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How to get a powerful canter, without speed?

inside leg to outside hand.

inside leg generates the power from the inside hind leg of your horse, the outside rein creates a boundary for the outside shoulder & the front outside leg. I like to have my inside hand be slightly higher than my outside hand (few cms, you cannot tell unless I am schooling a sticky lead change) to prevent any collapse of the inside shoulder, contact is even in the reins, but depending on the animal this can vary. My hot jumper mare only liked a few seconds of pressure on any singular rein to remind her, “hey come back” but then you HAD to release to even pressure again or you’d be on a bucky, pissy creature. To slow down is pushing into the outside rein from the leg rather than pulling on it. I like to think of outside rein controls speed and inside rein reinforces shape from the leg

Outside leg shapes turns and controls the outside haunch.

You’d be shocked how much leg a hot horse really wants - leg must be present but not nagging or too firm.

dressage rider as junior (equitation on that flat obsessed low jumper rider as an adult. NOT at all a hunter rider, FWIW) - I can be an effective, and especially on the flat ‘lovely’ rider, but not nearly as accomplished as a lot of the crew on this forum. YMMV. I would often be the ammy rider in a lot of sale horses’ flat videos.

I may have some videos around - would be happy to share
 but here is a good still of what I am talking about on a turn to a jump

Imgur

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Watching Richard Spooner clinics online during work is definitely my guilty pleasure. Maybe one day I’ll be lucky enough to actually ride with him :star_struck:

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Everything you’re saying makes sense, and the part about visualizing your outside leg controlling the haunches has really helped me with rollback turns, as well as lead changes. But this part is confusing me. To slow down, you’re adding leg and outside rein at the same time? Wouldn’t that just get you more impulsion and “lift”, not a slower canter?

Nope, foundation of all riding no matter the discipline, including the all of 3 reining lessons I took, is inside leg to outside rein. Western is a little more nuanced, but the gist is the same. Speed and impulsion are two completely different concepts - you can have one without the other, none, or both. I will say the nuance is really often only realized with a well schooled and/ or athletic horse.

Your lil Morgan may not have the same massive difference in speed vs impulsion as my KWPN or Warmblood / TB mare. Some of this is schooling whereas some of it as general athletic ability / natural movement of the animal. Some questions to ask yourself over time would be:

Was the horse ridden to develop the muscle memory to have impulsion with and without speed prior to you having / riding him?

Can do you do pole exercise where you fit anywhere between 5 and 8 strides in the same length measurement?

Have you ever ridden with a XC GPS watch that shows you meters per minute of travel speed? I like to do this flatting during conditioning work and over courses in lessons.

All of these are great exercises to determine measurable difference between impulsion/power and speed.

I also realize that nearly all of my recent horses were imported from Europe or trained by showjumping trainers in the US with connections to Europe. There is a large possibility that Morgans are not trained this way? Is anyone a Morgan expert here?

I am largely ignorant to anything outside OTTBs, WB showjumpers, and European imports.

Awww
 a Morgan. So much fun to ride. They feel like riding a smooth 454 engine car. So much power under the hood.

You should be able to open up the canter stride. It probably will feel/look faster especially at first. That’s to be expected with a breed that tends to have a higher natural head carriage and more knee action. Their canter tends to feel super smooth. Once you get your horse more relaxed at the bigger canter step; that should really help with the jump distances.

Those exercises getting three strides in a four stride distance should be really helpful.

Best wishes.

:slightly_smiling_face:

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Jane Savoie says it better than I do

For the non dressage / eventers here Jane is basically Jesus:

"Jane was the dressage coach for the Canadian eventing team at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. In 2000 she went to Australia, where she coached several eventing riders from the US, Canada and Belgium in preparation for the Olympics.

At the 2004 Athens Olympics, Jane again coached the Canadian eventing team, and was an integral part in several of the riders achieving their personal best dressage scores, with an overall result of tenth as a team.

Under Jane’s expert tuition, Susan Blinks and Flim Flam won team bronze at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney."

I have to politely disagree. For a small horse / hony without a 12’ stride, I would never recommend the one less.

In the 2’ hunters on a smaller strided Morgan, best put in the add step and do a beautiful round with penalties for the add than run the animal to a stride that it will never safely make.

At 2’ there isn’t enough to bascule to carry you away from the jump far enough to make this safe, especially for a small horse than has less than the standard 12’ stride. He would struggle to make it down the line over 3’3 at a nice round marching canter, let alone 2’.

