First in a Series
In the next few installments, Les Vogt takes you through exercises of his Five Easy Pieces. When you’ve mastered them, you should be able to put any part of your horse’s body where you want it, without resistance.
Doesn’t it take your breath away to watch a sensational reining or cow horse perform? It does to me, just like it did back when I was a kid and I saw my first stock horse in action. But the best thing about it is that these horses just keep getting better and better. First, because we’re breeding them better, and second, because we’re riding them better. And the biggest key I have found in developing that brilliant performance is the time that I spend getting complete body control during the foundation stage of my training on a young horse.
A key to achieving success in a performance training program is having a horse that will do everything with a soft and resistance-free neck.
If the foundation isn’t there, these problems will show up again and again, from a shoulder that isn’t responding to the neck rein like it should when you go to start your turn around, or a head and neck that aren’t staying relaxed and supple in your stops, or a hip that isn’t moving over enough when you cue for a lead change.
Not only will you have problems like this, but without complete body control, you won’t have a way to fix them. I can’t overemphasize this concept—you can’t spend too much time on the body control exercises that we lay out in this program.
The Zones of Our Horse: You'll hear me speak about our horse's zones and the zones correspond tot he part of the body that the exercise controls. Exercise No. 1 controls zone 1; exercise No. 2 controls zone 2, and so forth.
In the next installment about this topic, we will describe the Five Easy Pieces in more details regarding specific movements for the horse’s different body zones.
EDITOR’S NOTE: More with Les is a regular California Horsetrader column. Les Vogt has won more than 15 World Championships, including two wins at the NRCHA Snaffle Bit Futurity. Although Les still rides and occasionally shows, his focus is giving clinics around the world and developing products for the performance horseman. To learn more about Les and to see his clinic schedule, visit: www.lesvogt.com
Leave a Comment
All fields must be filled in to leave a message.