hi it's josie and today i'd like to talk to you about improving your horse's trot and we're going
to do it through rhythm tempo and balance i've had a few questions lately about horses that
are rushing horses that fall into and out of other gaits hazel white this one will help you
and jenna jacopec i hope i pronounced that correctly this one will also help you with
your problem with your off the track thoroughbred i would love to be able
to give you a quick fix but i have not yet found any in horse riding or horse training
what i have found though is the longest road is usually the quickest route so today i'm going to
show you some foundational things that i do with my horse so we're going to talk about rhythm tempo
and balance and we're obviously going to use the trot rhythm the trot is a two beat rhythm
you'll understand that it goes one two one two one two so we wanna make sure it is a nice good two
beat rhythm and then we need to control the tempo the tempo is how many of those two beats fit into
a minute cycle so a slower trot tempo is one two one two one two a faster tempo is one two one two
one two one two so you can see you'd fit more one twos in a minute cycle with the second one than
the first one now all horses have a natural tempo which is the best tempo for that horse
to find his balance and every horse that tempo is different and it's your job as his rider
to find the tempo that he finds his balance in easiest and once you've found that tempo
and you've kept your nice two-beat rhythm in a good tempo then your horse will find his balance
and you will feel that he has his balance because he doesn't appear to be falling forward so i'll
show you what i mean by falling forward i'm just going to talk a little bit about balance and then
give you a little visual so hopefully you'll understand what i mean by the horse running and
falling forward so nature made horses to carry more weight on their forehand that is the way
they naturally go there's more weight over their front legs than their hind legs when your horse
is young green or has never found his balance and you've added your own weight to him which
is loaded up his forehand a little bit he will tend to go like this and if you've ever done it
yourself and you've been running really fast you tip forward and you fall forward and usually the
horse will offer you a fast tempo because he's losing his balance so it's our job as the rider
to find the tempo that he can most easily find his balance in and i'm here to tell you it's
not usually the tempo that they offer you particularly when they're young and green
so we'd like him to go from that falling forward posture and tempo to one that's a little bit more
balanced so i'll see if i can show you and give you a visual on that when we control the tempo
we hopefully stop the horse from feeling like he's running and falling forward and bring his
center of gravity back and allow him to find his balance with it spread over four legs so that he
walks more like you're supposed to carry yourself in the saddle with balance and not falling forward
like everything in horses this is not going to happen overnight for your horse you're going
to find a few steps where you get the balance and then you lose it then you get it then you lose it
every horse is different some horses will find their balance
more quickly and easily than others that but then will find something else difficult work with
the horse you've got that's one of the joys of horse training is that they're all different and
i get excited about finding what i can help the horse with and what he can do well naturally so
how do we control the tempo in the horse's trot well the very basic foundation is that the horse
should follow the rhythm and we're going to use rise trot the horse should follow the rhythm of
your rise trot you are the pilot not the passenger you are the pilot not the passenger so the horse
must listen to your seat up down up down up down up down i am very definitely rising and sitting
good boy and if his tempo was too fast underneath me i'll see if i can make him go a bit faster
now he's going faster and he's actually starting to fall a bit forward i slow my rise
so on a young green horse or a horse that is actually out of balance or out of his tempo
you are rising and falling at a different tempo to what he's offering under the saddle and that
can feel very uncomfortable because you're actually out of sync with them the these are
part of the reasons guys you need to work on your seat and have a good seat before you try and start
training your horse so important and it will pay you back a million times over i promise you
so while he's rushing and you're trying to keep your one two not in time with him you need to slow
him down so we really don't want to use the reins too much if we don't want to pull on the reins we
never want to pull on the reins if we can help it so how do you do it well circles
are your best friend because the horse will naturally need to slow down on the circle
if he's going too fast so what you would do i don't know if i can reproduce this and i'm
sorry if i can't but these horses are my guys are a little bit further along and they really
listen to my seat but i'll give it my best shot all right rebel let's see what we can do so
we're going along here and rebel starts to get too
