Mary Wanless teaches how to transition a horse from trot to walk in three beats by slowing each pair of legs in sequence. Beginners might need six or nine beats, but the goal is staying light on the reins and avoiding the common mistake of pulling back.
Ideally, the horse would go from trot to walk in three downbeats. So what he does is decelerate one pair of legs, decelerate the other pair of legs, and then shift himself into the walk rhythm. And in that deceleration, the court is lower and the hind leg comes underneath him more. If he stops with his front legs, he's going to more do a handstand, like the front leg stop and the back legs going. And that's exactly what you don't want. So the three downbeats is the ideal. Now, you might start off finding it takes you six downbeats or nine downbeats. And if it does, it does. And you're aiming to just stay there quietly, stay short, stay in place, and to really think about what you do with the rain just being a passive resistance, your thumb presses that little bit harder on your first finger, but you're really aiming to not pull. You definitely don't want to lose, bear down. You definitely don't want a pull that's stronger than your push. And over time, you've got the chance that you can get it down from nine downbeats to six downbeats to three downbeats.
And then you really know you're doing.
The business okay, so you can sit again and walk, slingshotting back, keeping feet light. And ideally, the transition would happen in three downbeats. So the horse decelerates one pair of legs, decelerates the other pair of legs, and then gets into the walk sequence. But you're likely to find as you start this, that it takes many more downbeats than that to do the transition. And if you're tempted to lean back and grow tall and pull because your horse is pulling, then you really need to come back to walk, halt, to regroup, and get that good before you begin to learn the same structure in trot to walk. And how many downbeats was that? One. So we might actually review it and count downbeats, because that was five, I think. Yeah.
Trot, trot, trot. One, two, three, four. And there's the first walk step.
Okay, good boy. Well done.
Let's also count this down. Transition. Trot, trot, trot. 1, 2, 3 is a walk step.
