Do you sometimes wish you could “just go rope” instead of being faced with too much to think about when you practice or compete? It dawned on me the other day that the best ropers in the world can just go rope because they’ve been able to program their subconscious mind for each specific step of their run.
I’ve been having my students practice that on the ground, using eight strides in a typical run. You can stand back from the heading dummy or sawhorse and pretend you’re in the box. What will be your focus on that first stride? If you’re heeling, the first stride is all about hazing – leaving with the steer.
In my opinion, a lot of heel horses don’t break and run hard enough in the first few strides. Even some of you who leave with the gate will still miss the haze on a fast steer. Picture how hard a bulldogging or calf-roping horse breaks and runs – now you know what your heel horse needs to do in those first few strides.
So in stride one, you focus on reading the start. Stride two is about establishing which direction the steer is going and how fast. Three, focus on picking up your rope and getting your swing right. Four, feed your rope perfectly. Five, find your target and establish your timing. On stride six, you’re reading the corner. On seven, you’re riding into lane two where you can see the left leg really good. And on the final stride (eight), you should focus on the discipline to make yourself take a good shot.
If you struggle with, say, reading the corner correctly, it could be because you’re thinking about too many things at once. Instead, by the time you approach the corner at stride six, you should already have gotten your rope up, found your target and gotten in time. And you shouldn’t yet be thinking of delivering or dallying. So the only thing that needs to be on your mind is how to come in to the steer. For instance, if it’s a slow corner, you’ll hold your horse out; if the steer’s running up the rope, you’ll drop your left hand, use a lot of leg and ride strong.
We can program ourselves to react correctly based on each step of our run. In fact, the retention of our subconscious mind is amazing. I read somewhere that if you built a computer the size of the Empire State Building, that’s how much data a human subconscious mind can hold. It’s simply up to us to program it.
It’s automatic for me to never miss a haze, and I want the same to be true for you. All it takes is to consciously focus on only your start on that first stride. Do that over and over and after a month or so of practicing this way, you’ll be so used to doing it that it will become automatic. And your header will love you for it.
For more, visit SmartRoping.com.