How to Control Speed in Rodeo Barrel Racing

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Holly Heidemann on behalf of Expert Village and I'm going to show you a little bit about speed control now. And speed control's very important in the barrels. People think about barrel racing just being reckless, abandoned running and it's really not. If you don't have a little bit of control over your horse's speed, you can get into some very dangerous situations. So I'm going to show you how to teach your horse to respect. You can't out pull these horses, they've got to respect your sitting and speaking to them as cues for them to slow down also. If all you do to control your horse's speed is pull on them all the time, they can out pull you so that can get you into a very, very seriously dangerous situation. So I'm going to show you now how you're going to sit and speak to your horse to get them to slow down from a lope to a trot, from a trot to a walk, and then how to ask them to accelerate without necessarily kicking them. You're going to just move forward to get them to move forward and, and not necessarily have to always be hustling them with your feet to get them to move on. So to ask a horse to move forward you're simply going to sit forward from the waist and you're going to move your hands up their neck. You can also smooch to them, I'm not going to do a bunch of that because he's pretty sensitive to that and we'll move a little too quickly. So I'm just going to sit forward and he should move forward at a walk. Now I'm going to ask him to drive forward a little bit faster in a trot, and you're going to see me just lean forward a little more slightly and I'm going to do what's called posting where I work with his trot instead of against it. So I'm going to sit forward (smooching), ask him a little bit with my kissing in a trot. Now I'm going to slow from a trot to a walk by sitting. "Easy", sitting, "easy", squeezing until we get to that walk and then I want my horse to be able to work on as loose a rein as possible after that. Not pulling on him the whole time. Short reins don't always mean tight reins, they're short put I'm not pulling on this horse. So I've asked him to slow down by sitting and speaking to him and saying something like "easy". Try not to use the word "whoa" because that means stop. So think of a word you like to use to slow them down. I like "easy"."