Adult rerider here. I am either overthinking this way too much or am just not getting it. Can somebody please explain how to turn a horse on a circle at the canter to me? And also how to turn to poles or jumps that are set on a circle? I’m talking about horses that aren’t trained to turn when you pull back on the outside rein. I hope I am making sense when I say that.
You don’t turn by pulling back on the outside rein.
You look where you want to go. That makes your body swivel so the outside thigh presses the horse. You keep connection in the outside rein, you don’t pull. You can use some neck rein. If the horse is in balance and in sync with you the horse will go where you look. Yes they can feel your head move.
If the horse is off balance or prefers not to listen to you or is crippled or very crooked, things won’t go as smoothly. So you need a big balanced forward canter.
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Really depends on horse and rider level here but - “outside aids” doesn’t mean pulling on the outside rein.
Look where you want to go, open the inside rein a bit, maintain a light feel of the outside rein, and use your outside leg (the whole leg, and seat if you’re sitting) to gently “push” the horse around the turn. The outside rein is just there to determine how much bend/keep the shoulders from falling out.
Your leg and seat should do most of the steering, I like to think about the reins being there for finesse. You can practice the feel by walking on a loose rein and trying to steer around jumps or imaginary obstacles with just your leg and seat. This is easier with a horse that knows it’s job!
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Your outside rein doesn’t pull back to turn. The challenging thing with explaining how to use your body is that the same phrase can mean two very different things to two different people AND a lot of us say “I do X” but really we do “X+Y” or “Y”.
For Me when I want to enter a circle my internal dialogue is “outside leg, turn the shoulder, eyes look two steps ahead, turn the shoulder, eyes look just ahead, turn, eyes, turn, eyes”. Yes, it’s more about the outside hind leg, but that is the visual that works for my mind. If I think about putting 90% of my effort into moving the horse off of the outside leg and turning the outside shoulder and the last 10% is turning my own body to follow this new shape, it aligns me and keeps me from fiddling with my reins or doing too much. At the canter my outside leg is slightly back so the application of it inherently helps keep the hindend from drifting so my brain thinks “shoulder” rather than “hip” so I don’t start working harder than needed and becoming a pretzel. A stronger application of leg and sharper angle of my eye is what makes a 20m to a 15m to a 10m circle.
I think it’s important to understand the mechanics of a balanced turn or circle and then figure out what internal visual or feeling helps you coordinate your aids in a consistent way to create a seamless turn. At some point you’ll read or hear something that clicks and then consistent smooth circles become an automatic thing. Until then, give yourself some grace to navigate the 100 ways 99 riders will tell you how to make a circle happen. It’s not that any of them are wrong it’s just the tricky nature of putting automatic aids into words.
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To add to what’s been said already, start by doing it at the walk and then the trot.
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I’d highly recommend a few lessons with a Dressage trainer. Turning needs to be done by pushing the shoulders over, instead of pulling anything around.
The inside rein creates bend, it does not pull
The outside rein limits how much bend, and dictates how much to the inside the shoulder should be moving.
The inside leg at the girth creates a “pole” around which the horse’s body bends, so he doesn’t either invert his bend, or drop his shoulder in
The outside leg slightly behind the girth reminds the hind end to not swing out
It’s that simple, but it can be hard to really get when you’re trying to learn all 4.
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In a perfect world, your outside leg goes back to move the outside hind leg around the circle, taking your outside seatbone back with it. Your inside leg stays by the girth to maintain the bend of the horse’s ribcage around it, and your reins keep the angle of the head and neck connected to the shoulders, so the horse’s entire body is bent along the line of the circle. Your hips mirror the horse’s hips (so pointed slightly to the outside of the circle with the outside leg back) and your shoulders mirror the horse’s shoulders (pointed forward around the circle). None of these aids should really be "on’ or nagging the horse, your legs and reins should feel like the walls of a tunnel that the horse’s energy is rushing forward through without leaning on or pushing outward against the walls.
However, the real trick when you are having trouble making a round circle is figuring out which part of the horse is falling off of the line you picked for your circle and which of the aids described above will fix it. For example, if the head and neck are turning but the shoulders are not following, then you need to close the door that the shoulder is bulging out through by a combination of outside rein and leg. It often helps to look slightly towards the outside of the circle to shift your weight to the outside of the horse. If the inside shoulder is falling into the middle of the circle with the nose turned out, the horse doesn’t want to push off the outside hind (probably his weak side, so he wants to push with mostly the inside hind) or your outside rein is wobbly and he is trying to protect himself from it by not elongating that side of his body and reaching into it. Lots of changes of bend until the horse is responsive to your inside leg will help. When you press the inside leg into the horse, his nose should automatically bend slightly towards the inside. Similarly to above, make sure you are not leaning towards the middle of the circle and throwing the horse off balance.
