Training with Sean Johnson Kellyville, OK
Sean Johnson started his riding career in the English world of three-day events. In 2001, he decided to make the change to reining to continue his career in horse training and showing. During my time at Sean’s we worked on my leg position and making my horse do more of the work. Sean believes that you should expect your horse to do their job and correct them when they make a mistake. He feels that you should not help them all the time because your horse will start to depend on you. The drawback of always helping them is when you don’t help them they fall apart. Sean says expect the horse to be good and maybe they will live up to your expectations, but if you always expect them to be bad they are still going to live up to your expectations. Taking this philosophy and incorporating it into the circle, the turnaround, and the stop was the focus of my time with Sean.
Warming up
Every day we would warm up with trotting exercises. First, we would trot a few circles in each direction. Than we would move to a long posting trot to stretch the horses shoulder. Than a trot and a long trot with the horse in a counter bend. To counter bend the horse you use the outside rein and slightly bend the neck to the outside of the circle. You want to keep the horse on the circle so you need to balance the neck with your inside rein and use your legs to keep the horse from dropping into or out of the circle.
Leg Positon
All horseback riders have heard keep your heels down from the time they start to ride. I for one have struggled with this the whole time I have been riding. Sean explained that the reason keeping my heels down was so difficult was that I was gripping too much with my upper legs. By relaxing my upper leg, I was able to push down into my heels more effectively. This correction allowed my horse to move more freely and me to connect to each stride without having to work so hard.
Circling
Sean explains that it takes another half circle before the error becomes evident. So, if your horse is not coming through center on a straight line, the error occurred half way back on the circle, not at the center. Thinking this way was a great insight into where the mistake really started and that the correction should be made back when the mistake was created and that would prevent the mistake that became evident halfway around the other side of the circle.
The goal of the reining circle is to have the horse willingly guided and if you are helping them all the time they are not willingly guided. You want the horse to do more work than you. If you want to teach the horse to lock into the circle, only correct them when they make the mistake. If they leave the circle guide their nose to the inside with your inside rein at the same time bump with your outside leg. Once they are following the circle bring your hands back to center and let the horse follow the circle. If the horse is dropping into the circle guide them to move out by opening your outside rein and bumping with your inside leg. After working on this my horse started to move more freely and was locking into the circle on his own.
Circling can become monotonous for both you and your horse. You really want them to be waiting for what comes next. A great way to do that is to add a stop and a turnaround to the outside and loping off in the opposite direction. This one exercise helps sharpen up the circles, the turnaround, the roll back, the stop, and the lead departure.
Turnaround
The turnaround requires the horse to cross their front outside leg over in front of the inside leg. The outside shoulder cannot be pushing to the outside or the horse will not cross over well. To work on this start trotting your horse in a small circle and guide their nose by pulling your inside rein out and holding it there. Continue to trot like this until you feel your horse’s shoulder and neck commit to the circle. Once they commit to the circle open your inside leg and lay your outside rein and turnaround. While turning pull your inside rein out and kiss and release. The horse should increase in speed every time you kiss. If the horse does not increase its speed bump them in the outside shoulder and pull your inside rein out and kiss all at the same time. Do this for multiple revolutions and then trot out into the small circle and repeat the exercise. After doing this exercise in both directions and you feel the horse is crossing over well and is committed to the turnaround you can go ahead and do the turnaround maneuver in both directions.
Sean likes to start the turnaround by opening the inside leg and rein and laying the outside rein on the neck and outside leg on the body. He does not like to kiss to start the turnaround because he feels it can create a more abrupt start. Once the horse has taken three steps he kisses once for more speed and then again for each increase in speed. If the horse does not increase in speed he will bump the horse with the outside leg or both legs as well as kissing. If they speed up with every kiss, reward the effort by stopping the turnaround and let them rest.
The Run Down and Stop
When you are running down to the stop you want to have your inside leg forward and your outside leg is used to bump for more speed if the horse does not respond to the kiss. You also want to be driving down into your heels and sit down and back in the saddle. The idea is to have your body already in the stop position and be behind the motion. Being in the stop position as you are running down allows your horse to go to the ground with their hind end and you to stay seated during the stop. When you are stopping a horse you also want to be aware of your reins. You can use them to moderate the speed if you need to but when you ask for the stop you really don’t want to pull back on the reins. Pulling back on the reins will stop the forward movement and result in a shorter stop that can be heavy on the front end.
As with everything in reining maneuver the approach to the stop is just as important as the stop itself. What we did was use the entire length of the arena as well as going around the ends. The advantage to this is you can practice speed control at the ends as well as squaring off your corners in preparation of the run down. Sean likes to practice the stop this way because it allows you to build for the stop but you are not always stopping every time. He feels that when you are sitting in stop position and squared your corner and building incrementally you are able to surprise the horse with the stop there by training the horse to stop only when asked.
While in Kellyville, OK I logged 11.5 hours of riding time toward the AQHA riding program. https://www.aqha.com/trail-riding/programs/aqha-horseback-riding-program