Schooling the Walk with Julia Weir

This article is from the October 2020 Horse Deals magazine.

An exercise to teach the horse to listen to your seat and to lengthen and shorten the walk while maintaining activity.

Julia Weir is a successful and well respected FEI level dressage rider and coach based in the Adelaide Hills, South Australia. Julia is an EA Level 2, Dressage Specialist and Level 1 General Coach, as well as being a Coach Educator with over 30 years of experience in coaching riders from all levels and disciplines. Julia has bred and trained numerous horses, from breaking to FEI, and she currently has two horses on the SA State FEI Dressage Squad.

The walk is an often overlooked but important part of every horse’s training. In dressage tests, from Preliminary to Grand Prix, there are walk movements that are awarded a coefficient of two (i.e. double points) and yet many riders spend little time schooling the walk. So often, riders come for a lesson and tell me their horse has a bad walk, but it’s really that they don’t understand how to train it.

The walk should have a clear four-time beat, be active and show the sequence of left hind, left fore, right hind, right fore with equal intervals between each beat. The rider should be sitting in an upright position with even weight in both seatbones, a vertical line from ear, shoulder, hip to heel. Their arms should be bent at the elbow and their hands should be carried with their thumbs on top. The rider’s elbows should act as shock absorbers and should move with the horse’s topline, allowing the horse to stretch the neck forward with an elastic contact, and there should be an even connection with both reins.

In order to generate an active, relaxed and forward walk, firstly spend a few moments feeling your horse’s hindlegs, which is easy to do. As you feel your hip drop to the inside, this corresponds to the moment your horse’s hindleg on the inside has left the ground and is in motion, taking a step forward. As you feel your hip drop to the outside this is the moment your horse’s outside hindleg is in motion taking a step forward.

The only time you can influence your horse to take a longer step is when the hindleg is in motion, so the moment to apply your leg to your horse’s side is the moment when you feel your hip drop on that side and then on the other side as your other hip drops. At the same

ime, you need to allow the power being created by your horse’s hindlegs to come over the back to the bit and back to your hands, allowing a generous following of the forward-moving neck.

If your horse is poking the nose, imagine your hands are on a tabletop, carried in front of you with your elbows bent, your fists closed with your thumbs on top, elbows to your ribcage and then slide your hands outward across the table without pulling the hands back, down or through the table.

Both hands should be parallel to each other. When the horse drops the head and softens through the poll you can bring your hands together and then allow them to move forward towards the mouth again without allowing the horse to lose the roundness and softness through the poll. Of course, this will be difficult if the horse has dental issues which need to be attended to first.

Once your horse is marching with an active walk, you can teach your horse to take smaller steps without stopping. To do this, firstly squeeze your stomach, then as the horse is taking a forward step with the outside front leg, apply that rein to restrict the length of the step of that front leg, then do the same on the inside rein without letting go of the outside rein. If you apply the reins as the horse is taking a forward step, you can make the horse take smaller steps. After a few successful smaller steps, let your stomach relax and go back to asking for big steps from the hindlegs. After you have repeated this numerous times, the horse will start to take smaller steps from the application of your stomach and you will barely need to use the reins. Once you have the smaller steps, ask for a halt by squeezing the reins harder and you should get a halt which is soft and easy for the horse. If you ask for a halt from long, big steps and take the horse by surprise you will get an unprepared, untidy halt.

Never let the horse meander in the walk. The collected walk must have activity, so must the medium, extended and walk on a free rein. The horse should walk forward with purpose, even when having a break.

Do Your Homework

Spend 10-15 minutes schooling an active walk with long steps and frequently intersperse with asking the horse for smaller steps and then go back to the longer steps, put some halts in from the smaller steps. See how responsive you can get your horse to the application of your stomach first before using a light rein aid. See if you can teach your horse to take different lengths of steps so you have more than just long or short steps, but a variety of step lengths in between. This will prepare your horse so you can ride different lengths of walk in your dressage tests and will prepare the horse to be able to shorten the walk for the turn on the forehand or walk pirouettes.

Happy riding!

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