But I am a jumper rider who is 5’9+, stride count doesn’t matter and I haven’t ridden regularly anything under 16h in 
 nearly 2 decades. I say take this lil dude into the jumper ring or event him! So many cute Morgans cleaning up at Novice near me!

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I have to agree with this. If you’re not doing anything rated or over 2’6” even, strides won’t matter. I did quite well on a sales horse at our local A show in the unrated 2’6”. She had a tiny stride so my boss told me to just add so it looked nicer. Someone saw the horse there and ended up buying it a few months later. I placed just fine.

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Huh? Did you read both my posts and combine thoughts or something?

I first suggested adding a stride smoothly when showing in long stirrup.

Then suggested practicing an exercise opening up the step to leave out one in a four stride.

Two completely different scenarios.

Just for clarification


Cheers

It depends where you show I guess.

People here are on $80,000 horses in the 2’6” divisions; so strides do count. Certainly, doesn’t require that sort of $$$ investment but at USEF sanctioned shows, the horses are making the strides and then some.

They count here too in the 2’. Even in smaller local unsanctioned shows. But safety also counts. So adds will pin if safely done in smaller size classes.

Left coast here.

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Must have misunderstood. I suppose now you meant leaving one out in a 4 stride set for a pony/ smaller animal.

I still would never ask a short strided horse to leave one out in a 4 stride set at a standard 12’. Maybe poles, but probably not.

I was under the impression that OP was on an animal with a short stride that would have to gallop / leave long to make the 12’ striding, so leaving anything out at 12’ set course/lines is a no go in my head. OP’s post indicates horse can barely make the normal 12’ step.

Sure leave it out if set for the smalls/ ponies.

OP says horse’s canter is powerful but fast with no steering nor lead change. To me, a dressage rider turned jumper, if you don’t have steering nor a lead change the canter is just fast (likely unbalanced) and therefore absolutely not powerful. I’m thinking vaguely strung out and really moving to lengthen step with lacking power behind for a clean change.

Again not a hunter rider, as for reasons like this I dis-prefer the discipline. Ride the horse you have, not the one the rule book says you should be on.

@danhelm441 here is an old video (early 2018, yikes 3 years ago, I’ve come a long way) of an old lease/sale horse doing idk 2’6 or so for a sales clip. He’s 16.1 (I am a tall human) and has more than a 12’ stride. Also had an old injury that made him a pretty nasty stopper that was diagnosed shortly after this video (if you pay attention you might be able to see where the NQR is). Feel free to tear apart my riding, this guy gave me many concussions, broken fingers, and a massive black eye from stopping. Don’t worry he’s 100% retired and fat now!

But in short, all of this shape, track, and rhythm is all inside leg to outside rein. He was a very hot, forward horse - all my half halts are from that system, inside leg outside rein and are not hugely visible to a watcher.

Lol. No. You are still missing the points.

She rides a Morgan. Unless you have owned and or ridden one or two (or more) Morgan’s; you won’t get my points. She will understand though.

Morgans may be little but they are mighty.

I have seen a Morgan cross that was a pony, win in low .90-1M jumpers because his stride was huge and he could turn.
:smile:

Never said he couldn’t win the jumpers. Read my previous post about Morgans cleaning up in recognized Novice divisions. Also see my post that I know absolutely nothing about Morgans except that this one doesn’t have a 12’ stride and doesn’t have a lead change when he’s strung out at the canter.

The OP’s horse is not a .90m jumper Morgan cross with a huge stride. But thanks for the information, I will tell my petite eventing friends to look at Morgan crosses in the future.

Morgans were not the horses in mind for the hunter show courses set to favor horses with a standard 12’ stride. Hence they have pony & small divisions. I think it is unfair to ask a horse to risk injury for a 2’ course, but again, I am not OP nor did I supply any more advice than what Jane Savoie would provide. Inside leg to outside rein.

http://www.mdccorporation.us/course/usef_distances.html

Awww
 a Morgan. So much fun to ride. They feel like riding a smooth 454 engine car. So much power under the hood.

You should be able to open up the canter stride. It probably will feel/look faster especially at first. That’s to be expected with a breed that tends to have a higher natural head carriage and more knee action. Their canter tends to feel super smooth. Once you get your horse more relaxed at the bigger canter step; that should really help with the jump distances.

Those exercises getting three strides in a four stride distance should be really helpful.

Best wishes.

