with the outside calf.

If that is not working, use the spur not to cue the transition, but to get the energy and attention needed, and then re-ask for the canter, Repeat as needed. Do not use the spur as a cue for the canter or you lose all of the subtleness and lightness of the aide.

The reason leaning forward is not getting you the canter is because you are putting the weight forward and throwing the horse off balance. To pick up the canter, the horse needs to lighten on the new inside fore and step under on the outside hind. So, to help the horse you must put your weight to the outside hind to help the balance and support to allow them to lift the inside fore.

[Sunsets]

OP, the more of your posts I read, the more I think we and our horses were cloned. I struggled with many of the same things with my fussy, Very Opinionated, mare. She could overreact to the spurs, but if I didn’t have them on she’d blow through my aids and bully her way right out of the arena. And it took YEARS to undo my hunter-perching ways.

Edre is giving you fantastic advice. It is ALL about the seat. And I know you probably know that. But you aren’t there yet. Which is fine! I’m not either! But the Very Opinionated Mare requires a Very Tactful Ride, so you don’t get an easy way out of this. Not that dressage is ever easy. That’s what makes it fun, right?

As far as asking off of your seat, I’ve been told to think about sliding the inside seat bone forward. Don’t collapse into it! (aka don’t be me), keep your ribs up and straight. Since you are tilting your pelvis to the inside, your outside hip bone will slide back a bit. Your legs should stay long, don’t pinch at the knee.

Get the biggest awesome trot that you can, with the best contact you’ve got, then just slide that inside seat bone forward. I like to think “up and out” to myself to remind me to not lean forward and to encourage the shift to the canter. My instructor likes to use “Canter on your stick horse” to visualize the kind of scooping motion that comes along with that. It should feel seamless when you get it right. And once you are cantering, you will stay just a bit shifted, with your outside leg a bit behind the girth. When it comes time to trot, bring that outside leg forward (thus straightening your pelvis again) and that will help to balance the transition down.

And yep, as you already noted, you cannot stress about the transition. So get the best trot you can, ask for a canter, and if it doesn’t happen, no big deal. Regroup, re-check your body position, and try again. Personally, lots of canter/trot/canter works for me, the repetition keeps me from anticipating and trying too hard.

[thecolorcoal]

@Scribbler , You are confused because you are misinformed. No, I said i have a habit of nagging WITHOUT the spurs. The spurs keep me in check, preventing me from over-using my leg. I highly suggest you carefully read what I am writing instead of leaping to the first conclusion or assumption that comes to your head. Maybe chew on the words, think about them. I think being honest and open about my riding is better than creating a false sense of perfection. How am I supposed to get help, useful or not, if I don’t explain bit by bit what is going on? I can be wrong, I am allowed to have faults, and I am not going to be afraid to put them out there if someone can show me how to reverse the into strengths. I don’t want to lull myself into believing I am better than I am.

I am wearing spurs because I want to try and articulate my leg aids and get her moving away.I find it unnecessary to kick a horse when there are better ways of expressing your desires. I believe strongly, maybe it’s a mare thing, but being as POLITE as I can and kick-kick-kicking is going against our fundamentals, tap-tap-tapping is not helping and only upsetting her more.

I am still riding the way you would in HJ as far as cues go and I am trying to learn an entirely different system of riding, at least in my eyes and experience they are completely different.

@ladyrider2 , thank you, that is an extremely good idea. I suppose maybe I am thinking canter cue in the HJ sense of the word. I don’t know if there is a difference. I am finding there is, maybe it was the way i was trained or maybe it’s the truth. We use a lot more contact-like aids in the jumper world, and I am finding dressage is more about weight displacement rather than using your legs or hands directly. Am I on the right thought path? I am going to try this tomorrow and see if maybe I can get through to her with my seat and weight. I certainly don’t want to “OUTSIDE LEG, INNNNNNNSIDE LEG KICK!!!” with a spur, no way.

@Sunsets, aw sunny we should be friends then! The fact that dressage is so hard is what makes it super fun in the first place! I vert much agree there. Using my seat is a completely foreign concept that I am still struggling to articulate as I ride. Coming from a 2-point world to a 4-point (?) is quite mindblowing!

She does know how to canter off of a kiss, can I train her “new aid” bridging with a kiss? I have a feeling she isn’t instinctively going to know how to canter without at least some reference to our old aid.

[Sunsets]

Sure. You can’t use voice commands in a test, but nothing at all wrong with a cue when schooling. Most riders do it.

[thecolorcoal]

I hope I can drop it when she learns the seat aids.

[tinah]

Doesn’t matter if you’ve got spurs on or not, the aids are the same. The spurs are there for two reasons: To teach a horse to respect the leg, and, on a finished horse, to allow a quieter leg for more subtle communication.

Visualize driving her inside shoulder over and lifting it up with your inside leg, and pushing her inside hind up just as it leaves the ground with the outside leg.

[thecolorcoal]

Wonderful visualization, Tinah! I can actually see in my mind’s eye what that should look like. Is there any compromise with your cue strength using spurs? Too little doesn’t get a reaction vs. too much gets a negative reaction? I feel like i’m in absolutes with my horse. It’s either not enough or too much all the time.

[ladyrider2]

There is no reason you should need to use a spur to cue for subtler communication. The horse can feel you tense a calf muscle, let alone push or bump with a calve. If you are using the spur to ask for the actual canter, you need to take a step back.

