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hello everyone i'm amelia and today we're talking about the canter and specifically how
not to grip with your legs in the canner this is something that i see
a lot of riders do let me know in the comments if you tend to grip with your legs but basically what
what happens to a lot of riders is that they finally get their horse in the canner and they
really want their horse to stay cannery so they end up like squeezing squeezing
squeezing squeezing to keep their horse in the canner and this is really bad for a couple of
reasons which i'm going to explain in this video and then i'm going to also
give you some tips for how not to grip in the cancer be sure also to give this video a thumbs up
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and the bell so you can be notified when i post a new dressage video every week all right jack
so first off i'm going to demonstrate to you why gripping is so bad and what it does to your cancer
so i'm just going to first of all take my time here get a nice trot going
it's always important to you know whenever you're riding take your time to get things in order
have a nice contact have a nice tempo and then i'm going to prepare for my canner transmission
as i come to the rail so now what a lot of riders do is that they grip with their legs like this
and they draw their legs like up and out of the saddle like this when they're cantering
and this is really bad for a couple of reasons because you can see
how gripping is pitching me forward gripping with my leg is also making
it so that i'm like bouncing out of the side like you can see my butt going down down down
so you can see that gripping with your lower leg
sorry jack gripping with your lower leg is really not pretty it's not nice for the horse and
um it locks up your seat and it makes it ineffective to where like if your horse is
gonna break you don't have anywhere to go so the way to fix this is that first of all you know just
think about while you're walking or even at the halt find kind of your neutral leg position find
that position where your heels are down you should have contact with your cap but not so
much contact with your heel and certainly not with your spur so that's kind of neutral leg position
now when you ask for the canter like if i'm gonna ask for the right weak canner my left leg
is gonna go back and a little bit on him but it's important that when he picks up the cancer that
i that i take my spur and my lower leg away now i don't i don't take my leg all the way up here
i keep my leg slightly behind the girth in cancer position but i'm not gripping with my leg so let
me demonstrate this to you i'm going to pick up a nice trot i'm going to ask for the cancer
in front of the camera so you can see what happens is that horses get used to you nagging
and gripping and so you have to kind of break that habit um so there i asked for the canter
now when he canners i'm going to try to push my heels down and really follow the motion in my
feet so your horse will stay cantering much better when you're able to correctly follow the motion
now let's say like that you find yourself gripping so i've been cantering for a while and suddenly
i'm like oh my gosh i'm tipping forward i'm gripping with my legs this is bad now the first
thing to do is to sit back and then release your leg but give your horse a kick and release again
so let me show you that again say you're gripping you're gripping you're gripping
you're gripping you're gripping first thing sit back push your heel down kick your horse push
your heel down again so push your heel down give them a kick push your heel down again
the reason that that's important is that say if i'm gripping gripping gripping gripping gripping
gripping gripping now suddenly i take my leg off that's what happens is your
horse just breaks to the trot so if you find yourself gripping in the canter
you need to take your leg off but be ready because your horse is going to break
because you're you've been basically making your horse keep cantering by gripping and kicking every
step so when your lower leg comes off your horse is going to think that they should trot so you're
going to release your leg and then quickly give your horse a bump and then release your leg again
so notice when i gave him that kick it was kick release and i gave him a kick that was so quick
that it didn't lock up my feet so i'll show you that one more time to the right or start to the
left the other way ideally is if you can first of all make sure that you can trot without gripping
that's like step one is just make sure that you can go along here and trot without gripping
and then i'm gonna ask for a canner where the camera can see what my outside leg does
so when i ask for canner i'm pushing him into the outside ring
outside leg back cancer and then release my heel a little bit so my outside leg stays behind the
girth but it was cancer and release my heel cancer and release my heel cancer and release my heel so
i'm kind of reminding myself all the time kick release kick release this really requires that
your hips and your feet are independent so like my hips and my feet are swishing from the back to the
front of the saddle so my teeth going swing swing swing and then i can get my kick without my hip
stopping because what i see a lot of people do is that they kick they kick and at the same time they
lean forward and they stop their hips and then their horse stops so it's really important that
when you give your horse that quick cake that your hips and your feet do not stop following
the motion good boy jack now again if you find that you're like gripping and kicking every step
step one is sit back step two give your horse a kick right because it might be like even there
when you go to shift your weight back your horse might think that they want that you want them to
trot so shift your weight back and then push your heel down give them a kick push your heel down
good boy you also notice that when i kick my horse my hands don't move
so i'm not doing kick and pull which isn't very nice but a lot of people do that so
when you do a kick it's just from your waist down and that's really important
so if you feel like your horse is just like really lazy and it's hard to keep them in the counter
i recommend doing lots of transitions between trot and canner so you're going to go trot
forward canner get going get him going where i can push my heels down then come back to trot again
and forward canner good boy and you kind of want to get that that jump the first
stride where the horse really jumped into the canner and then push your heels down
and care good boy
good boy so if you have a horse that's super lazy
do a lot of transitions where they really go quick and forward into the canter
rather than trying to keep your horse going the whole time in the canter good boy jack always
remember whenever your horse does the right thing to reward them good boy good job so i
hope that video was helpful i hope it gave you some ideas for how to stop gripping at the canner
be sure to check out in the description box i have a free mini course on rider position that
will help you kind of with your leg position and your seat position because ultimately that's the
importance here is that your seat is independent and able to really follow the motion of the horse
bye