:slightly_smiling_face:

I have nothing helpful to add to the OP, but I just wanted to say as someone newly riding her first Morgan, this feels incredibly accurate. These responses have been helpful to me in thinking about how to work on her canter, as she is also small and does not have a 12’ stride, though she thinks she does


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The main way to add power without speed is to install a really good half halt that lives in your back, not in the reins. Then you can add power with your seat and leg but contain it with your back.

To develop this: work on getting your downward transitions without having to use your reins. So ask with your body, then if the horse doesnt listen (or hear you at first, if they aren’t trained to ‘listen’ to your back they wont hear it), THEN use your reins to say, “That meant WHOA.” Always ask with your back first and think of your reins as the enforcer, not the initial requestors.
You want to feel like your pace control is a pile of marbles in your bavk and if one of them slips out you just use the reins to put it back, but then you let go again. Work on getting enough positive tension in your core that all the marbles stay there.

Once you have your horse listening to your back, go bigger smaller. Always bigger smaller. In the trot we go bigger smaller bigger smaller, in the legyields and shoulder in we go bigger smaller bigger smaller, on a canter circle we go bigger smaller bigger smaller, etc etc. There is very little reason unless you are doing a long and low break to spend more than 5 or 6 steps in the same pace and stride size.

All of this expanding and contracting will both finely tune your pace control and also add a lot of power to your gaits.

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Using a breed to say what they can/can’t do, or should/shouldn’t be able to do, isn’t fair. You have to look at the horse. Morgans as a whole may be a very versatile breed, but some are simply not built well enough for a nice open canter. Not all TBs are built for that, not all QHs are built to be a good Cutting horse.

But EVERY horse can be gymnasticized to increase his range of stride, and every horse should have that work done. The more adjustable a horse is, the better a ride he is. Every horse can be put through the pole work to add and leave out a stride, it’s just going to be easier for some horses than others. And some horses, no matter how hard you work, are not built to have the perfect 12’ stride needed for even C level showing.

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I think I am being slightly misunderstood here, and my ignorance to Morgans is showing.

I am merely saying I would never ever encourage a short strided horse to ever leave out a stride of the normal 12’ distances under any circumstances.

I’ve posted this photo before, but to me, this is what leaving a stride out looks like out of a standard set distances. I am again a jumper rider, so just my perception that the impact of leaving out a stride is not very hunter-like?

Imgur

This horse in question is 16.1 and is RF Easy Going (ML’s former 1* horse https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owxZOWpTZYQ) & this was the first line I put him through a few days after he got off the trailer for me. He felt .80 cm was too small for his warm up. This was a shocker to me as he floated down the line and this felt effortless, but surprising.

I got read the riot act and was severely reprimanded by my trainer for encouraging a VERY capable horse to leave a stride out of a normal set distance. This was a standard 5 which he did in 4 after we TROTTED into the first element.

I am reading the recommendation by @Moneypitt to set a standard 4 stride and ride it in 3 on a horse that is already struggling to make it down in the 4 (per the OP’s own comments). Seems really unnecessary for 2’ showing.

Maybe leaving one out doesn’t always look like this, but that is my personal experience of which I am commenting from. Nothing against Morgans, I wish I was small enough to fit on them!

My suggestions all say the same, but do not specify specific distances and I do not know the animal and it’s capabilities, only what OP has posted, which is short strided and struggles to make it in the normal step.

I agree that this can be construed as shoving a horse down with speed for the sake of leaving out a stride. That’s not constructive :slight_smile:

I (me, not entirely clear about everyone else) am only talking about schooling a horse through poles set at distances that are conducive to that horse, at that point in his training, so such that you can show him how to shorten his stride length while maintaining impulsion to add a stride, as well as the opposite - lengthen, impulsion, leave out a stride - in order to teach him adjustability, which every single horse should do - they are transitions within a gait.

In the beginning of a horse’s learning, that might mean setting a distance between poles on a 10’ stride, or 11’.

And some horses will never had the step to do a 12’ stride no matter how well you school him. That doesn’t make the schooling useless, it simply means he’s not going to make it as a Hunter once he gets to a certain class of showing (which isn’t about the height). At that point you can gallop the course and likely not place, or you can add strides in lines and likely not place, or you can do Jumpers :sunglasses:

I “know” the look of the picture. I have one :laughing: It wasn’t a case of leaving out a stride, it was rider error and not paying attention to pace and realizing it was either go long, or chip badly, and thankfully JB complied with “go long go long!” :laughing:

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Apparently, the fact that a hunter needs to have a stride longer than 12’ is a requirement once the jumps get over 2’3” high is lost on some people commenting.

So, it’s not surprising that they would not have any experience training that either.

Check, check


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