Ep 48: Creating Muscle Memory with Feel, Timing & Balance
Horsemanship is nothing more than how effective your communication is with the horse you are currently on. We tend to put so much emphasis on the horse and what the horse can and can’t do, when in reality, your horse can do only as much as you help them do.
Just because you have good communication with one horse doesn’t mean you are granted that level of communication with the next one. For this reason, it is important for you to develop strong muscle memory as a rider. Muscle memory creates consistency, which in turn, creates confidence between you and the horse you are riding.
Most of the performance horses I train are in trained in speed events like roping or barrel racing. Muscle memory is incredibly imperative in these events because when you add speed, you are going to fall back on your muscle memory.
So, what creates muscle memory? Feel, timing, and balance.
Feel — the comprehensive set of signals that you send your horse to alert them to make a change in speed or direction. The ultimate goal is to develop a consistent enough feel to where you can send signals with your body while keeping slack in your bridle reins.
Timing — refers to the timing of your release. This release needs to be clear and consistent to signal your horse that it found the answer.
Balance — refers to body position and weight distribution. Be mindful of where your body is at and consider, “where does my weight need to be distributed for this maneuver to be as easy as possible for my horse?”
I train a variety of performance horses from rope horses to barrel horses, and my fundamentals of feel, timing, and balance stay consistent no matter which discipline I’m training in. Good communication with your horse can carry over to any discipline.
When working with young horses, for example, it is common for horses to be fragile and insecure. For this reason, it is very easy for us to do more harm than good if we are not consistent with our feel, timing, and balance.
Another example is in the barrel racing. Think about a barrel run from your horse’s perspective: If you’re running as hard as you can, but you’re not sure where you’re going or why, you would feel a lot of anxiety.
This is exactly how your horse feels when you don’t have consistency with your feel, timing, and balance. If your horse isn’t crystal clear on what signal to expect from you, it’s going to be very hard for them to feel confident running down the alley.
Everyone’s feel, timing, and balance is going to be a little different, but that’s why we have to be consistent with our unique style of riding to help make it as easy as possible for our horses to understand what we’re asking for.
Ashley Schafer and Emily Miller are two great friends of ours, and they are also two barrel racers who are an excellent representation of what it looks like to have great feel, timing, and balance.
While they both work in the same discipline, their goals are a little different, and so are their methods of riding. Ashley focuses on futurity horses, while Emily competes at pro-rodeos; however, their fundamentals come back to the same philosophy—consistent muscle memory.
If you feel like you’re struggling to achieve consistent communication with your horse, I encourage you to pick one person you admire and really analyze that person’s riding style. Pay attention to their body position, where they place their hands, and even what they do before and after a run. All of these steps are working together to develop their muscle memory and to help their horses better understand their feel, timing, and balance. Get specific about the steps you need to take with your own riding to develop your own muscle memory, and be intentional about working on these steps each time you ride.
Great muscle memory is created through hundreds, if not thousands, of correct repetitions. As trainers, we often get in the mindset that everything we do is to help the horse get better, when in reality, the things we do to make ourselves better are reflected in our horses.
Remember, sometimes, the repetition in exercises is for the rider, not the horse.
Learn more about the training methods discussed in today’s episode with our virtual training programs.
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