Equestrian Speed Training: Barrel Racing

Video Transcript

"We always like to look at our horse experience as a lot of fun and just about any rider can enjoy the opportunity to take their horse to the backyard play day. With a little bit of talent, practice and a lot of skill from the horse, soon you might even be to a competitive level that you never dreamed of. Again, with all play day or speed events, we want to be sure we take a horse into a quiet introduction to the pattern. We often refer to these as patterning the horse. Just like with poll bending, we want that horse to get a nice quiet, non-excited introduction. We might take him through at the walk many times. We might then take him through at the jog many times. As the rider completes her first jog, let's take her back through at the jog and talk a little bit about the details of "at the barrel". So the rider's going to go ahead and she's going to choose either to go the right or the left. If she starts with the right, its one right, two lefts or right, left, left. That means her right hand is very close to the barrel. She wants to treat her turn as a very balanced and round kind of turn that with speed could turn into nearly a pivot. It's important that we not get too close to the barrel. That's a common mistake because we often think, oh, I want to be as close to the barrel as possible, so I can get the best time and be the fastest. A knocked over barrel is a five second penalty. We don't want to do that. So this rider demonstrated the right, left, left. Now we'll have her demonstrate the left, right, right approach. So she'll start at the jog with the left barrel, do a left hand turn, then it goes right, right. It's always good, when we're introducing a horse to barrel racing that we test out both sides. You want to make sure that if your horse turns better to the right, which side would you start on? Certainly the left because that makes only one left hand turn as compared to two right hand turns. I like that this rider is putting her inside leg on the horse, encouraging him to bend around that leg as though he was bending around the barrel, keeping him in as upright a position as possible is going to him to come through. We often think of it as though each barrel has some what what we call a pocket. You want to find that absolute best position that your horse, based on this confirmation, body size and overall ability can get through the barrels without getting so close that he knocks them down."