Training flying changes- Trainer vs Crappy Ammie

[RJC]

My horse and I are preparing to start changes. I’ve read a couple things (here and in Janet Foy’s writing) that suggest that if changes are started incorrectly (the horse is late behind for example), this will be difficult to correct later, even with correct riding.

I’d love to hear from some ammies who trained flying changes themselves on their first dressage horse. How did it go and do you wish you had had a trainer or higher level rider start them on your horse? Or did you have someone else start changes with your horse and then you struggled because your aid was different?

FWIW I am classifying “starting them yourself” as including your coach yelling instruction to you while you try to execute from atop the horse.

[Spudsmyguy]

I working on this with my horse so interested to hear what others think. My horse has the general idea and I think it’s a timing issue on my part as I can feel him setting himself up for it but can’t quite get the connection to do a flying change.

[Feathered_Feet]

Do you ride upper level? Have you ridden changes well and correctly, with a quality canter before and after the change? Have you ever been described as a “talented amature”?

If you said “no” to any of these questions, you should let your trainer work on the changes, and you just work on developing the canter (because remember, 98% of the change is the canter before the change) until the changes are more reliable, because what you’ve read is correct. This can be a very emotional/challenging/difficult time for some horses and you definitely do not want them to be afraid, uncertain, or otherwise not confident about changes. You really, really want this to go as smoothly as possible for them because the changes only get harder as you go up the levels so you want the horse to be confident and the changes to be easy.

That being said, if you answered “yes” to all of these questions, consider the following. Whether its feasible for you to teach them (versus a pro who has done so on many other horses) really depends on 1) how easy your horse finds changes (i.e., do they do them naturally and correctly on their own out in the field?), and 2) how talented you are as a rider. If your horse has a natural aptitude for changes (i.e., does them cleanly on their own out in the field, or offers clean changes under saddle on their own), then you might be just fine if you stay out of his way. If he struggles, then he will really need you to help him every step of the way. Which brings me to my next point:

If you are a talented, upper level rider, you can probably do it. I did it with help from my coaches on the ground as you describe, but I had ridden lots of changes on lots of different horses, and have been described as basically a pro with a day job. I would only try them in a lesson until my coaches said to go ahead and play around with them on my own, and even then, it was only a few at the end of the ride a few times a week (never drilling!). If you are not a talented, upper level rider, you risk making the whole experience much more stressful and drawn out, and nobody wants that, least of all your horse. I was also ready at any moment to hand the reins over to a pro if I thought it wasn’t going smoothly (for my horse’s sake, this was not a time for ego!).

But remember, 98% of the changes is the preparation - months and months of developing the canter to be ready. So, you can definitely do that part with help from your coach.

Side note: if your coach doesn’t recognize how much prep goes into teaching changes, you need a different coach. Don’t let some “trainer” who hasn’t put correct changes on multiple horses experiment and learn on yours.

[theresak]

I trained them totally alone, with a coach yelling, and with another rider as my eyes on the ground throughout a year before they were solid.

We had clean but unsophisticated/not on the aids changes at first, then got lazy behind (within the same stride but “late”). I was able to fix the late change in lessons with my trainer by trying different exercises. My trainer is an eventing trainer but has a really good eye for biomechanics and was able to help us to an unconventional fix (push the hips further to the new lead to almost leg yield, then tap with the whip). It took us a winter to fix the late change and I had to only do them with someone who could watch and tell me if it was 100% clean for a while to reinforce and stop with a good one.

It really can be flying change h*ll, as Janet Foy describes it. Give yourself a year to get them to 80% before you show. I had a different trainer ride him twice at the beginning of the training for changes and she helped some and I’m sure if I had a trainer on him regularly, it would have gone quicker. But, once he got the idea of doing more than one change on a shallow loop, we were able to progress quickly through the tempi changes and the 1s came easily, even with a fairly earthbound canter.

I’ve now got a 4 year old who is pretty happy to counter canter and I’ve tried a few times to ask for changes and only gotten 1 clean one, so I’m a little nervous about that.

[SuzieQNutter]

Can you canter 4 steps, walk 4 steps, counter canter 4 steps, walk 4 steps, canter 4 steps, walk 4 steps, counter canter 4 steps, walk 4 steps around the arena?

Can you canter half a circle from b to x and counter canter a 10 m circle at x hitting e then canter a circle at x hitting b?

Are you riding flying changes on other horses?

If yes, yes and yes you are starting to be ready.

[RJC]

I am not an upper level rider. I “completed” second level this season with scores in the high 60s (one over 70%!) on 2.2 and 2.3, but that is my highest level experience in dressage

I wouldn’t say I am a brilliant rider, but I’m also not the worst… I installed H/J changes on my jumper mare a decade ago, but she was naturally prone to changes. I rode many many changes in my H/J life, but I have never ridden a change on a horse trained for the dressage court.