fast I have to make him go fast good boy so i will slow my rise and turn
on a circle the minute he starts to come back to my seat or my rhythm i will let him go straight
if he goes fast again i will turn on the circle and when he slows i'll let him go straight
if it means i need to complete a full circle that's what i'll do and sometimes
when you're riding a young green horse this will be your entire training session
just working on getting the horse to listen to understand to listen to your seat so one two one
two one two one two so what i do at the top of my rise is i pause and pull my core muscles in
so i basically pull my belly button to my backbone it's the best way i can try and
explain it and engage the lower muscles from my belly button to my pubic bone
almost as if you're blowing out through a straw
and i do that at the top and release pause and release my horse will feel that
and if he doesn't in the beginning because he's green as i do repetitions of this he will work it
out they are pretty smart when it comes to things like that they can feel the little tiny movements
that you do on their back again why you need to try and get yourself a good seat so another way to
actually teach your horse to listen to your rhythm of your body if he's not understanding it is to
do a little a trot you see yep i have to add a leg and perhaps even a little bit of whip here because
rebel does like to go slow and stop that's his favorite pace stand still so allow him to go
forward and then slow him down oh you and but keep him trotting no trot trot trot little trot and
then i will allow my rise to get a bit more um i want to say bigger but that's not the word forward
and now a littler one and a good way to do this exercise is to do it before the corner a little
a trot come around the corner little trot and then let him out into what would be a normal trot
good good
coming into the corner little trot nope nope yeah see i gotta use a bit of leg and whip because he
wants to just go on to his face good boy and stop good boy and now i'm gonna ask for a bigger trot
good and come back littler make my rise littler i don't pull on my reins i can promise you that
i do squeeze release the outside rein in a half halt come across the diagonal littler trot
a little a trot and now big trot and coming into the corner little trot sit a bit more upright
and by that i mean instead of sending my energy that way i send my energy
up a bit sorry rebel so now i'm going to send my energy out and forward and i'm going to lift my
energy up and bring it up and down more or less on the spot for a little way to think about it
good so once you've found your horse's tempo you attempt to work him in your training sessions
in that balanced tempo and you do that for a little while because of course the horse has to
develop some muscles and if he's been used to running around on his forehand
and we're now putting him into more of a horizontal balance he will have to develop
some muscles and we don't want to make him sore so you work through that you'll find that
he'll lose his balance find his balance lose his balance find his balance that is perfectly normal
and how long it takes for him to develop the ability to carry that rhythm for a while
depends on each individual horse it doesn't happen overnight that's what i'm going to tell you
but once you've got that and you're pretty sure that you've got your balance pretty well
under control then you start to develop the horse's trot so once you've got that rhythm
i use my rise and i will ask him for a smaller trot you can see i use my legs here a bit because
rebel likes to come back and walk and then i will do a big rise and ask for a bigger step
i sort of push myself up up up up up up up and that helps him because he's learned to follow my
rhythm to take a bigger step and now i'm going to make a smaller rise and a little up down up down
but i have to add leg here because rebel doesn't this is hard work let's see he'll do a little trot
and i'll come out of this corner and we'll do a nice across the diagonal in a little bit
longer step so i will go up up up trying to keep the tempo the same so the way you can control your
horse's balance trot is by controlling the tempo of his trot we do that firstly by how we rise and
use our body regardless of whether the horse is listening to it or not you must do it all the time
because i promise you eventually your horse will tune into it and then you have him listening
to your your body rhythm then you can use your rein squeeze release outside rein squeeze release
then if he doesn't listen to that you do a circle so the minute i feel him come back
to my the tempo that we had chosen that he was doing i allow him to go straight if he only goes
straight for two more steps and then he starts to run again i turn him again when you're training
a young horse this is obviously your entire training session for some of it until you can
get your horse to understand these foundations and if he doesn't listen to a turning on a circle i
will go and work with slowing the trot right down trying to find a way to explain to the horse that
i want him to listen to my body i hope this helps you go out and play with it come back and tell me
what you find good bad or otherwise i'd love to hear how you go with it and thank you for watching