How many times have you looked at the puddles in your arena and thought, “Great day for ducks, but not for riding lessons!”
Bad footing can wreak havoc on your lesson planning, and that includes frozen or baked-hard ground as well as mud soup.
How many times have you watched a horse and rider warm up and thought, “That horse is a bomb waiting to go off?” A tense, jigging, spooky horse can be hard enough to manage at slow speeds, and is definitely not a great candidate for a lesson on cantering or jumping.
How many times have your plans been changed by a loose shoe, or a badly-fitting saddle, or a rider who forgot their boots/girth/saddle pad and decides to ride bareback instead? By a horse struggling through an arthritic flare up, or a rider who falls and loses their confidence?
Teaching riding is often the art of improvisation
In some circumstances, the best option is to call it quits in the arena and pivot to some unmounted instruction.
But don’t be afraid to teach entire mounted lessons at the walk for fear of boring your students. Walk-only lessons are a seriously underrated tool that can save you income, keep your horses fit, and challenge riders at all levels.
Slow-paced lessons are a regular occurrence in our schedule every summer—when the heat index hovers somewhere between oppressive and yikes— and every winter, when we forget what it feels like to ride on dry ground.
They’re often appreciated during No-Stirrup November, even if no-stirrup walking is a sneaky workout in its own right!
And since we’re all about keeping school horses happy, we will absolutely schedule some low speed, high-reward walk lessons for a horse that feels overbooked.
Every time we use this trick, the goal is for our students to leave feeling like they really got their money’s worth. We tell our students that they know they’re becoming real riders when they can be stimulated and excited about an hour of work at the walk.
But you can create this enthusiasm by planning mounted lessons that are challenging, entertaining and valuable.
Our top ten lessons to teach at the walk:
1
Start with the seat. It is surprisingly easy to fill an hour with focused seat-building exercises — especially if you are working to correct a specific piece of the rider’s position. The lesson might begin with a series of no-stirrup exercises at the halt, including toe touch variations, core work and saddle-friendly yoga poses.
This can progress to balance exercises in stirrup stand, no-stirrup stretches at the walk, and upper-body exercises to improve contact. You can find ideas in our lesson plans for mounted horsemanship, and in the Blue Horsemanship study guide.
Throughout all of the exercises, emphasize deep, regular breathing. Many riders breathe shallowly or hold their breath without realizing it, creating tension and fatigue. Learning correct breathing technique will help with…
2
Transitions, which can include lengthening and shortening stride at the walk, moving from medium walk to free walk, halts, and reinback. Even beginner riders can learn about rhythm and tempo, influence the walk with their seat, and practice riding with straightness and balance to help the horse halt squarely.
Once your students have the tools to ride smooth transitions, challenge them to games requiring precision. Can your students halt squarely over a ground pole, or with their horse’s front hooves on a mat? How many times can they halt and walk forward between two cones?
Advanced riders can practice these maneuvers on a loose rein and/or with a neck rope in preparation for riding bridleless, an Instagram-worthy skill that always catches their interest!
3
Good communication requires good feel and timing, which you can encourage by teaching students about the mechanics of the horse’s movement. Discuss footfall pattern in the walk and see if students can correctly identify when each leg is moving forward — no peeking!
Once they can feel the inside hind, you can teach timing of aids and practice “posting” at the walk, which can be tricky for even experienced riders.
4
Developing feel makes it easier to practice bend. Even beginners can learn to detect the “banana/backwards banana” and how it influences the horse’s balance, and practice aids to influence different parts of the horse’s body.
For more advanced students, play with true bend/counterbend on the rail — and off the rail. Ride bending patterns, such as Barrels for Bend, and creatively combine ring figures: “Who can ride Mickey Mouse ears? Or a rainbow with two pots of gold?”
5
Of course, one of the best ways to practice “talking to the end of the horse’s body” is simple lateral work. We tend to think of lateral maneuvers as more advanced skills, but walk/trot beginners can learn basic leg yielding, turn on the fore and even turn on the haunches with the help of an experienced horse. Our Rainbow Level students love to sidepass over poles, which can be accomplished with a Ground Buddy assisting with the cues from the ground.
Advanced riders can incorporate lateral work when riding equitation patterns, such as those found in our Purple and Teal Level sets.
6
We all know that flatwork comes first, but jumping enthusiasts can get their practice in as well by spending a large chunk of the lesson in two-point. Start by fine-tuning positions, then ask students to maintain their two-point while riding through transitions and ring figures.
If you really want your students to feel the burn, gradually raise the stirrups, finishing with a walking race in a jockey crouch. Look for our Red Horsemanship Sample Lesson #1 – Day At The Races.
By the way, two-point practice isn’t just for students in English saddles! Western riders can also experience improved balance and fitness from riding in two-point position and by standing in their stirrups.
7
There are hundreds of polework patterns that can be challenging and entertaining at the walk. Set recognizable shapes such as a fish or a bow tie, or build progressively more complex grids of raised poles you can mix with transitions.
Don’t forget to include some Whoa Poles to test communication and brakes.
8
Ground poles alone can provide plenty of obstacle practice, but you can add variety and branch out into obstacle courses. Beginners can practice Survivor Courses with and without stirrups to drill those safety skills; add excitement by timing rounds in a walk-only version of an Extreme Cowboy race.
Need an extra challenge? Students can ride multiple rounds, swapping horses for each course.
9
We like to include plenty of mounted games skills in our obstacle courses, but if you have enough riders and equipment, you can also hold a full-fledged games day. This can be surprisingly fun and challenging if you only race at the walk — establishing a penalty for illegal trots!— and include difficult games skills such as placing a tennis ball on a low cone.
10
Never underestimate the value of a nice relaxing hack. If your horses are VERY quiet in the open and you have a safe stretch of road or trail, both horses and riders will enjoy the change of scenery.
You can use the time to practice road safety skills, play verbal unmounted games, or discuss HorseSense topics. (Conditioning is a logical choice!)
Or you can simply walk in silence, encouraging students to appreciate their surroundings and the music of their horse’s hooves.
Of course, you can always leave the saddles in the barn and practice ALL of these lessons bareback
This can be a particularly good choice on a cold winter day when the ground hasn’t quite thawed.
Start with some groundwork to get everyone’s blood moving, then let students enjoy the warmth of their horse’s back for the second half of the lesson.
Bottom line: Walking doesn’t have to be boring!
By helping your students learn to appreciate the slow stuff, you can improve their horsemanship and deepen their connection with their horses — and save yourself some rescheduling headaches while you’re at it!
Need ideas for entertaining mounted games that can be played at a slow pace? You’re in luck: THE BIG BOOK OF GAMES ON HORSEBACK has over 100 student-approved games, with arena diagrams, equipment checklists and variations for private lessons. The paperback book is available through Amazon, or you can purchase a PDF version directly from us!
Amazon reviewers say it’s an “amazing resource,” “an absolutely brilliant book” and “a 10 out of 10,” among other really nice things.