My horse is VERY obedient, willing to please, and can take a joke all day and night, but not enormously athletic. I have never seen him do a change at liberty and he has never accidentally done one whole working CC, etc.

I really can’t assess how “talented” I am as a rider. I think probably average? I brought a green broke horse with a good mind through second level with weekly lessons. I generally get 6-7 for my rider effectiveness and use of aid and 7-7.5 for seat and position. We have a nice balanced canter and a half halt that my coach says is the half halt we need for changes. I also sometimes accidentally block him with my seat and do a weird thing with my inside leg in half pass. His collected canter is not yet where it needs to be to show third, but it’s always improving.

Side note response: My coach is decidedly not experimenting with my horse. She earned her gold medal on a horse she started and her other students are showing/have shown up through FEI. She specializes in helping her students find young horses and bring them up through the levels, and her other students that board with me have put changes on themselves with her help, though with mixed success on the quality of the change.

I have asked my coach to be the one to try it out first (I’ve been doing the prep work for a while). She said she doesn’t need to because I am capable of doing it. I would like to just trust her (she’s been right on everything else), but I’m getting all up in my head about it and we have gone from “clean simple changes through one to three steps of walk” to “awkward trot steps” in the last week because I’m…maybe trying too hard to keep him snappy.

I have a lesson this weekend and will definitely talk through it with our coach and have her help us regain ground on the prep work, but I’m really looking for other average ammies’ experiences in this area.

[RJC]

@Spudsmyguy

I working on this with my horse so interested to hear what others think. My horse has the general idea and I think it’s a timing issue on my part as I can feel him setting himself up for it but can’t quite get the connection to do a flying change.

I sense a support group for Lead Change Hell in our future

[RJC]

@SuzieQNutter

Can you canter 4 steps, walk 4 steps, counter canter 4 steps, walk 4 steps, canter 4 steps, walk 4 steps, counter canter 4 steps, walk 4 steps around the arena?

Can you canter half a circle from b to x and counter canter a 10 m circle at x hitting e then canter a circle at x hitting b?

Are you riding flying changes on other horses?

If yes, yes and yes you are starting to be ready.

Yes.

I have never tried, but will now!

Nope.

I feel like this is all confirming my feeling that I’m not ready

[Feathered_Feet]

I think ultimately, if you trust your coach, and she says you can do it, you can always give it a try and see what happens. Sounds like she will have a good sense for if it’s going off the rails and if you need to change course. Also sounds like she knows she’ll be fixing them if it goes wrong, so she’ll probably be mindful of how they are looking

Jane Savoie had an excellent breakdown of what you need to have before starting changes:

• a very collected canter (like, so collected someone could walk next to you while you canter) for at least a few stride at a time.
• a balanced counter canter.
• a balanced, pure, and obedient simple change.

Now, you don’t do your changes out of the very collected canter, you do it out of a forward collected canter, but you need to know that your horse understands the collecting aids and has the strength for it. The rest is all about balance.

Not that I would ever second guess Jane, but I will add to her list that the fourth requirement is a VERY active hind leg and a big bouncy uphill canter - if you so much as think forward your horse needs to jump into an uphill, medium canter (and one that bounces up, not just forward). This is crucial because if the hind leg is not snappy and the canter does not have enough air time, there is just not enough actual time for the new inside hind leg to jump forward, and that’s where you enter the dreaded territory of late-behind changes.

If you can do those 4 things, and your coach thinks you can do it, you will probably be fine And they will be a work in progress, and will probably get worse before they get better, and that’s all normal. It’s a fun off-season project

[Mander]

@Feathered_Feet

(i.e., does them cleanly on their own out in the field,

How often do you notice this happening? or rather, not happening? I always assumed horses generally changed correctly on their own (or at least not terribly behind) but I took some video of my lease horse playing in turnout and he got a handful of correct changes, but there were several times he’d just swap in front and cross canter a few steps before either swapping back/turning the other way or breaking to trot. My first thought was maybe some discomfort/pain, but now I’m wondering if it could also be laziness?

[joiedevie99]

If your coach believes you can do it, trust her. But not forever. You will not screw up the horse forever if you spend two or three lessons trying the changes and fail. If it isn’t coming easily to the horse in a few tries, I’d have the coach ride for a few days before trying again.

[Feathered_Feet]

Actually not that often! And I think it’s just an issue of sloppiness in turnout (understandably), so I don’t read too much into it. I think if you see a horse doing late-behind or unbalanced changes now and then I wouldn’t worry too much. More like, if you see clean changes out in the field, that’s a great sign. If you see your horse never even attempting them (and dropping to the trot to change), or doing an awkward change and looking upset, then that would give me pause.

