Slowing Down!

This is one of those life lessons that we learn from horses.....to improve balance, slow down! This week a new student asked me why it was that her horse seems to pick up the canter when all she is asking for is trot. I thought about this for a moment and then asked to see her trot. One likely answer would have been that she was probably unknowingly giving a canter aid to her horse. Some horses will pick up the canter more easily(especially in one direction) if they have a particular diagonal pair of legs that is chronically farther apart than the opposite pair. But in this particular case the answer was about speed! Her trot was unfortunately too fast for her horse and he was moving on out of balance to the point where he felt more comfortable picking up the canter. My advice was to slow the trot down and there was no other incident during the lesson. She did make one comment though, "I only kept up the pace because I thought we needed impulsion." I simply stated that impulsion had little to do with speed and left it at that.
Another student asked a question at the end of a lesson where her horse worked mostly at the walk on a square using a variety of lateral exercises to bring him into a better physical attitude. He was walking oh so grand, articulating his hind leg joints as he learned to manage his very large body within the given parameters. Her question was, "how does one know if the walk is too slow?" My immediate answer was, "if you can immediately ask the horse to move on and he does, then you know you did the right thing." But I realized later that the answer I gave wasn't really an answer to the question she asked! I had to think some more about this question and came up with an idea of what her real querry was about.
Working slowly is somehow a concept that seems contrary to the norm for dressage riding where there is lots of activity and grand motion. I am not against grandiosity. What I am against, however, is the compulsion to work with mph, particularly with large horses, where there is little chance for improvement in balance. Working with the energy the horse offers, building it within and directing it carefully, growing the horse upward, instilling self-carriage.....all these things make for brilliance when we later add mph. Mph does not bring about self-carriage or balance.
So I suppose the last question above was really a wondering about whether or not her horse was somehow short changed by not moving forward with greater abandon. To that idea I would suggest that by the slowing of the horse and the putting him to task laterally with elevated head and neck, the result would be a greater setting on the haunches which would improve his balance and provide the necessary self-carriage which would enhance forward motion by giving the horse's body a sense of integrity or collection as he advances ground. Any heaviness of hand, lowering of the head and neck, irregularity of the steps.....these would be examples of ill effects of working slowly.
Eventually, I will have the opportunity to explain to the first student how the speed really had little to do with the fact that the horse was attempting to canter. It was rather the horse's poor balance at trot that was causing the problem. Speed is the ENEMY of IMPULSION! Slow work 'with purpose' gives birth to impulsion.

The Walk: Influencing Its Energy

Without trying to make for too much confusion, I'll try to explain what the rider can feel from the saddle and how to adjust his energetic influence to the horse's walk energy. Just take some walk steps of your own on a straight line. Allow your body to clearly shift weight from one leg to the other. What you should notice is that as you stand on one leg(let us say it is the left one)and swing the other(the right) forward, the hip above the one you are standing on shifts or swings slightly to the left while the hip of your right leg drops, falls in slightly and then rises as you put down the right leg only to then feel the left foot leave the ground and the left hip drops and falls in while the right one shifts or swings to the right. So your hips gently sway from side to side....always out toward the leg you are standing on. This is basically what is happening from the horse's hind legs. At a walk you feel this dropping out of one side of the barrel and a slight bulge or swing out of the other side. The dropping side is consistent with the lifting of the hind leg off the ground on that same side. On the bulging side, the hind leg behind the barrel is ON the ground and soon to push off it.
Working on the premise that we really have the best influence over a leg when it is airborne, try to imagine that on this dropping or hollowing out side that the horse is sending energy forward to his forehand. The feeling under the rider's seat is a slight drop and in and swing up and forward toward the withers. So the walk feels as though the energy is sent up toward the withers at the end of each step. This is the same pattern that the rider needs to follow to activate the combined energy from his horse and his own body's influence.
Shoulders of the rider relaxed back and down, with elbows hanging relaxedly down at the hips, the hip of the rider sparks this combined activated energy over to the elbow on the same side which conducts the message forward down the arm and through the rein to the bit. This action happens on one side at a time. So the hand effectively sends energy to the bit only as the hip tells it. The timing is accurate and smooth and is resolved at the moment the seat on that side rises to the top of the wave and has an additional influence into the withers. The motion feels like a beautiful swan gliding along on a still lake.
Initially, practicing the walk in this way may feel awkward for a few steps but then the effect is beautiful and brings the horse into an influence more from its hind legs. The walk innately is more like a crawl forward, like a pulling of the horse along by his front legs with hind legs following. Moving the hands and arms in a rowing fashion keeps the horse striding too far out in front of himself, falling away from balance and away from the influence of his own front end lifting mechanism. Keeping the hands in unison with the seat motion brings the horse into a collection of his parts quite easily. It negates the need for excessive and awkward hand aids and excessive leg aiding which only disturb the walk and morph it into another form.
Try keeping your arms steady with your hips and feel this flow. It may resolve many issues you have with unsteadiness from the horse, jigging or jogging, can help you create variations in the walk(collected, medium and extended), and help you start to identify any irregularities from the horse that will need targeted exercise.