The Riding School: A column about the people who teach us how to ride
Today’s topic: Your student’s first canter. Our columnist discusses introducing this brave new gait in a way that inspires confidence, not fear.
From The Riding Instructor:
The canter: That magical gait of which all new riders dream… the wind rushing through your hair (or, uh, over your helmet), moving in perfect harmony with the horse, possibly along a beach somewhere…
Unfortunately, the reality is different. I have found over the years that with new riders, beginning the canter is really the most difficult step. Another instructor friend and I agreed that we are more nervous about starting students cantering than jumping – there’s just so much that can go wrong. And it’s a make or break moment for any rider; if they can get comfortable cantering, they are much more likely to stick with it than those whose first canter is, well, a little disastrous.
The difficulty is the position and the transition. Because of the rolling motion of the canter, students who are not well prepared end up with heels and hands up, pushing themselves away from the horse. If anything goes wrong, they are up on the neck, perfectly positioned to go splat when Lightning (bless her heart, she would never, but let’s just say hypothetically) screeches to a halt in the corner of the ring. And the schoolies seem to take offense more at the canter than the trot: the mild hanging on the mouth that they ignore at the trot becomes insufferable when they are asked to canter at the same time. Normally quiet, steady citizens suddenly will shake their heads, race around corners, possibly even – gasp! – buck.
A bad canter can take a while to recover from. When I first started teaching at my current barn, I had an adult student who the former instructor claimed was very comfortable at the canter. We tried, her weight got forward, the mare shook her head and stopped, and she fell over the shoulder. Normal, yes, but it took five months and a horse change (to a far more suitable mount) for her to feel okay about the canter again.
So here are my tips for successful first (and, for some students, many) canters:
* Everyone first canters on the lunge. This may seem like a “duh” statement, but you’d be surprised how many instructors don’t do this. They think the riders can steer and stop, so why not just do it on the rail? In my opinion, there are already too many things to think about: keeping your position, steering, actually getting the horse to canter. It’s better to leave the rider with less to worry about.
* For many students, especially smaller children, the first canter is with the vaulting surcingle (you all know how much I love it) or, at least, without stirrups. I know that seems more dangerous, but it’s actually much safer. We have grab straps on the front of the saddles; the kids can pull themselves down in the saddle with long legs and learn to sit the motion. With stirrups, they are much more likely to push themselves away from the horse and get forward. This is, of course, predicated on the students having ridden without stirrups throughout their early riding careers, something I definitely advocate. This doesn’t work as well with beginning adults; they don’t have that spaghetti ability to rebalance themselves that kids do, so I usually let them keep their stirrups.
* On the lunge, do multiple short canters instead of one long one. The hardest part of learning to canter is staying balanced in the transitions up and down, so this is the skill we really want to hone.
* When the student is ready to leave the lunge line, I always start her with a canter on it first, before she tries it on her own. This allows me to ensure that Lightning is in a good mood today before turning the student loose. And, of course, I make sure the rider gets very comfortable cantering in by herself before we try dealing with other riders on the rail.
I’ve been in my current position about six months, so many of the students I started are just moving into independent cantering and, I have to say, that there is no greater pleasure as an instructor than watching a small child bomb confidently around the ring with a giant grin on her face or hearing a delighted fifty-something beginner explain that she’d now checked off an item on her bucket list. No, they haven’t just completed Rolex, but a good first canter is one step down that road!
- Send an email to wylie, the author of this post at wylie@horsenation.com
One advantage to teaching western riding is that my students are comfortable (and my horses are comfortable!) steering with one hand…they can then use their other hand to either push back on the horn or hold onto the cantle of the saddle to teach their body how to sit the lope. Unfortunately English saddles and the sit of the canter don’t seem condusive to this shortcut…
After a 30 year hiatus from riding–and getting a severe head injury during that hiatus–I started lessons to see if I could still do it. I was doing well at the walk and trot, so my instructor put me on another horse for the canter, to spare me from the rough canter of the school horse. The green mare I rode picked up the canter nicely at the beginning of the long side–bringing a huge smile to my face–and although I WAS sitting the canter, I was NOT riding the mare. At the end of the long side, she broke into a trot which unseated me, so that when she turned the corner I continued to go straight, right into the wall.