[Edre]

Some food for thought: In a dressage test, of course they judge the whole impression. Presentation, the movement, rider aids, the whole nine yards. However, we have the liberty to break things down in our private rides. Other than the five or so minutes you’re riding a dressage test, you can go ahead and break things down as much as you need to to work on them.

Which leads me to my point: it sounds like you have multiple issues that you’re trying to work on all at the same time. This could be a situation where you need to break them down more. Work on your canter aids without spurs. Work on your mare’s responsiveness to the leg with spurs. You do not have to do all of these things at once. It may be you spend a few weeks just focusing on one, then follow up with the other. It may look like you deciding that hey, you don’t need to canter on two or three rides a week while you wear spurs, then the other rides will be more of a transition/seat work focus.

(Edit for clarification: Spurs aren’t a necessary component in transitional work. Spurs are not for forward. Whips are for forward, spurs are for lateral give. So spurs don’t really have any place in transitions, at least as I was taught.)

Back to the canter situation though. If your mare has an auditory cue for canter, use it every time you set yourself up for canter, and work on cantering off your seat and not the leg. Ideally of course she will associate a known cue (sound) with the physical cue (seat) and relate it to the appropriate response (canter).

That said, you’ll still have to set her up for it properly. When I say “a trot so nice she wants to canter” I am not referring to just a nice quality of movement. I am referring to the type of trot and positioning of it (generally a circle, for the purpose of this discussion) where it is physically easier for a horse to step into a canter than it is to maintain the degree of effort to keep that trot. The bend needs to be correct (not attained through pulling the inside rein is the big error I tend to see in riders here), the hind end needs to be engaged and in line (most of the thoroughbreds I’ve ridden have a tendency to want to fall to the outside with their hind end and collapse to the inside with their shoulders). The trot must be energetic without being on the forehand, and certainly not flat or quick (again, can be a TB-related concern. They get flat, on the forehand, and rush fairly easily by nature of conformation).

Once you get this trot, you have something you can work with. Make sure your inside rein is light. (So many riders - myself included - have a really nasty habit of wanting to grab at the inside rein. It is not your friend! Imagine that the inside rein belongs to your horse, the OUTSIDE rein is yours.) And then the canter aid. I’m going to take a stab at explaining this but I will inevitably make a mess of it I’m afraid…

Make sure your body is lined properly (and for sake of this description, imagine asking for the transition on a 20m circle). Your outside hip is drawn back a little bit, your inside hip is level (NOT pushed forward). Your upper body should be rotated a little at the waist to bring your inside shoulder back (in line with your inside hip) and your outside shoulder can be a little further forward (by nature of the rotation of your waist - NOT that you are pushing your shoulder forward). This position is really awkward to consciously think about - but it helps you set your body where it needs to be, and keep your weight/balance proper as well. (It’s also something that I found came back to be reinforced with me once I was working on half passes and flying changes, so establishing this as a solid foundation now will probably serve you well in the future.) So with your body position, let your outside leg come back from the hip - it’s not just bending the knee to jam the calf/ankle back. Let your entire thigh shift a little. And then with this position (and the trot you’ve created above!) think of swinging your inside seat bone a little forward. Sometimes it helps your mental imagery if you imagine swinging your inside seatbone to the outside shoulder. You shouldn’t be shoving or scooping your seat at all but the image of “scooping” them into the canter can help some riders, I think. With a light, balanced seat and a giving hand, this should be a decent set-up to go into the canter.

And of course - if it doesn’t work/things fall apart, go back to the basics and build it up again. Do not keep chasing when the quality of the gait or the position has been compromised. A frenetic, rushed canter transition doesn’t school/teach/reinforce anything you want. So don’t do it.

[thecolorcoal]

Thank you, I think the confusion is that I am short and my horse is sort of tall. She has a wide barrel. My entire leg touches her. Putting my leg on will inherently make the spur touch her, and that is what I am trying to avoid. I can Lower them, but then I have to point my heel to use them. I may still be pointing my toes out and using the back of my calf muscle to cue. Therefore, based on where the spur sits on my leg relative to where the horse’s barrel is, the canter cue will include the Spurs as I am using the back of my calf to cue and with that the spur will alway come into effect. That is the physics behind it.

so knowing this how can I prevent it? That is what I am asking and I have no idea how it came to be assumed that I am using the Spurs to cue, I am NOT nor do I want to.

[ladyrider2]

Lower your spurs so you have to point you heels to use them. That’s how they work for most people. That way they are not on the horse all of the time.

[atr]

Two things.

1. Raise your spurs so they are above the spur stop on your boots. This will give you better a better feel of when you touch her with them than if they are in outer space on your heel–and you will find are far less likely to gig her with them by accident. They need to be solidly and stably attached so they don’t flop around, so you can actually control the feel of when you touch her with just a roll of your hip (see item 2 below.)

2. This is harder, but it really the crux of your issue You’ve got to sort out your leg position. Roll and open your hips so your inner thigh is on the horse and your calf is parallel to the horse rather than the back of your boot, so you have to consciously think about turning your leg to touch her with the spur. Then you’ll actually have the whole range of aiding touching and squeezing motion with your entire leg without the spur coming into play.

You’ve got to do this from the hip, not from the toe. It’s a hard thing to develop after years of riding with the heels down toes out H/J thing, but you need to be a dishtowel, not a clothes peg. It’s really the key to developing an effective dressage seat and position.

How do I describe this? You can almost think of it as a kneeling posture, without losing your upper body in the process.