Now that we have thought about rider position, flexion, and getting the horse to move away from your leg, it's time to move on to your horse's canter.

Canter, rhythm and balance is very important for a show jumper and he should be able to maintain it without too much interference from the rider. For our sport you need a horse whose strongest pace, his favourite pace if you like, is canter as most of the work is done in canter.

Many of us over-ride our horses in canter telling them constantly to keep cantering. In fact all this does is make your horse dead to your leg. Give him an instruction to canter then allow the rhythm to develop. If he breaks to trot — immediately ask him to canter again. This way he learns that he keeps cantering until you tell him not to.Your legs should be there and with the horse, without working too hard to keep him in canter. This will also help you to get a real feel for your horse’s stride and rhythm.

I do not go from trot to canter, I work directly from walk to trot and walk to canter. The reason for this is if a horse works from canter to trot and trot to canter he can get very confused when you ask him to shorten in the canter and he will think that you want him to trot. What happens is that you ask him to shorten and he feels like he is going to break into trot, to stop this happening you are taught to put your leg on to tell him to keep him cantering; so the poor horse gets confused. He is cantering round and you are saying to him ‘keep cantering, now wait, keep cantering, now wait’ actually that horse is then always waiting for you to keep your leg on to tell him not to trot. Move this forward to when you are jumping a course, you would look very silly in a jump off when you go to turn a corner and take a pull to mean wait and your horse breaks into a lovely extended trot!

My horses learn that they trot, they walk, then they canter and they keep the canter going. From a very early age they know to hold and maintain the canter and wait for the rider to tell them whether to go bigger or shorter.

I also see riders getting confused by speed. Far too many riders work on the principle if they are doing 10 miles per hour they are trotting but if they are doing 12 miles an hour then they should be cantering. The walk, trot, canter paces are all individual and each has a very separate role. However within each pace you may want to vary the speed and the stride length.

It may help to think of the canter and rhythm as a cog.You make the cog bigger or smaller depending on the gear in which you want to go. If you were in an outdoor competition you will want to work on a bigger frame - a bigger cog than if you were working in an indoor environment which is shorter and tighter where you would want to work in a smaller cog or a shorter rhythm.

Next week: Flatwork for Jumping Part 3: Flying Changes