With jumps/poles on a circle the main things that help me are looking to the opposite side of the circle (so with 4 jumps evenly spaced as you land from jumping one you are looking at the jump after the next one, not the next one) and trying to hit every jump at the same distance from the center of the circle.
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agree you need to get with someone who understands dressage. Turns are created by having energy from the rear which is sent FORWARD, by seat and legs to the hands which SOFTLY channel the energy to create the bend, Inside leg to the outside hand is the way of thinking, turns are always a forward movement, there is no pulling involved
The spiral in and out on a circle is a classic exercise
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How would you turn a horse that prefers not to listen to you?
take several steps back and figure out why he’s not listening. Most horses don’t really just think “eh, no, I don’t think so, don’t feel like it”
They’re either still a bit confused, or they are trying out something they think is easier (or more fun/interesting), or it’s just hard and they’re trying to avoid that discomfort, or something actually hurts.
It takes way longer to really ingrain a behavior than many realize. It’s also not a linear progression. You may THINK a horse really gets it just because he did it right the last 10 times, but in his head, he’s still trying to truly solidify the aid-behavior connection, so may still try different things.
Some horses try many more different things, or a few of the same things, for longer than others, before they go “ok, she really DOES mean This when she does That, and it doesn’t do me any good to keep asking of The Other is what she really wants”
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I would back.down and school walk trot until horse is balanced and supple…
That could take anywhere from ten minutes to six months.
Is the horse broke? Will he do this for your coach? Is his canter balanced on the long side? Can you canter the corners of the arena in balance?
What’s his refusal? Does he break.stride? Bulge outwards? Drift inwards? Can you do a simple lead change through a trot? Is he lame? How’s your balance?
Are you in lessons? Is your coach helpful? If you are not in lessons, get some. If your coach is not helpful get another.
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The “how’ is also complicated by asymmetry. Most horses will naturally fall thru one shoulder. Making one turn seem easier than the other direction.
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One thing that was a lightbulb for me is that a horse must still be straight on a circle. Just like when you turn on the ground, you don’t bend and turn just to go left and right.
I’m not an instructor, so I won’t confuse you with inelegant language, but I found this video helpful.
It’s very important not to pull on the inside rein and imbalance him, or lean, because it’s such a hard habit to break. I spent years doing this and it really impeded my progress.
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A lot of times, when the horse doesn’t do the thing you think you’re asking him to do, it’s because your cues are off, or your balance is off, and you’re giving the horse mixed signals.
I’d third (or fourth) the idea of taking a lot of lessons with a good dressage trainer. And don’t be discouraged when that trainer takes you back to the walk and doing tons of circles at the walk before you even get to doing it a trot. And then, down the road, putting it together at the canter. Oftentimes the rider’s whole technique needs to be broken down and then reconstructed.
It can be totally mind-blowing how much is going on that you don’t notice until you’re forced to!
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I’m not sure how much of this advice helps with overthinking. I teach a lot of beginners.
-look where you want to go. On a circle that’s 15 minutes ahead if you picture a clock ( this doesn’t work for anyone under 18 at this point, but oh well).
-point your belly button on the exact track you want to follow. Ie it needs to follow the curve.
-feel both reins without pulling back on either. Keep one hand on each side of the neck, elbows bent. Then your torso follows your belly button.
-close both legs.
-if you are falling either in or out, pick up the hand and use more leg on the side that the horse is going towards, not the direction you want to go.
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I have to disagree here. When riding a bending line, the inside seat bone should advance. Which places the entire body above it facing the OPPOSITE direction to the curve. Mary Wanless explains this as the way an ice skater makes a turn. They look to the outside, advance the ‘inside’ and their weight makes the turn to the inside.
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While I think a lot of us get that, it may be a bit advanced for where OP seems to be at. Similar to cboylen, I teach the beginners/novice/intermediate to swivel the rib cage so horse & rider shoulders are heading the same direction. This also helps to position the hands and gets them away from thinking “pull rein” to turn.
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I don’t think teachers beginners the incorrect mechanics is productive.
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We do it from day 1 when we tell them to pull on the reins to stop. I am always explaining that yes, we are moving up now, and there’s a few things you’re going to have to learn all over again. It’s a process.
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At some point it’s also about how old the person is. It’s one thing to try to teach basic mechanics to a 7yo who doesn’t have great control over moving body parts in independent or counter-intuitive ways, and it’s another to teach an adult who can at least rationalize in their brain to do things counter-intuitively.
Nobody really wants to learn to do things one way just to accomplish an end goal - go, whoa, steer - and then once they get it down pat, have to not only learn a new way but UNlearn the old way
IMHO nobody should be teaching a 30yo beginner to pull and kick to stop and go, but that might be ok to start with for a young child.
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