Using a tool like a 'tap metronome' is a great way to quantify your stride horses tempo.
Before we go further lets define what tempo is.
Tempo: The Rate or Speed of Motion or Activity.
When considering tempo in horses we are generally measuring the STRIDE tempo; that is what we are focusing on in this piece.
However, keep in mind the tempo within the stride (the beats of steps: 4 beats of walk, 2 of trot &, 3 of canter) is generally what people are talking about when they are discussing rhythm. For instance a horse with a lateral walk might have a perfectly acceptable stride tempo but the rhythm (step rate within the stride) would be described as 'irregular' or 'incorrect'. The two terms however are somewhat interchangeable and it is important to clarify the word 'rhythm' if it is used without a descriptor of 'stride' or 'step': rhythm being an overall construct versus stride rhythm and step rhythm being descriptors of observable biomechanics.
Andrew Mclean has spent some time measuring stride tempo. I'll be honest I can't right now find where this information is published, when I do I will edit this document. Right now I will just repeat what he has told me about average stride tempo measurements (for correct biomechanical gaits to emerge).
Collected walk and passage - 55 bpm
Piaffe is between these two, I'm not sure if there is a consensus on the bpm.
Collected trot - 75 bpm
Collected canter - 95 bpm
Jumping obstacles over 1.10m - 110bpm
The point of me telling you all this is you can do it at home for yourself. Measure your own horse or watch some film and measure horses on TV, its quite fun and incredibly interesting. Also if you do it frequently you will train your ear and eye and will start recognising tempo's that are too fast or too slow intrinsically.
The tools I use
On my iPhone - app (free) called 'Tap Metronome' by Dan Soper
Make sure you set the 'beat' to 1.
On my desktop I used this the other day and it was great (also free). Didn't need to check or adjust any 'beat' settings https://taptempo.io/
How to use
If you want to measure your horses stride directly: pick 1 leg (left fore for example) and watch it closely, 'tap' along in time to ONLY that leg each time it hits the ground, and you will get a measure on the screen. This is good when you are watching or have a friend on the ground who is watching and can report back to you, or if you can ride/work your horse one handed and use the phone with the other one ;)
If you want to set the tempo and compare: on the app (not sure if you can do this on the desktop) you can roll the bpm counter to any measure and just let it play. This is helpful when you are actually working with your horse and can't be 'tapping' away (lols), set the metronome put the phone in your pocket and just listen.
*Remember we are measuring STRIDE tempo, hence you are only interested in one leg as it is representing the amount of time that passes between the moment it has hit the ground and the NEXT moment that same leg hits the ground = one stride.
Aaaaaand that's it!
Being that the above guides are collected paces its important that you can go both quicker and slower within each gait in order to teach adjustability of tempo. I've not tried to measure and record the upper and lower limits, I'll try and remember to ask Andrew next time I talk to him (if anyone else knows let me know), but there tends to be more adjustability the higher up the gaits you go.
Its also interesting to consider how adjustable the trot needs to be; from 55bpm to 75+bpm, in order to move between passage and collected trot. Therefore you can understand how important it is to train an adjustable tempo, not just focus on training changes in stride length. Something sadly many (most) dressage trainers do not do because they do not distinguish between tempo and stride length or even recognise that every gait is made up of these two component parts (very concerning).
ATM I think that's all I want to say on the topic, have fun measuring stride tempo at home and on other horses, its very educational!
Till next time, Sandra.
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