Horrified, my instructor ran to see if I was still conscious. I was, left sitting in the arena footing, laughing about my fall. My instructor put me back on the horse to try again, and this time I had the sense to actually ride the mare so that she didn’t break gait.
I can laugh about it now, but I’m sure my instructor thought she’d killed her student. She must have assumed that I had retained more of my previous horse sense, but I was so amazed by cantering again I forgot to keep riding the mare. My bad.
And of course, I WAS WEARING A HELMET FOR EVERY RIDE!!!
Ok, I started riding at a backyard very Po-dunk barn….the way we learned to canter was on our old, faithful 30 year old (he’d been that 30 year old for lord knows how many years) arabian lesson horse that was “comfortable” with someone riding double. The instructor would hop on behind the saddle and stabilize us or push our bums into the tack while we sill were steering and controlling everything….scary? yes! safe? not at all….at least we had helmets…LOL
My first riding instructor was not as, uh, careful about preserving her students’ confidence as Horse Nation’s Riding Instructor. I’m pretty sure she just instructed us to kick, hard, and grab mane. That was pretty much her advice about EVERYTHING, though.
My instructor was SUPER cautious about cantering. It was almost a year before I started cantering my horse, and even then I had my first “cantering lesson” on a lesson horse with a small movement. Part of my delay is that my instructor is of the school that says it’s best to transition up into the canter from the sitting trot, so we were spending ages on the sitting trot. My warmblood has a gigantic movement, and everyone who’s ridden him has trouble sitting his trot. And once I did transition him into the canter, I was always still a bit off-balance from sitting his massive trampoline trot. Things got light-years better once I decided to transition up from a walk instead of from a trot. The “up” from the walk is as smooth as butter on hot toast, like skating on ice. I have zero trouble staying calm and relaxed all the way up. My horse is a retired show jumper, and I’m thinking that he’s probably a heck of a lot more used to the walk-canter transition than the trot-canter one. I asked my instructor once why she hadn’t just gotten us to do a walk-canter transition when the sitting trot is such an issue – she knew how fast his canter was and thought I’d feel like I’d been shot out of a cannon. Turned out not to be a problem!
I agree–the walk-canter/lope transition is about a thousand times easier on everyone. I am able to teach leads immediately if I start them from the walk!
i learned to canter in a western saddle and the horn was a great steadying device. when i later switched to english tack i learned to grab mane when i needed it, but i definitely think that western tack was key to learning how to sit and keep my balance.
We have an amazing lesson horse who canters from voice commands. We count to him “1, 2, 3, Canter” and he goes, every time regardless of what the child is doing. Typically, we start beginners in western saddles, even if they are planning on riding english, so that they can hold the horn when they start cantering. The best part about this is that the student can start the horse on their own without kicking and pulling AND they know exactly when the horse is going to start cantering. Lucky also stops on a dime when anyone says whoa or if the rider becomes unseated. I have a few other horses that are close to being this awesome but Lucky is just one of those special, once in a lifetime horses.
I make my students pass “The Canter Tests” before they get to canter for the first time… The tests are: posting trot with no stirrups, two-point at the trot with airplane arms, 2 up/1 down and 2 down/1 up. Passing the tests makes a huge difference (I think) in my students’ ability to safely canter and also gives them the motivation to practice some of the “icky” stuff… Once they’re ready to canter, I really like this trick I learned from watching a Western instructor: I have the student hold onto the cantle with her outside hand and the pommel with her inside hand. It really helps get the seat down in the saddle. Once they get good at cantering like that, then I make them practice moving the cantle hand forward (while cantering). If they can do that and still keep their seat down in the saddle, then I let them have the reins… and then if that goes well they get to canter off the lunge (but in the roundpen). I’m super cautious, but mostly because a) I almost have a heart attack myself every time a student falls and b) I really want my students to have positive experiences.