Develop Your Trot Lengthening!

[Music] okay today's video topic is about trot lengthenings uh i'm amelia if you didn't know that and trot lengthenings first show up at first level at first level they want to see that your horse has developed thrust so thrust is what allows you to do a trot lengthening it's that ability to where the horse can push off of the hind leg and what you want in a trot lengthening is that you want the strides to get longer but you don't want the strides to get quicker so let me know in the comments if you struggle with your trot lengthening and what your horse's evasion is in the trot lengthening i'm going to give you some tips and some exercises to help you with your top lengthening today be sure to give me a thumbs up if you like my channel it helps out and also check out the links below i have a free rider assessment quiz for you to take so let's get started with today's topic so a couple of things to consider so one of my favorite exercises to work on the trot lengthenings is to combine a suppleness exercise with the lengthening exercise because in order to get the steps longer and not just faster your horse has to be supple so an exercise that works on suppleness is a leg guilt so what i'm going to do is i'm going to turn up the quarter line and i'm just kind of keeping my horse at a regular trot i'm doing the posting trot i'm going to lay guild him over to the rail and then when i get to the rail i'm gonna go towards my lengthening and i'm thinking really slower bigger slower bigger so if you have a horse that tends to just get quick and choppy this is going to help because it's going to loosen up the leg you loosens up their lower back and engages the inside hind leg so that they can then push for that nice lengthening trot oh my curio has a very nice lengthening drop so again i'm just kind of keeping it slow half all no he starts to anticipate i'm thinking slow rocking back and then big big big good boy so it's good to do this exercise from both directions so let me show you off the right as well because it's important to do it from both sides because you need to work both hind legs equally so you're always working the inside hind leg a little bit more and like here in the leg yield off my left leg i'm loading up the left hand leg so i'm loading keeping it slow keeping it slow and now i'm thinking lengthen slower bigger slower bigger good boy you'll also notice that i'm doing this in posting try so if your horse has trouble with the lengthening getting off of their back and helping them out with like really like i'm thinking that i'm not posting faster i'm going slower bigger slower bigger like i'm not posting faster i just want to get more ground cover in the strides good boy good boy so that's one really good exercise if you're having trouble with your lengthenings just going like diagonal after diagonal and just running your horse in the trot lengthening is not going to make them better so don't do that another really good exercise that you can do if you have a horse especially that likes to ration the lengthenings or that hollows again it's really important that your horse stays round when you do the lengthening because if you lose that connection hind leg back mouth when you do the lengthening then your horse isn't going to get that longer step they're just going to get quicker so another good exercise is to just go on a circle and you're using the bending line so i'm using the fact that i'm on a 20 meter circle and i have him off of my inside leg and into the outside range here i'm just doing a nice slow trot and then what i'll do is on the open side of my circle so like from b to e i'm gonna post and lengthen lengthen he's like we don't normally don't there lengthen lengthen and then i'm gonna sit and do my regular trot so that wasn't the best lengthening ever but he wasn't really expecting it a regular trot now big lengthen slower bigger slower bigger slower bigger good good now slow trot again keep them a little back on the panel go ahead and then again posting bigger bigger bigger bigger bigger bigger good good boy and i might stay going in the lengthening change direction but you can just kind of play with it on a circle that can really help if your horse tends to rush bigger bigger bigger bigger good boy good boy good and then coming back good boy so another really good exercise that i like for developing the drop lengthening is to do them on a half diagonal so i'm going to go k to b get them straight and up lengthen and then i'm going to use a 10 meter circle to bring it back so a lot of horses have trouble coming back after the lengthenings instead of just pulling on them use a 10 meter circle to bring them back and then go again lengthen good good and then a 10 meter circle brings it back good boy good boy good so those are several exercises for you to try to improve your trot lengthenings i have a course on first level dressage i'll link it below if you're working towards showing first level this year it's an awesome course where we go through all of the movements but these are just some tips that can help you to work on your lengthening trot and every horse is a little different but it's super important that to get a good lengthening your horse has to be supple so their muscles have to be elastic and stretchable and they have to stay round and over their back otherwise you're just going to get where they're running faster with short steps which is definitely not what you want for a good score in your trot lengthening so let me know if this is helpful and i'll see you in the next video good boy mercurio [Music]

Channel: Amelia Newcomb Dressage

Views: 38,615

Keywords: dressage, horses, equestrian, training, trot lengthening, first level dressage, medium trot, leg-yield, suppleness, how to develop a trot lengthening, horse hurries in the trot lengthening, second level dressage, united stated dressage federation, 10 m circle, posting trot, sitting trot, poll up, round horse, 20m circle, dressage show, tense horse, choppy steps, horse rushes

Id: iCcTDFRLV70

Length: 7min 59sec (479 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 24 2021