So I’ve been rider for a little over a year now. I feel like I haven’t been making progress in the canter like I can. I can posting trot around the arena forever now, do ground poles, sit the trot, do no stirrups in the trot, trot jump small cross-rails and verticals, and can ride a few bucks and bolts/spooks. I feel like my trainer(that I lease with) doesn’t do enough cantering with me. Like whenever I have a lesson the most I get in is a few laps of cantering and my legs/upper body need work(my seat feels ok and I can find the motion) but I grip with my heels/ legs and get a bit disorganized.I had a lesson today with another barn that I lesson with and I felt so much more disorganized today! Like I couldn’t get it right. The mare I rode today kind of rushes into the canter(with that super awkward trying to sit a fast trot), and usually I could do a but of a half-halt but my trainer said she will stop if I even touch her mouth. She told me to throw away my reins but I felt like I had no control of her and she just flew around the arena. I’m just discouraged because the canter is so fun and I want to be fluent at it like I am the trot. Should I ask my trainer to practice it more?
It’s hard to sit a canter on a poorly trained horse or one you don’t feel safe on.
You might find it useful to do longe lessons on a horse that is responsive to the trainers voice commands so you can hold onto the pommel and learn to sit the canter.
Yes, a more experienced rider on a better horse can balance a horse from a collected trot or evrn a walk into a collected canter. But if you are dealing with horses that are reluctant to canter or you are hanging onto the reins, a half halt can be counter productive.
It’s impossible for us to know why you’re having problems cantering and why your instructors may not be having you canter more because we don’t know you, how you ride, them, or their horses.
Really, the only thing you can do is have a polite but direct conversation with your instructors and ask them. Maybe start out by saying something like, “I feel like I’m having a lot of trouble learning to ride the canter and I really want to get better. What can we do to improve my ability to ride at the canter?” And see what your instructor says.
I’d agree that you’d benefit from taking some lessons on a better-trained horse, one that is responsive to your aids.
Being told to throw away the reins at the canter, while it might be appropriate for the particular horse you were riding, really isn’t going to be a helpful strategy with most horses.
From the instructor’s point of view, the problem with trying to teach someone to canter, even on a well-trained horse, is that beginner riders often have little control over their aids and their balance at the canter. So that there’s often a lot of bumping the seat into the saddle, some flailing, and occasional panicky moments that result in a death-grip on the reins, etc.
This description may not be true of you at all (I have no way of knowing), but it happens often enough that instructors don’t want to subject their lesson horses to it on a regular basis.
I think that cantering more is something that you could raise with your instructor, as an open question not as a demand. And then listen to what she says about why she thinks you’re ready or not ready to do more work at the canter.
It took me a while to make progress at the canter also - partly because most hour-long lessons only consisted of a few minutes of canter and partly because I never had a trainer explain to me what to do with my body in a way that made sense to me.
Firstly I would recommend watching some videos about cantering on YouTube. Amelia Newcomb Dressage, Your Riding Success, and HorseClass have all gave some tips that helped make it click for me - you want to swing your hips with the motion.
If possible, see if you can take some lunge lessons on a horse with a good canter so you can just focus on yourself and not the horse. Depending on your competence and confidence level you might also want to see if you can lease a horse with a comfortable canter so you can get more practice. If you’re only lessoning once a week and your trainer just has a general lesson plan instead of one tailored to you then you’re going to have a tough time improving on the things you want to work on.
I, too, even as a lifetime rider who can ride all the GP movements and school my own horses up until P&P (with help, of course) find it difficult to really sit the canter on an unbalanced horse or a horse that does not go forward without some serious effort on my part. You need to be able to truly just “sit there” and have the horse canter in balance beneath you. It’s hard to describe until you feel it, which, from your post, doesn’t sound like you’re there yet. More experienced people ride to improve the horse’s balance in the canter and the forward thinking tendency, and then it all comes together eventually, but this is also usually on a horse they ride more than someone would ride in a half lease or in beginner lessons.
I agree a better trained or better balanced horse would be extremely helpful. Longe lessons are great because you don’t control the forward, you only need to work on sitting there. Not everyone’s visualization or feeling of the canter is the same-- I don’t think of swinging my hips forward, but rather that I sit down, and then in the “up” part of the canter, my pelvis gently bumps the pommel of the saddle.
