The beautiful, elegant, ever-flowing free walk. It seems simple enough, but many riders have major problems during their free walk. In fact, there’s one particular problem that seems to creep up on almost everyone during the free walk, often costing them some serious points.
Can you guess what the biggest, most common problem with the free walk is? I’m sure you are right on the money, because most likely, it’s plagued you as well.
The Free Walk Crisis:
You turn your horse onto the long diagonal and let the reins slip through your hands. Your horse reaches and stretches out into a lovely, swinging walk that will surely get you an 8, at least a 7. Then you pass X and things are still going smoothly. You think to yourself, “Yes! Yes! We’ve got this!”
As you are getting closer to the wall at the other side, you know it’s time to start thinking about picking up the reins and preparing for the medium walk, and then the canter.
As the horse’s nose gets closer to the wall, you slowly grab your reins and it’s almost as if you squeeze your eyes shut because you are now fearing the worst. “Please don’t, please don’t,” you say to yourself. You are so afraid of what might happen, so you sneak the reins slowly, inch by inch, up into your hands. You creep your fingers farther up the reins into a shorter contact as you wince.
But long before you get your hold, the inevitable happens….
Your horse TROTS
Then you snatch the remaining slack of the reins as fast as you can, which puts a stop to the jig, but also hollows out your horse’s back. You hope the judge didn’t see it, and you wonder if you covered it up well enough. And by the time your canter work begins, that dreadful incident is still in your mind.
How the Free Walk Slaughters Your Score
Let’s take the scenario above: You get your score sheet and feel relieved when you see all the 6’s and 7’s for all of the movements for the first half of your test. You may have even got a few 8’s. Then you see your score for the free walk, and it’s a 4. But it’s a double coefficient, so that’s two 4’s for that one movement.
Then you see that your next score, for the medium walk, is also slashed to a 4. And that’s also a double coefficient, so that’s two more 4’s on top of the other two 4’s.
You know that your free walk was fabulous until your horse jigged. It would have been an 8. But because of the dreaded jig, you lost 4 additional points, twice. Then, that also ruined your medium walk because you jigged into the transition and your horse hollowed. So if your medium walk could have also been an 8, you’ve now lost 4 more points, twice, making that a grand total of 16 points lost.
Then you blow your canter transition because you didn’t have a quality walk to set up for it.
As you can see, it’s a snowball effect. In addition to all of that, your mind is probably still consumed by the whole free walk-into medium walk-into canter fiasco, so you are not able to really focus on the remainder of your test. And that will certainly have some sort of influence on your performance as well.
When it’s all said and done, a test that could have been a 65% turns out to be a 55%.
What Can You Do About It?
In the example above, you can see that the entire last half of the test can be potentially ruined due to one little mistake during the free walk. So all you have to do is prevent your horse from trotting in the free walk, and there will no longer be a snowball of issues to follow.
First you need to think about why your horse jigs toward the end of the free walk. Ninety-nine times out of 100, it will be due to the fact that you are picking up the reins. So why does the horse jig just because you pick up the reins? Anticipation.
The horse knows that once you gather your reins, you will certainly go off trotting next. How many times while practicing, or in a lesson, do you trot directly after you pick up the reins? I bet the answer is all the time. How many times, practicing or in a lesson, does your horse jig when you pick up the reins? Probably a lot.
The problem is that it happens all the time, but we don’t really care that much unless it’s at a show. When you go to pick up the reins and your horse starts trotting before you’ve given the aid to do so, most riders will either ignore it or bring the horse back to walk to reorganize and try again.
You Need to Break the Bad Had Habit and Start a New, Better Habit
So if you don’t want your horse to engage in this habit at the show, why would you continue to let it happen at home? You need to work hard to eliminate the behavior altogether, and then it will no longer be an issue at the show.
Here’s What You Need to Do:
If your horse is expecting to go into trot work every time you pick up your reins, you need to stop doing trot work after you pick up your reins.
So next time you pick up your reins, don’t trot. Start a new cycle, or habit, so that your horse no longer anticipates the trot.
Not all horses have the habit of jigging when the reins are picked up, and some horses are worse than others as far as anticipating the trot. So you will need to plan your new routine accordingly.
For horses who don’t really have this problem, I still try to never trot directly after picking up the reins, because I don’t want to create a jigging problem. So for these horses, I like to keep walking about ten steps after I pick up the reins before I start trotting. This also allows me time to establish a nice rhythm with good contact to the bit in order to get a good transition.
For other horses, you may need to walk 20 steps, or even a full lap around the arena, before trotting. You may even need to pick up your reins and just not trot at all for that particular day, in order to get your point across.
Perfect Practice Makes Perfect
If you want to fix this issue before your next show, you need to start practicing now. Don’t wait a week before the show and expect a miracle. You need to be able to comfortably pick up your reins and remain in walk, totally relaxed and worry free.
Try This:
Spend ten to fifteen minutes, switching back and forth between free walk and medium walk. This is a great exercise because you actually don’t trot at all after picking up the reins. You go from free walk, to medium walk (shortened reins), back to free walk (longer reins), and back again to medium, and so forth. So just as the horse thinks you might send him trotting, you drop the reins instead. Through time and patience, your horse will soon learn that you might not actually ask for a trot after you pick up the contact.
You can also try doing something other than trotting when you pick up the reins. You can dive straight into some lateral work, which will get the horse thinking, so his mind will no longer be stuck on the anticipation of the trot.
Fix Yourself to Fix Your Horse
You also need to think about what vibes you might be putting off that may be causing your horse to trot during the free walk. Horses are experts at reading humans. If you are worried that your horse is going to bust into a trot the second you take up the reins, chances are very good that your horse will do just that. If you are worrying about it, then you are planting that image in your head. You are essentially visualizing your horse trotting, and your horse can pick up on that. So he might even think he’s doing want you want.
In addition, if you are nervous and anticipating that your horse might be anticipating, then your horse will pick up that nervous energy, which will make him nervous as well, and he has no outlet other than to trot off.
So it’s really important to relax yourself and only think about things that you are wanting from your horse. Get the negative out of your mind and instead, visualize your horse stepping up into a nice round frame as he walks with a marching beat into your new shorter contact.
Take Away Message
Correcting unwanted behaviors in horses takes time and commitment. You are not going to solve your problem in one ride, and probably not even in one week. You need to make a choice to change your expectations and methods, and stick firmly to the plan. Time, patience, consistency, and commitment are key.
Keep Riding, Keep Refining
The Refined Rider
