# lope vs. canter



## Reiningcatsanddogs

Stay loose between your pelvis and your back and move with the horse. Goes for walk, trot, lope or canter. Western is very much about feel since you are sitting everything.


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## ApuetsoT

It's basically discipline dependent. Some say a lope is slow, canter is faster, regardless of tack. Others say no matter the speed, western is lope, canter is English.

How you ride it is generally the same, as far as sitting goes. Many who ride English don't sit the canter at all. Specific to what kind of English riding you do. Western pretty much always has you sitting.


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## jgnmoose

It doesn't actually matter, and as the posters above me have said there are pet definitions. In "Western" any Lope/Canter is called a Lope or a Canter and speed does or does not have anything to do with it. Make sense? Of course it doesn't, call it what you prefer and people will know what you mean. 

Personally I say lope to mean all speeds of the "Canter". 

The two tips I would give are to actually drive with your hips. Feel that rythm and intentionally move with it. Isolate your upper body above the ribs and below the knee. The entire motion should take from your thigh to your ribs. Whether the horse is loping fast or slow, driving with your midsection just feels the best to me. The other tip is to keep your stirrup contact firm but don't press. Pressing actually causes you to start bouncing. If you have become used to pressing on the stirrups, this can be one of those little mysteries on why the lope is hard to ride. Your weight and center of gravity need to be on the horse's back. 

You can often tell when you are in a sweet spot on an emotive horse because they act like they are enjoying it, lowering their head, relaxing etc. 

Good luck!


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## Linda G

Thanks for the feedback. I do have trouble isolating my body parts. Keeping some in place while trying to have others loose and flowing. In order to try to stay with the saddle and the movement, I am looking for some kind of description of the movement so I can anticipate what to feel and how to move with it. Do your hips go back and forth front to back, up and down, in a circle like a wheel or like a hoola hoop?


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## Chasin Ponies

I grew up in the very strict, very proper hunter world and you never ever would have heard a hunt seat rider use the word lope. It was always canter and I never heard lope until I started hanging out with Western riders. We also never used the word jog!

I do use the word canter when I voice train my horses though, as lope sounds too much like nope, slow and whoa!;-)


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## bsms

Your hips need to move with the horse's back, just as they ought to when at a walk..only the motion is different. The best way to feel it, IMHO, is to get a sheepskin cover for your saddle. It will provide enough 'grip' to your butt that your butt and hips will almost automatically move with the horse - because they have to. After a month or more of riding where your hips have to move with the horse, you can remove the sheepskin and you'll be OK on a slick saddle.

When a horse canters, the rear of its back angles up and forward, with the fulcrum being at the horse's center of gravity (roughly the rear of the withers). But you don't want to be moving across the seat of the saddle. The saddle, after all, is not moving on the horse. So if your movement matches the horse, it will also match the saddle.

These two screen captures were about 1/2 second apart, IIRC, in a very animated canter. Not my style of riding, but it illustrates what a horse's back does during a canter:








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Sheepskin. Longish stirrups. Relax. Let the horse do the extra work while you learn the feel of the movement. Before long, you will move with the horse without thinking about it.

Saddles with sheepskin:








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The smaller version runs about $45-50.

Also:


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## Linda G

Thank you so much, that video is awesome !


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## boots

In MT, SD, and WY lope = canter. And everyone posts at the trot. But we do not trot slowly, we do what I used to hear termed a "working trot" in English circles in the eastern US.


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