The Counter Arc Maneuver in Rodeo Barrel Racing

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Holly Heidemann on behalf of Expert Village and the second lateral movement I'm going to show you today is counter arc. The counter arc is done in a circle and counter means opposite. So what, instead of poking his head to the inside of the circle which we would normally be doing in a barrel turn, I'm going to take and I'm going to ask his nose to come to the outside of the circle. So if I'm going to be heading right in a right hand circle, I'm going to tip his nose slightly to the left and I'm going to be using my left leg. Similar to the sidepass, I'm going to be asking him for lateral movement in that circle, but what I'm really asking for is his rib cage. I want his rib cage to bend this way while he's making a circle to the right. What this does, is it gains control over the hip, and it gains control over the shoulder. This is very helpful if you've got a horse that is diving into the barrels or what we call shouldering a barrel, which he does some times, and this is a good movement for him to learn to keep that shoulder up and keep that hip in position. So I'm going to demonstrate that now."