Lesson 6: Basics of the Trot
What to know about the gait: interesting facts
Old horsemen have always said that if you want to work a horse down, that is, diminish his energy level so he’s not so forward or strong (that is, fast), trot him on a longe line. But don’t canter him; that, they say, will just make him stronger. It is the old horsemen’s concept that trotting wears a horse out faster than any other gait.
Maybe, maybe not. Stephen Budiansky, in his book The Nature of Horses, says that if a horse is using himself optimally at each gait—walk, trot and canter—he will burn the same amount of energy at each gait.
That may be true. But few horses, especially under new riders, are going to be using themselves optimally. So I will stand by the old horsemen’s tried and true standard: if you want to wear a horse out enough to work quietly for a beginner, longe him for 20 minutes at the trot, ten minutes to the left, ten minutes to the right.
QUESTION: What is longeing? It is putting the horse on the end of a 20- or 25-foot leash and asking him by voice, hand and whip to move continuously in a circle around you at one of the three gaits. There is a particular way to hook the bridle to the longe line so that it is effective and doesn’t hurt the horse. But in general, longeing is a task beyond the beginner rider, especially at this point. The instructor, however, may well longe a horse for a beginner rider’s use.
For most horses, the optimal trot would be about 7.5 miles per hours. (The optimal walking speed for a horse would be just over 3 miles per hour and the optimal cantering speed would be about 13 miles per hour.)
The trot is a symmetrical gait, that is, the left and right feet of each front and back pair of hooves hit the ground at even intervals and those pairs remain in contact with the ground for the same length of time.
What to know about the gait: history and use
The trot has always been used as a dignified and relatively comfortable way to use a horse to cover longer distances more quickly than anything but a running human could do. And a horse can trot far longer without tiring than a human can run. It is a comfortable gait for the rider providing the rider has learned how to deal with it. If a rider simply sits in the saddle on a trotting horse without learning the techniques, one of two things will happen. Either the rider will, at some point, bounce right off. Or the rider’s bottom and spine will be bumped to smithereens.
So, when humans began to ride a lot, they soon discovered that they had to accommodate the ‘bounce’ of a trotting horse in order to benefit from the clear advantage it was to be able to use legs other than their own to get someplace. So, posting was born. Posting uses the rider’s legs, buttocks and abdomen to get the buttocks off the saddle when the horse’s trot moves it upward, and to set the buttocks down again during the brief moment the horse has all four feet on the ground, between movements of the two pairs.
Best of all, unless you’re on a really lazy horse that requires constant application of your leg muscles, it doesn’t tire the rider much more than it does the horse. And, the rider can always sit the trot for a while if he or she gets tired of posting, or the rider can walk or canter; the canter will get you there faster, but you have to know you’re on even ground and a few other things to use it wisely.
