“It will actually speed up your rollback.” “Always let him have that second to know that it’s coming,” Piper says. Don’t follow up with your hand until your horse begins to respond with his feet. It’s better to teach the horse that your slight movement from looking in the direction of the rollback is the cue to start the turn. “He’s going to flip his head and you’ll have an ugly rollback.” “You can’t move your hand too quickly in a rollback, because if you pull on your horse’s head while his feet are flat on the ground, you’re going to pull on his chin and the outside rein is going to pull on the outside part of his mouth,” says Piper. But he explains this is counterproductive. Piper says riders often rush their hand cue in an effort to attain a snappy rollback. If you’re doing a rollback into a circle, you’ll ask for the lead for the direction you’ll be circling. If you are turning left, you’ll want the horse to lope off on the left lead most times. When your horse has turned 90 degrees of that rollback, you can begin cueing for a lead departure by adding your outside leg and kissing. Once I feel my horse’s inside foot pick up in response to that cue, I will follow through with my rein hand, coming across my pocket, and I point that hand 180 degrees from the way we stopped, ideally going right over my slide tracks.” “This makes my hand move a couple of inches, which is my cue for asking for the rollback. “As I look over my shoulder, my pelvis and back twist, just like if someone was calling my name,” says Piper. Once the horse has finished stopping, start your rollback by looking over your shoulder in the direction you’re going to be turning. Piper explains a “fresh mouth” as completely releasing any contact you have with the mouth before picking up contact for the rollback. “Whether I pick up my hand slightly to balance the horse or not, at the end of the stop, I’ll push my hand forward and press his neck with my hand to get a ‘fresh mouth.’“ “When I sit down on my pockets and say ‘whoa,’ I want a nice sliding stop,” says Piper. You’ll ask your horse to build speed from a lope gradually up to a gallop during the run down, and then ask for a sliding stop. But as soon as I sit deeper in my saddle and sit back, my horse knows to move into the second gear and start running for that stop.” If I was in a horsemanship position-straight up and down-the horse is not supposed to go fast. ![]() “When I sit back and move my inside leg forward and ask the horse to speed up, I’m in a different position. “I go into the rundown in gears,” says Piper. While competing, you’ll do this maneuver one-handed, and no matter the pattern, it all begins with a rundown from one end of the arena to the other. Watch the video below on how to ride the reining rollback:
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