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Develop your horse’s straightness in canter with the help of this shallow loops exercise

Martha Terry Martha Terry

    • We know straightness is a crucial element of how our horse goes, and one of the scales of training. Canter, being asymmetrical, is the hardest gait to achieve straightness, with many horses falling out at the shoulder and swinging the quarters in.

    This flatwork exercise uses shallow loops to straighten the canter, improving engagement and encouraging your horse to accept the outside aids. Straightness still applies when the horse is bending. The horse is straight if their hindlegs are following their front legs travelling on the same two tracks in self-carriage.

    Quarters-in is a common fault at lower levels. As the outside hindleg strikes off (and starts each canter stride sequence), it carries the most weight. Horses may try to compensate for this by swinging the quarters in so this weight-bearing leg doesn’t have to step under so far.

    Aims

    • Straighten the canter
    • Teach your horse to accept the outside aids
    • Achieve self-carriage

    The setup

    No setup required: This exercise is easiest to do in a school to help you be disciplined about the size of loop. If you do it in a field, we suggest you mark out an area to work in.

    Diagram showing horse training exercise with coloured loops for improving horse straightness in canter.

    If your horse struggles to maintain canter on the correct lead on the wider loops, start with a shallower one

    How to ride this exercise

    1. Once warmed up in walk, trot and canter on both reins, go large in a balanced working canter.
    2. At the first quarter marker on each side of the area, ride a 10m shallow loop. The bend of the horse’s head and neck should follow the direction of travel.
    3. Repeat, progressively decreasing the size of loops to 8m, 5m, 2m and 1m.
    4. Finally, ride the same exercise with barely noticeable loops of 20cm – with the aim that your horse is completely straight.
    5. Repeat on both reins.

    Tips and troubleshooting

    1. Your horse goes disunited or hollows

    Just come back to trot, try to relax, and then try again starting with shallower loops.

    2. You lose the quality of canter

    Some horses rush as they anticipate cantering across the diagonal. Perform a half-halt in the corner before starting the loop to keep him on the aids.

    3. An unintentional flying change

    Maintain the existing canter lead (the lead you started the loop on) with your true inside leg and the outside leg slightly behind the girth. While the horse’s body should bend around the loop, their nose should be slightly pointing toward the leading leg to prevent the horse from interpreting the turn as a cue for a flying change.

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    Martha Terry
    Martha Terry

    H&H features editor
    Martha is an experienced journalist who is mad-keen on horses and dogs. Her reporting CV includes the Paris Olympics, European championships, Aachen World Equestrian Festival and World Cup finals. After growing up with assorted liver and white springer spaniels, she enjoyed 14 years with two rescue dogs. Now, her constant companion is Fidget, an extremely energetic and habitually muddy black and white springer. Martha has written on topics as diverse as a top horse’s clone to the best GPS trackers for dogs, as well as equestrian and rural matters for Country Life, The Field, The Times, The Spectator and The Telegraph alongside Horse & Hound.
    Martha Terry

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