Since you directed your question to me, let me say that the replies you’ve gotten re: the difference between rhythm and tempo are correct. Many people are confused by this, so you are definitely not alone!
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Thanks @TBKite @Scribbler and @SillyHorse for the explanation.
That would make my advice to the OP to establish the rhythm of the trot and find the horse’s sweet spot where the tempo and impulsion are consistent, relaxed and free of the rider pushing forward or slowing down (because yes, too many people rush the horse off it’s tempo and sometimes rhythm in an attempt to get forward). Once you have that sweet spot you can begin to ask for a little more forward impulsion for a few steps, and a little more collection for a few steps. “Little more” being the key. You can ask for a little more bend, a little cleaner and softer transitions, and so on. Ask for the little bit more for 2-3 steps and go back to neutral allowing the horse to come back to their sweet spot. For me this is the important bit because it’s too easy to go chasing the big response to what we want and lose the basics. Over time the horse’s sweet spot changes as they build the muscle and balance to carry themselves with greater impulsion.
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@RedHorses Yes, exactly! Also of course keeping in mind that some horses will choose to rush if they feel unbalanced and need to be encouraged to keep a slower tempo. It depends on what the horse is offering you under saddle.
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You want forward without running.
Yes, that’s why I think about looking for the sweet spot. Some horses offer it, but others need a bit of help especially if someone has tried the run them off their feet to get them forward technique. Finding the sweet spot allows the horse to realize they can relax too.
Yes! Also just because you are working on rhythm and tempo doesn’t mean you stop working on all the other aids. You might find you need to do shoulder fore or shoulder in or counterbend or half halts or work on being off the leg or anything else, really, in order to get the rhythm and tempo that is appropriate for the level you are at. And you might find the rhythm and tempo get off balance when you teaching something new.
The trick is to neither let rhythm and tempo disappear nor to get stuck at a beginner level of either and not move along. You don’t want to push a horse into a running trot. But also you don’t want to keep him at a slow gait forever after he has the strength to carry himself with more oomph. I have watched friends work to get a green horse into a relaxed tempo and rhythm then find it very emotionally challenging to push him up to more impulsion because they worked on “go quietly” for so long.
One of my horses is a foxtrotter. With him, his slower trot is definitely that shuffle off-thingy they do. When i sit back and ask for it, i can get an actual trot. But, it takes effort on my part and speeding up on his, and he’s a farmhorse so i just let him find whatever gait he wants as long as he’s going the speed I want. My Standardbred pacer also has a real trot, but for him also, speed is the essential ingredient to move him from a pace into a trot. And i think? that growing up in the pasture with normally gaited horses as examples, and also the big hills, have kept that pacer from developing a racing pace. So, i wonder… Would increasing the tempo on an ‘impure’ trot be instructional for a dressage horse? I mean, would it give them the concept of the footfall you are looking for and then, once they get-it, work on getting a good trot from them at a slower trot? The two of my horses i’m taking dressage lessons on both rather came-with their own metronome and have good steady walks and trots.
The general answer is yes sort of, but the progression is more formal than that.
With a green dressage horse the first gait you want to work towards is the working trot. That is the good forward steady going places trot that the horse can hold over distance. It will be neither extended nor collected. If the horse is naturally high headed and above the bit like my Paint you teach them to reach for the bit, lift at the withers, and step under with the hind legs. If the horse is naturally heavy on the forehand you use half halts to get him to lift a bit in front. Dressage is about seeing how a horse naturally moves and improving that.
You obviously are going to have moments of riding the horse at faster and slower trots at this point. A lot depends on what the horse needs. If the horse is a bit quiet, then you want to push them to do a bigger trot as long as they stay in rhthymn. If a horse is hot, you might be asking them to dial it back a bit. Obviously transitions within a gait are super useful. My current green project will do transitions from big trot to slow trot on voice command on longe or at liberty and they both look like things you could ride.
Once the horse is strong enough, you start collected trot/lengthened trot. You are asking the horse to lift in front and carry more weight behind. And give at the poll. You keep them coiled up for collected trot, then for lengthened you keep them in the same posture but ask for impusluon and length of stride. Eventually the lengthened trot becomes an extended trot. It feels totally different than a running trot on the same horse. My understanding is that the tempo of footfall shouldn’t vary that much between excellent collected and extended trot. A collected trot should have some lift and suspension.
In order to build up a horse to collect, it’s useful to do a lot of walk lateral work, in hand and under saddle, shoulder in on circle, diagonal, straight line, spirals, and then working up to trot under saddle as the horse is able.
Each horse and rider pair is on its own timeline here. And yeah, you have to feel your way through this with every horse. What helps increase correct the rhythm and tempo while building impusluon, without getting racy and unbalanced?
My Paint mare was very short behind and was on the verge of doing a fox trot. If I had a real gaited horse on my hands I wouldn’t mess with that 
but she was just moving wrong. Though I did once find a genre of various backyard YouTube videos called Racking Quarterhorses.
Anyhow it took a lot of work but she now has a clean trot and tracks up nicely when she is warmed up.
Dressage for developing your horse is to find out what he’s doing naturally and then do the opposite so a tight horse needs to learn to open up the gaits and stretch to the bit before being asked to collect, and a heavy horse on the front end needs to learn to lift in front and carry himself before being asked for more speed.
At the moment I have this green project, a fallen through the cracks adult half Lusitano who came with a history of bucking. I wanted to work with her because she is phenomenally well balanced naturally. We will see how that goes.
