Walk is an essential part of your warmup. Especially if you have an older horse, walk work can be a great way to help keep them in shape without wearing a lot on their body. It is a good idea to try and do 10-15 minutes of walk with your horse at the beginning of each ride!
In this video, I will be showing you a few things you can work on during the walk. One of the most important things to focus throughout your entire ride is following your horse’s motion. The walk does not have suspension like other gaits, but we do want our horses to be walking like runway models, swinging their hips, backs, and shoulders. If we lock our bodies up and stop following their motion with our seat and elbows, it will cause your horse to tense their back, slow down, or maybe even stop!
Once you have checked in with your body and are following your horse’s motion, really focus on the rhythm of the walk. You want to have a clear four beat rhythm that is active. From there, you can try practicing your free walk on a long or loose rein. See if your horse will stretch their neck down like they would when grazing! That is how low you want their head to go in free walk.
Walk-halts are another exercise you can practice. Halts are an important exercise to practice, because in every test you have at least one halt! When you are practicing your walk-halts, really focus on getting your horse to respond to a light aid without pulling, bracing, or losing their balance.
I also like to practice leg-yields during the walk. When you are working on leg yields:
- Make sure to leg-yield off both legs
- Think inside leg to outside rein connection– your inside leg tells your horse to go sideways and your outside rein keeps them straight
- As you are yielding, focus on keeping a little more weight on your inside seat bone
After you have done 10-15 minutes of walk work, you can move on to trot and canter. Once I have completed my walk warm up, I like to move on to trot-canter transitions.
I hope these tips help you when you are practicing your walk!
