hi it's josie and today i want to talk to you about lengthening your horse's trot how to do
a lengthen trot you have to have a horse that has done enough work that he has a balanced
trot with a good metronome-like tempo one two one two he doesn't um lose his balance and go
one two one two one two one two one two one two one two one two that is a horse that needs still
needs work on the very basics of rhythm and tempo but once he's got a good regular rhythm
with a metronome-like tempo you can go ahead and teach him to lengthen his trot so lengthen trot
is not a medium trot or an extended trot okay length and trot is the beginning before the
horse has done enough collection to actually do medium or extended trot so lengthening trot is
just the fact that the horse's body becomes a little bit longer and his trot stride becomes a
little bit longer and he therefore covers more ground the tempo should stay exactly the same
when your horse does his lengthened trot i personally had a lot of trouble with this
because a lot of my horses would just run run run run run run run and wouldn't lengthen and i had
no idea of how to get him to lengthen so we're going to work a little bit through that today
when we get to asking the horse to lengthen there is a little bit of preparation that you need to do
before you ask him to lengthen you need to build a little bit of energy within him to get him
feeling a little bit like a wound up spring they say but he needs to be a little tiny bit
compressed together so that when you let him go and when you let him go you don't let him go by
giving the reins but what i'm talking about is you push him push him push him push him together
and i'll go through this in a minute and then when you're ready to do your lengthening you go okay
then and he should go off in a lengthened trot the preparation is your job and then the lengthening
is the horse's job what i found when i did mine as i said is my horses would just get faster and
faster and faster and faster and i'd actually slow them down and go no that is not what i want
and then they'd go faster faster faster faster and then i would slow them down again and so we never
got to lengthening trot what i've since learnt is that if you let them go a little bit faster
they will do one of two things and neither of them is a disaster okay they're in fact just
the way the horse is going to learn they will either take a few longer steps because they've
gone as fast as they can and then they just push a little bit and that's when you want
to stop what you're doing and praise your horse and say good boy that's exactly what i wanted
or the other thing they'll do is they'll lose their balance and fall on their forehand and
then they will actually usually fall into canter and that's okay if they fall into canter all you
need to do is bring him back to the trot but the minute he drops back into trot in the first stride
of trot you need to send him forward again so that he can actually understand that no it's
not canter you want and no it's not that fast trot that you want and he will then hopefully
give you a couple of steps and you can praise him my two horses both took one of those ways
rebel actually found his lengthen stride for me spider has had a lot of difficulty
getting lengthening and he was the one he would always fall into canter because he actually found
canter easier than he did doing his fast little trot and it took us quite some time to teach him
that what i wanted was a couple of good pushing steps from behind carrying and pushing through
so as i said you need to prepare so coming into the long side in a minute i'm going to be
adding energy to rebel by asking him with a half halt half halt half halt here we go sorry i can't
talk listen listen listen adding energy looking where i'm going saying you do the lengthen trot
good good boy now when you're doing this in the beginning with your horse if he hasn't done this
one or two steps is enough put him away for the day and be thankful that you've got that
so i'm going to do it again good boy rebel
so as we come around the corner here i'm adding
half halt whoops half halt half halt listening i don't think hang on yes good boy
good good
now i do it in rising trot because usually i'm teaching a younger horse this and if you watch
me down the long side here i'll try and do it what i do is in my up there we go
he's almost lost his rhythm there did you see that if not go back and watch it
i pushed him too much so instead of just rising here
i rise now he wants to he's anticipating the lengthening so i'm going back to just
not doing any but when i hit the top of my rise
i grow a little taller and i pause for a split second and my legs say
go go go go go that's enough good boy
i'll come around and i'll see if i can do one going away from the camera
you have to play with this guys it's really difficult especially if you're
teaching yourself but if you don't have a go you will never learn it so here we go half halt
half halt half halt bigger bigger big good boy whoops he's nearly losing his balance good boy and
that's what happened at the end of the long side there rebel did lose his balance and almost cantered
so we'll try it down here half halt half halt slowed him right down rise rise rise rise
so i use my rise to ask him to do it bigger bigger bigger it comes from my core
see if i can show that on the circle line
here we go bigger bigger bigger whoops didn't get anything there
there we go
steady when you're doing your lengthenings like this you need to have a really nice contact
with your horse's mouth and the one thing you don't want to do when he's lengthening because
you will get a little more contact in your hand is i'm not going to do it to him i just
slow him down here is drop the contact on him you don't want to throw your reins at him to let him
make a bigger trot because i'm telling you now he will fall straight on his forehand if you do
that and eventually the horses begin to trust the contact and trust that you're going to be there
and if he stumbles within that lengthening as a rider with a good core and good balance i actually
help him to find his balance again and not lose his confidence so if you throw the reins at your
horse and he stumbles and falls forward he's going to lose all confidence in going forwards so that's
just a quick little look at how to get your horse to lengthen in the trot i hope that helps you
some if you have any questions let me know in the comments i'd love to answer them for you if i can
don't forget to like the video subscribe to the channel and thanks for watching guys see you later