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i have a noodle and a stiffy. Noodley mare is allll about bending her body and crossing her legs in an X. She is not a longbacked or longnecked horse either. Uphill and long legged-she’s built for this. She learned to slow down her trot by being complimented on the prettiness of her swinging, sashaying trot LOL (so vain!). And yeah, my goal is to encourage her noodliness ability, and not squash that, but still try to get her on a straight path. We compromise a LOT doing quarter line to rail.
Stiffy horse is a buckskin grade. He tracks alright at a walk, but his trot is lazy. Transitions are seemingly the key to that. He can understand a good hind leg moving trot when he first goes up from a walk, then he peters0ut. 20m circles, or 1/3 rail length, are about the distance of his engaged trot. I really don’t know why i’m on him for this…i guess because everyone thinks he’s so handsome. He does LOOK good. Once i get one of my mustangs going well under saddle i’ll switch horses. My sticking point is, i can get more out of two lessons on two horses when i’m trailering over 3hrs r/t to lessons. ~too bad i don’t have a SuperHorse that could take me through two hours~
Both of these horses will benefit from dressage training even if they never become competitive horses. And I don’t think any horse wants a 2 hour dressage lesson, so taking 2 is ideal!
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ALL horses benefit from dressage!!~
Much to my coach’s chagrin, i will end a lesson on a horse when s/he has done something well, and that is often at 45 minutes or so. We warm up, we loosen up, we rehash some movements, we work on something we’ve been trying to lean, s/he does well! …and i’m off the horse! I’ll stand on the ground and coach will have to teach me in conversation if she wants me to keep learning stuff, otherwise i’ll unsaddle and let the horse roll. LOL. Coach loves to try to coerce me to keep to a 55 min lesson. Almost never happens.
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This ne[quote=“eightpondfarm, post:31, topic:759137, full:true”]
ALL horses benefit from dressage!!~
Much to my coach’s chagrin, i will end a lesson on a horse when s/he has done something well, and that is often at 45 minutes or so. We warm up, we loosen up, we rehash some movements, we work on something we’ve been trying to lean, s/he does well! …and i’m off the horse! I’ll stand on the ground and coach will have to teach me in conversation if she wants me to keep learning stuff, otherwise i’ll unsaddle and let the horse roll. LOL. Coach loves to try to coerce me to keep to a 55 min lesson. Almost never happens.
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This never happens at my lessons. We work to the fitness of my horse and me, which changes constantly with me not able to ride or get to lessons regularly.
I took a non horsey friend and when we finished she commented that the time was not up. I explained to her that we do not follow a clock. We do what the horse needs and he had been good and done enough. We want him to be happy to go to lessons, not to get over worked and not want to go.
Later at the float she made a comment that he was tired. Yes that is why we stopped early, he did not need any more.
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Exactly. I have had lessons run long but with long breaks discussing theory. My Paint mare does best if active schooling is kept to 20 minutes maximum. The schoolmaster mare I rode daily a few years ago liked a 45 minute routine that started slow and took her through a lot of lateral warmup that she enjoyed. Both could go for hours on trails in the back country.
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Huh? The walk may have no suspension, but it should definitely have impulsion, shouldn’t it?
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No the term for walk is activity. You want an active walk, not a horse who is going backwards, which is a term and not a horse in reverse. You want it to look like the horse is going somewhere. My instructor says for my boy I have the right walk when he is moving my body.
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I have talked with my riding teacher a good bit about impulsion at the walk.
I just ride her lesson horses, so she has spent many hours viewing her lesson horses at the usual lesson horse walk, say 2-2.5 MPH. I personally prefer the horse to walk at 4 to 6 MPH in a four beat “flat footed” walk. After months of concentrating on the drive from the horse’s hind legs the walk is usually improved, but there is another level that I have achieved on some horses (not all lesson horses are up to this.)
At the lower levels where the impulsion is starting to develop in the walk my riding teacher gets happy, she LOVES seeing the horse do what she calls a “marching walk”, relaxed, ground covering, with the horse reaching freely forward with swinging legs and with rein contact.
Then, on a few of these rather elderly school horses I can get a super walk, keeping the same four-beat gait, 4 even footfalls, the horse’s hind feet start over-stepping the front hoof print by even more, and the horse DRIVES with his hind legs.
My riding teacher and I agree that the last walk DOES involve true impulsion, she sees how the horse is moving and I feel it in my seat. The impulsion at this walk is definitely more on a horizontal plane rather than a more vertical plane as in a trot, impulse does not only show itself when the horse is in the air.
We can all disagree about this.
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Yes this!! I expect there is a nuance to the technical word translated from German such that the movement of walk isn’t considered impulsion. But absolutely you can improve the walk, and end up with a huge ground covering true 4 beat flat foot tracking up walk with your horse sashaying her hind end and you rocking side to side with your hips. It’s a lovely thing.
The idea that there isn’t “impulsion” at the walk, and the very odd idea that the “walk can’t be improved” shouldn’t make people accept a less active and forward and correct walk. Or as I often see, relegate walk to just cool out on a loose rein. The walk can be a wonderful gait.
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I did not see anyone on this thread saying the walk could not be improved. They simply said that you want more activity in the walk. Not impulsion in the walk.
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You’re right. It’s more a cliché I hear elsewhere. The trot can be improved but not the walk, etc.
What is said is when looking for a new horse you assess the walk and the canter and not worry too much about the trot.
The walk and canter can be improved and oh that magical day that the canter changes in unforgettable! But basically what you see untrained is not too far from what you will see trained. It is easier to have that naturally to start with and build on it from there.
Other than that every horse and every gait can be improved with correct riding.
Every horse and every gait can worsen with incorrect riding.
eg. the walk can deteriorate and become lateral. The canter can deteriorate and become 4 beat. The trot cam become a pace.
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