But I think most horses do sloppy changes in the field most of the time, and can be taught to do them correctly under saddle (including my current FEI horse, who gets 7s and 8s on her changes now - shown through 2 tempis with easy 1s).

[EventingMaff]

@SuzieQNutter covered most of the exercises that prepared me to teach a horse flying changes as a ‘crappy ammie’…although I was a working student at the time with daily lessons so it was with A LOT of hand holding and direction!!

Another PP mentioned it, but the other exercise we did as prep was the collected to medium canter and back to test and generate ‘bounce’ in the canter.

The way I ended up teaching the changes was to turn in on the quarter line at canter, walk 4 steps, counter canter (however many steps to get a GOOD canter again), walk 4 steps, turn to come around again (putting in a medium canter on the rail as needed to re-energize the hind leg). Repeat with 3 strides walk, repeat with 2 strides walk, repeat with 1 stride walk, repeat with no walk stride.

I would only decrease a stride of walk when I could maintain a quality canter / counter canter throughout. Rinse and repeat coming from both ends of the arena.

[Feathered_Feet]

I’ll second this - a few lessons is not unfixable. But don’t keep pushing if it doesn’t seem to be going in the right direction.

[RJC]

@Mander

How often do you notice this happening? or rather, not happening?

@Feathered_Feet

If you see your horse never even attempting them (and dropping to the trot to change), or doing an awkward change and looking upset, then that would give me pause.

I think in my guy’s case, it just doesn’t come up that often. His pasture is a giant square. He sometimes gallops to the gate in a straight line, but there’s no reason to change direction. He occasionally plays with his geriatric friends, but they mostly trot. He’s an economy model and just doesn’t canter around much.

[RJC]

Hmmm ok. I think I’d feel better if I spent some time working on hind leg engagement and reducing steps between true and counter canter. And see how my lesson goes. And try the half circle-half circle at canter.

I think part of me knows this is going to be hard (new concepts are sometimes impossible to him at first), and doesn’t want to feel like it’s hard because I’m not doing my part. But I also thought that one attempt and failure would count as starting them badly and ruin him. So…

[leheath]

My horse is naturally talented at changes and knew jumper changes when I bought him. I completely suck at riding changes, even on a trained horse. I managed to “lose” my horse’s changes on command (though he would still do them of his own accord while we are jumping) so I fully intended to have a trainer teach him dressage changes when we were ready. Then I went to Spain and had the opportunity to take 4 lessons on an upper level dressage schoolmaster. I specifically asked to focus on learning the aids and timing for changes. I finally started to “get it.” Came home and obtained clean changes on my horse (who is showing 1st and schooling 2nd), within 2 rides. All that to say, if you can learn the aids on a horse that knows changes (and reliably get changes on that horse) and your horses is reasonably natural/good at changes on his own in a field, I think you could do it yourself. Otherwise, have a trainer teach him first so it is less of the blind leading the blind! But you and your trainer know your abilities and your horse’s, so if he/she thinks you are ready and able, I’d trust their judgment and give it a try.

And as others have said, if you give it a try and it isn’t working, a few mistakes won’t ruin his changes forever.

[Feathered_Feet]

Yeah, playing and changing in the field is a young horse’s game Mine is old enough now that turnout is for grazing, not playing. But I was able to find a fair amount of videos of her as a younger horse from the breeder so was able to get a sense for her natural way of going. Or if you just free lunge your horse in the round pen you can often get a sense for how they carry themselves and may get some insight into how they might handle changes of direction at the canter.

[eponacelt]

@SuzieQNutter

Can you canter half a circle from b to x and counter canter a 10 m circle at x hitting e then canter a circle at x hitting b?

This may or may not be a good test. In some horses, it is possible that confirming counter-canter like this before the changes are solid can actually make the changes HARDER to teach. But YMMV.

I mostly taught my first horse flying changes on my own with my trainer working with me on the ground. Happily, he was a flying change machine, and there weren’t really any issues with him other than him letting make the changes my idea rather than his.

My current horse has been a little trickier. Trainer started the changes briefly (over the course of a few days), but I’ve done the lion’s share of the training. I did go through a phase where I couldn’t tell if they were clean or not, so I ONLY rode them with qualified eyes on the ground. We’re now working on rideability. That canter-walk-countercanter-walk exercise sounds helpful and I’m going to try it!

So to your question: Yes, it is possible for a reasonably qualified ammy to teach changes, but expect it to take longer and expect setbacks. And always, always, always have good eyes on the ground.

[BigMama1]

If you have a coach / trainer who is capable and experienced of installing them then yes, save yourself a lot of issues and choose the obvious option.