Training a horse for any timed event takes time. We talked last month about instilling the basics-giving to pressure side to side, breaking at the poll, responding to your legs and your body position. Those are the tools for learning and correcting any part of a timed-event pattern.
Once we have mastered the basics, we teach the horse the pattern. In a way, this part is simple…if you know exactly what you're training him to do. In other words, you need to know exactly where you want him to be in any part of a pattern-the approach to a turn, the turn, and when leaving the turn.
In fact, how successful your training will be depends on how exactly the same you can take the horse through the pattern, over and over.
Precision is Everything
If you're wide one time in one spot, then close in the same spot the next time, you're teaching the horse that precision just doesn't matter. But in timed events, precise, correct patterns are everything! Find your perfect pattern and don't deviate from it-no matter what the speed.
To get the precision you need from your horse, you have to ride painstakingly the same every time you go through the pattern. And that goes not only for where you position your horse, it extends to how you position him. Your hands need to be the same at a walk, as they'll be at a trot, at a lope and at a full-out run. Your body position, from the beginning, needs to emulate what it will be at a run. Throughout the process, steady hands and quiet, consistent posture create a horse that is smooth and solid.
The opposite is also true. Being too rough or inconsistent with your hands, and not being consistent with your body position, are going to create a horse who tries to avoid the discomfort rather than one who's trying to be consistent as he goes through the pattern.
From the beginning, even at a walk, be sure to ride exactly like you will at a run. Put your hands forward between the turns, so when you pick up for the turns, your horse feels the difference. As you approach the turn, melt into the saddle and keep weight in the outside stirrup so you don't lean.
Bring your hands up to help the horse collect, then ask him to bend to the inside. Increase the bend as you complete the turn, then let his head straighten up as he goes to the next turn and as you shift your weight forward.
