How to Slow Down a Fast Trot

some horses just like to get super speedy at the trot and riding their trot can feel more like riding a road runner than a horse so it's exactly what Carly is working on is keeping a more steady consistent rhythm at our trot and in today's video I'm going to explain what I'm working on with Carly and how this might help your speedy horse as well [Music] I'm Callie you're watching the weekly show here at crk trading today I'm sharing a riding and a training tip as well and each week here on the show we talk about all kinds of horse topics from riding rider position to how horses learn different training techniques and also big topics in horse care the first thing to understand about horses that rush is that many times the Russian comes from the horse either being out of balance or being anxious and many times these things are connected because a horse that doesn't have good balance is going to have anxiety because of that lack of balance so there's a lot of times that we have to really take a big step back with the horse that rushes at the trot and we have to teach them to better balance themselves at lower gates like doing a lot of walk at doing transitions doing a lot of backing up so basically the horse learns how to shift their balance back and how to carry themselves in a frame where they're able to maintain balance so a horse that goes around with his head up and his chest push forward he's kind of falling forward all the time so it's gonna be really hard for him to slow down because he's actually rushing to help keep his balance we won a horse to be able to move in a better way that they're moving with their neck reaching forward their back lifted and from that position they can easily adjust their balance to go more forward also to slow down change directions whatever we ask for now of course there's kind of the prerequisites of the horse needs to be physically comfortable to be able to do this this means we have to have a saddle that fits well that he's not going into this unhealthy posture and movement to try to escape the saddle and we have to be in an effective position as the rider that we're moving freely with the horse and we're not accidentally getting in his way or making it uncomfortable for him to move well and I have a lot of other videos that you can search here that will help you with those topics so for today I'm just gonna focus on once we're kind of up in the trot what are some exercises that we can do and as I'm working here with Carly in the next few minutes you'll also see the time step maybe I say okay I'm gonna come back to the walk we're gonna work on something a little slower before we go up into trot so the first thing that I'm gonna do before I even pick up the trot is I'm going to check what her response is when I ask her to slow down just from the walk so I'm gonna see if I can ask her to halt as I do this I'm thinking about filling out here in my back it's kind of like I can feel the waistband of my pants expanding is a way to think about when I say filling out my back that slows my movement a little bit in the saddle and I did close my fingers there on the reins as well to ask her to slow down I'm gonna do that one more time right in front of the camera so I'm gonna ask her to heart having to close my reins a little bit stronger on the right rein because she's willing to get a little crooked there wasn't a real balance taught I'm gonna ask her to back up now I'm just thinking about slightly shifting back with my Center closing my fingers a little on the reins again you'll see I'm not leaning back or pulling back it's just a little shift of my balance it wasn't a great backup either she's a little distracted by the door that's right behind the camera there so I'm just gonna work the walk for a few more moments here until she feels a little better at walk before we start to go into trot I want her walk to feel balanced so I'm gonna start using some little half faults at the walk when she starts to even think about kind of rushing forward and getting a fast walk I do the same movement that I did to ask for hot I think about filling out my back slowing my movement closing my fingers a little bit but in my half halt when she slows down I soften and then I allow her to walk forward again instead of coming all the way back to the heart and I know this is really difficult to see but that's kind of the key of it because if I start doing a lot I might cause a big change in her and I don't want a big change I just right there what to slow down and rebalance a little bit and when I can catch that she is starting to get quick in those first few steps I have to do a lot less then if I was to if I was to just wait and let her get up into a big rushing walk I would have to do a lot more to slow her down now what I liked there is what I liked into my reigns she actually reached her neck forward that brought her back up a little bit and she stayed in a nice consistent tempo of the walk if when I like sit in my reins she would have put her head up and got really quick then I would have asked her to I were taking a little contact I would have asked her to come back into a better balance and we would have tried it again so now I'm gonna go ahead up into the trot and I'm gonna do it the same thing at the trot but one of the keys that I was doing at the walk but I want to just bring a little bit more attention to it is I do always release when they slow down now sometimes with these speedy horses a release doesn't mean that I just go to a totally loopy rain because their balance might not be ready for that they might actually lose their balance more and then have to speed up again but I'm always releasing in that I if I here ask for a little slowing down and then i soften part of that pressure that's in the half hook and then the subsequent release release of that pressure comes from my body so here to happen I just tighten a little bit that slows my movement she slowed down so then I released that she's actually keeping a really nice try say she gets a little quick here in the corner and I slowed her down part of why this is looking really balanced is because I'm feeling those small changes and I'm making a little adjustments before she gets too out of balance now I'm going to show you something else that I really like for horses that rush and that's using my space so I'll ride into a wall and I'll use the wall to help trigger the slowdown and I'll start doing different patterns around my arena instead of just following a circle I'll ride into different places use my wall I half halt right as I come into the wall the wall helps to create the slowdown that I can then release even if it's just a few steps before I have to ask the horse to adjust their balance and slow down again so part of why you're seeing this look pretty easy with Carly is because I took the time that when she did start to rush I would come back to walk we would work on what we did in the beginning I also did some other work with her to help her balance did some work on the ground some in hand work so that she learned to respond to these little subtle requests that I'm making to bring her back into a better balance and that way here when she starts to go back into her old pattern of wanting to get really speedy it just takes a smaller shift from me she knows what to do with her body to find her balance and to be able to go slow again walk good girl so Carly made that look pretty easy there were two things that really helped us one was just what I explained that I have put in to work with her that she understands how to rebalance herself and it's creating a new pattern of movement for the other thing that of course helped us is we're in a quiet indoor right now there's not a whole lot of distraction she's obviously in a calm mood so when you're riding and your horse is anxious sometimes just because of the environment they're just worked up and hot think about using that exercise that I showed with the wall so again notice when I rode I would ride like I was going into the wall at an angle not riding straight into it just at an angle I would give my half hot which was again that thinking about filling out here at my waistband slowing my movement and if I needed closing my fingers on the reins and not closing my fingers sometimes I need to shorten my reins and get really strong there but I'm doing that right as they're coming into the wall the wall helps to create the slowdown and then I soften and relax again I also created rhythmic movement so in the beginning when I was walking the circle and even when I was doing the exercise with the wall I was looking to just create consistency because when we have rhythmic movement that can be very regulating and calming too so I would love to hear now from you if you have a horse that gets speedy at the trot put a comment down below and what is something that has worked well for you was there anything that you noticed needed to change in maybe something you did with your position maybe it was an exercise that helped maybe it was practicing transitions what was something that worked for you or do you have another question put it in the comments below and as always if you're watching this anywhere besides crk training blog.com that's where the best conversation always happens

Channel: HorseClass

Views: 57,745

Rating: 4.9654875 out of 5

Keywords: slowing down the trot, fast trotting, horses that rush, rushing at the trot, fast horses, slowing down a fast horse

Id: K63Mxl4R68E

Length: 10min 30sec (630 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 03 2020