Ep 178: The Benefits of Loping Small Circles
One of my go-to drills for evaluating softness and speed control is loping a small circle. It’s a very basic exercise, but sometimes it’s the simplest exercises that can be the most revealing when uncovering the holes in our foundation.
Loping circles is one of the most routine things we do. Whether preparing for practice or competition, most people lope circles as a warm up. There’s nothing wrong with loping circles simply to warm the horse’s body up, but as trainers, we have the opportunity to be more intentional with this warm up. When you go lope circles to warm up, lope circles with a purpose. It’s a great opportunity to reinforce your horses’ fundamentals and help them build softness. Softness in the body creates softness in the mind, which turns into confidence in the mind.
Loping a “Perfect” Circle
Regardless of the size of circle I am loping, my goal is to lope a perfect circle. Loping a “perfect” circle means traveling with balance and collection in all five body parts. Whatever path I put that horse’s nose on, I want its body to travel along that same path. I don’t want the shoulders or hips drifting in or out. I don’t want the horse to brace against the bridle. I want to stay at a consistent speed with my hands down. If you tend to micromanage and use the bridle reins to hold your horse at a certain speed, you’ll instantly discover a hole in your foundation if your horse increases speed or falls out of place when you drop your hands.
This criteria may sound very specific, but to me, these points are the benchmarks for determining how solid my horse’s foundation is. And in turn, this determines how strong my communication is with my horse. It’s easy to put the blame on the horse when something goes wrong, but in reality, the holes in their foundation are only a reflection of our weaknesses in communication.
Loping Smaller “Perfect” Circles
When loping circles, I always start with bigger circles first and work my way down. At a larger diameter, it is easier for horses to maintain softness and collection – this is key to building confidence with these maneuvers. Once a horse is solid at a larger diameter, I will slowly begin to tighten the circle.
As you tighten your circle, the horse should maintain that “perfect” circle – traveling with softness and collection, and staying off of the bridle. The tighter your circle, the more your horse has to prepare its body to get soft. It’s natural when we tighten a horse’s path that they will start to stiffen and push on the bridle reins. It’s not because they are getting stiff in their mouths; it’s because they are getting stiff in their bodies.
As I decrease the size of my circle, I’m looking for:
The horse’s shoulder to stay up and not dropping in
The ribcage to be soft and ‘picked up’ around my leg
The inside hind leg reaching forward and staying underneath the horse
Oftentimes, when we decrease the size of our circles, we will notice our horses getting tighter or “heavier” in their turns. This is due to balance and weight distribution. If you’re calling “balance” a comparison of the weight distribution on the front and back end, every horse on earth is unbalanced. They have to work to redistribute their weight on their hind end so they can be in a position where they can easily adjust their speed or direction. If our horses are unbalanced, it’s going to be nearly impossible for them to maintain softness in their five main body parts – the head, neck, shoulders, ribcage and hindquarters. To me, they must maintain this level of balance and softness to lope a “perfect circle.”
Turnarounds
Turnarounds are a drill I use to work on maintaining forward motion and helping my horse step through a turn while staying soft and collected. This is a drill that I cover in depth in our Foundation to Finish training program, but basically, it is using a fence to initiate a turn, then working to maintain fluid forward motion. When I go into a turnaround, I don’t focus too much on getting the horse to plant that inside hind leg as I do making sure that they maintain forward momentum to carry them through that turn fluidly.
Turnarounds are helpful in overcoming any stiffness or “stickiness” in the front end. It’s incredibly important to keep the horse’s body balanced and their front end moving when you are entering into a tight turn.
Being Mindful of Your Body Position
When you get into a tight turn, what is your body position like?
Are you relaxed?
Or, are you tense and bracing against the horn?
As we tighten up any maneuver, we tend to fall back into micromanaging tendencies, we get less patient, and we become more aggressive with our cues. If we don’t have softness in our own bodies, how can we expect our horses to find that softness? If you want your horse to look for that release point in the turn, you have to be relaxed first.
Sometimes, it’s the simplest maneuvers like loping a circle that are the most effective. When we try to work on a complex exercise, we think we are really putting our horses to work – in reality, all we are doing is creating confusion by sending unclear signals. If we don’t have the skill to communicate the responses we are asking for, why would we expect the desired results from our horses? When we improve our communication, our horse’s understanding improves.
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