The concept of teaching a horse the correct positioning is simple – we use consistency and repetition on green horses until they automatically run to the correct spot.
But even when you’re not training a rope horse, you need to maintain a sense of arena awareness. Consciously know your position not just when approaching the steer, but throughout your run.
I have the philosophy that in a perfect world, we always rope from the perfect position. But if you’ve competed much, you know there are times when you’re too close to the steer and times when you’re too far away. How much have you practiced throwing from an uncomfortable position?
Knowing you won’t always find yourself in the perfect spot while competing, you have a choice. Do you prefer to throw when you’re too close or when you’re too far away? I believe that 25 percent of the time in competition, you’ll have to take your second-best shot, and you’ll have to use the shot you hate 5 percent of the time.
In my book, there are three spots for positioning – perfect, too close, and too far away. Practice all three on that dummy or sawhorse, especially from your least favorite spot.
A sense of arena awareness is also handy in patterning your horse after you head a steer. Try to be consciously aware of the fact that your horse is getting too wide too soon or slowing early.
If your horse has developed these habits, you can fix them. Imagine there’s an invisible barrel that you must not knock over as you move left, which means taking another stride or two down the arena before you really widen. Traveling further down the arena like this will encourage your horse to keep his feet moving. Instill this pattern in your head horse, and he won’t short you even at a rodeo or jackpot when he’s going a million miles an hour.
To fix problems, it takes awareness of where your horse is in the arena. Another situation when arena awareness comes into play is when you headers are logging the steer across the arena.
After you catch horns, take your dally and get the steer’s head for that first stride, you need to glance up at the fence for two-tenths of a second to get your bearings. Obviously, you don’t want to look away from your steer for very long, but the only way to truly take the right path is to log two jumps and glance at the fence; go two jumps and glance up again.
Even at the NFR, those headers will stick it on one and look up after that first move. They know there’s a fine line there – if they come back up the arena too much, they’ll swing that steer’s hip to the outside. If they come across too straight, they’ll get in a bind facing.
It’s just as important for low-numbered headers. From the moment you nod until you face, arena awareness is just smart roping.
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