Many times, I have seen riders canter to the first jump of a course and have it be less than stellar. But then they land, change their canter, and lay down the ride of a lifetime. I have named this “first jump-itis.” The cure is to establish a quality canter right away so that you can approach your first jump with impulsion and confidence, rather than using it as a reminder that you didn’t quite have enough pace.

Mastering the Canter Transition

It all boils down to a need for better preparation. First, examine the canter transition itself. In a lesson, you can’t use the whole ring to get going, as you and your horse are going to be exhausted before you even get to the first jump. In a group, you will get reprimanded for wasting time. At a show, you are only permitted an opening circle or 45 seconds, depending on your discipline.

Before you ask for the canter, be sure your horse is responding to your leg by developing a marching walk. This walk will feel as though your horse is truly taking you somewhere, not as though you are begging him to take each step. If the squeezing leg aid is not enough, don’t hesitate to give him a kick or tap him with a crop behind your leg.

Once the marching walk is established, use your inside leg to step your horse over toward the rail for a few steps, getting him thinking about his hind end.

Next, bring your outside leg back for one or two steps at the walk, then squeeze to give the canter aid. Be sure to sit tall and stay back (not throwing or perching your body forward) throughout all of this. The best transitions into the canter have an uphill, lifted quality to them, and this will be difficult to achieve if your weight is forward over your horse’s shoulders.

If your canter transition tends to involve a few (or many!) trot steps, be sure to do your homework to correct this. Your horse should move directly from the walk to the canter. Should the situation call for cantering from the trot, you can set your horse up to canter in a similar manner as described above but in a sitting trot. The whole process, once practiced, will take less than 10 seconds.

Canter Quality

Now that you have the canter, focus on its quality. It’s always better to have a little more pace in the canter than you think you need, as that will allow for you and your horse to have more options to choose from if you need to adjust as you approach the jump.

If your horse is being responsive to your leg, it will be easier to ask him to move up for a longer distance or collect for a tighter distance while still maintaining a springy energy to the gait. This indicates continued engagement of the hind end, called impulsion.

What typically happens when your first jump goes poorly is that the canter lacks impulsion, so you’re left with only the options of hoping to get to the jump at a good distance or to chip in to a tight distance. The option to move up to a more forward distance is not available if you never tuned up your horse to engage his hind end to be responsive to your leg aid.

Practice Makes Perfect

Remember, there’s no situation where a canter lacking impulsion will be useful. Whether there is a scary filler in the first jump on a hunter course or a tight turn after the first jump in a jumper course, a slow, weak canter won’t help to answer the question at hand.

A great exercise to actively practice building your pace to the first jump is by only jumping one jump: Set up a jump on both quarter lines of your arena, one for each lead (see opposite page). Make the jumps a comfortable height for you and your horse, 3 to 6 inches lower than the highest you regularly jump, or your competition height if you show.

For hunters, practice an opening circle and then head straight to the jump. Once you’re consistently meeting the jump with power in your canter off of each lead, increase the difficulty by adding in some attention-grabbing filler to the jump or make the jump an oxer.

For jumpers, don’t allow yourself more than half the ring to cultivate the canter you need. After being successful with the exercise from both leads, add a cone about 42 feet (three strides plus landing) beyond the center of each jump and turn before it to simulate a jump-off track.

Congratulations, your canter is a success!

This article about canter quality for jumping appeared in the April 2022 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

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Generally, I find it is a lack of knowledge about the weight aids that can spoil the canter. Most people know the inside leg should be at the girth, the outside leg behind the girth, but it is the “feel” that is everything—both in riding the canter and teaching it—and this is not discussed enough.

But first, let us put ourselves in the horse’s shoes. We have to appreciate that he needs as much freedom as possible to push off with the outside hind in order to take up the correct lead, and this should inform us where our weight needs to be.

With a riding arena to negotiate, there is always the danger that the rider will force the horse to go disunited or change leads, not because he wants to, but because he has no choice. Too much movement in the rider’s body can be very unsettling for the horse, and to continue on the correct lead in a constricted area where corners are continually coming up would make any horse feel threatened. It is a miracle that most generally manage as well as they do.

Canter Transitions

A good canter transition is all down to timing and “feel.” The horse cannot push off from the outside hind if the rider sits too much into the back of the saddle. Unless he is very big and strong, the horse will feel blocked by the seat and, since the rider’s weight often drifts to the outside on a corner or circle, he will be doubly compromised.

Instead, the rider should advance their inside hip and sit into the inside seatbone. This will free up the outside leg and lighten the outside seatbone so the horse has a chance to step under more easily and push off behind in every stride.

Often, people find it hard to think about their hips. What will really help the horse is the act of deepening the inside leg and putting more weight into the inside stirrup. The feeling should be one of stepping down—never pushing against.

On the ground, this is exactly what would happen if we cantered or skipped ourselves, which is where my Weight Aid Workshops are so valuable. In order to push off from behind, we have to jump into the inside leading leg, and that is the feeling I try to teach riders. Think of skipping right! (Or left, as appropriate.)

It is the same on the horse. Once we let our weight down and step into the inside stirrup, we can push off more effectively with the outside leg behind the girth and the horse can follow our lead. Provided we keep our weight directly under us and let our weight go down naturally through gravity, our canter will be confirmed.

There is no reason for it to be lost, or for the horse to go disunited or change, just as long as we maintain pressure in that inside stirrup. It is also important that the outside hand does not give away too much, which can throw the horse onto the inside shoulder, instead of keeping his inside hind well under him.

Excerpted from The Rider’s Balance, Understanding the weight aids in pictures, by Sylvia Loch. Used with permission of Trafalgar Square Books, www.horseandriderbooks.com

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