Trot Diagonals

This article is from the January 2021 Horse Deals magazine.

Ann-Maree Lourey is a Grand Prix rider and psychology-qualified Level III specialist dressage coach and coach educator who has run Byalee Stables in the Hunter Valley, NSW, for more than 30 years.

Know your trot

Rising on the correct diagonal is a bit like a dressage secret to the unknowing. I have lots of self-taught students turn up who have no idea what ‘correct diagonal’ means, and in some cases, they have no idea that the concept even existed until I explain! How would they? They can’t know what they haven’t been taught. Despite their thoughts, it isn’t their fault!

So the first step is to know some basics about the trot, otherwise, you won’t be able to work out the correct diagonal at all.

You need to know that trot is a two-beat pace. That means that when you close your eyes in the saddle (safest on the lunge), you can hear one/two, one/two as the horse’s front feet hit the ground. Now, if a horse has four legs and it moves in a two-beat pace, it stands to reason that there must be two legs moving at a time!

And there are. When a horse trots, it moves its legs diagonally, that is, front left and right hind together, then front right and left hind together. Then there is a moment of suspension, which means that there is a moment when all four feet are off the ground – you can sometimes take a photo of that if you’re lucky, and it looks like the horse is floating above the ground!

How do you know if you are on the correct trot diagonal?

It is really simple to tell if you are on the correct diagonal. A lot of the trainee coaches that I assess make it complicated, but it really isn’t. Try this: on a circle, your butt hits the saddle as the outside front foot hits the ground. It really is as simple as that. Going around the arena in a lap? Your butt still hits the saddle as the outside front foot hits the ground. Some riders call it the fence leg.

What happens if you are trail riding and you are in a straight line? I get asked this all the time too. If you aren’t on a circle, you still need to swap from one diagonal to the other every couple of kilometres. And you definitely need to swap your diagonal when you change rein so that you are sitting with the NEW outside front leg.

Why do we need to sit on the correct diagonal?

Why? This is always the next question. Why do we need to be on the ‘correct diagonal’? Admittedly, the horse doesn’t know if we are or not, it only knows when it feels better. And a lot of people don’t realise that it is important, usually because they didn’t know about correct diagonals and want to shrug it off. The basic answer is that being on the correct diagonal helps the horse to stay balanced on the circle, and around a curve. If you only ever sat on one diagonal, always, your horse would muscle up more on one side than the other, developing unequal strength, which won’t help future training and will result in him feeling better one way than the other.

You also need to know the correct diagonal if you wish to compete in dressage or in the show ring. While you won’t actually lose marks for being on the wrong diagonal in the dressage arena, it certainly does help the overall impression that you give the judge – that you have some vague idea what you are doing – and also helps the horse to stay that little bit more balanced on his 20 x 60 stage, and so earn more marks for each trot movement. In the show ring, it will certainly add to the aesthetics of the workout and help your chances of success.

On baby horses, experienced trainers might even sit on the wrong diagonal on purpose to help their horse pick up canter if they are reluctant to do so and want to keep trotting instead. And if your horse is falling in on the circle (in other words, acting like it is a motorbike instead of curvy flesh and blood), sometimes sitting on the wrong diagonal on purpose can actually help (together with a sideways pushing inside leg) to push the horse out. But that’s for another day. Stick to basics for now!

How do we correct our rising trot if we are on the wrong diagonal?

Again, keep it basic. Sit twice. Instead of up, down, up, down, up, down, you will instead ride up, down, down. Just do it once. Like magic, you will be sitting as the outside front leg hits the ground instead of as the inside front leg hits the ground. If you have a coach, they will tell you when you get it right, and ask you to look down at the outside shoulder. You should be hitting the saddle as you see your horse’s front outside leg hit the ground.
You can also work it out by working out the footfall of your horse when you are trotting. You really need to be able to tell when each front foot hits the ground, so when I am teaching I usually get the beginner or unknowing rider to shout out ‘left’, ‘right’ on each step. Then, if we are on a left circle and the right front leg is the outside front leg, I will swap the word ‘right’ for down and up for ‘left’ … then the rider can check if their butt really is down when they say down, and really is up when they say up. If it isn’t, they can swap sides and correct it and actually feel what is happening.

Some people do consistently sit on the same diagonal no matter which way they are riding. By this, I mean that they always hit the saddle with, say, the horse’s front right leg, whether the horse is travelling on a right circle or a left circle. They just seem to fall naturally onto that shoulder, and this no doubt has more to do with the balance and evenness of the rider’s body (or lack thereof) than anything else! Even these people can work it out however, with time and patience.

Even if you don’t ‘get it’ straight away, you won’t be confused by trot diagonals forever! Some people seem to click with the concept in their very first lesson, and some might think they will never get it right, but one day everyone does, and one day you won’t even have to look down to check anymore either.

Enjoy the learning process, it’s half the fun. All that trotting can only make you a better rider, after all!

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