Top hunter/jumper coach and competitor Hyde Moffat of Schomberg, ON, believes riders should use the walk as the foundation for their flatwork skills. He shares his tips on unlocking the potential in the walk and the importance of this ‘forgotten’ gait.
“The walk is the basic working gait that everything is built off of. A horse works the same way at the walk as they would at the trot or canter; it’s a very easy way to introduce aids and gain control. If it doesn’t work at a walk, it’s not going to work at trot or canter.
Improving the quality of the walk allows you to work on straightness and developing a horse that moves evenly through its entire body. When the horse moves correctly, you can aid its ability to do the job easier and feel better fitness-wise. A good-quality working walk used in conjunction with hill work is a fantastic opportunity to build muscle, because horses are then truly engaging themselves.
Common flaws I often see are horses not walking forward or carrying themselves – dragging their feet without true impulsion. Riders often don’t provide direction and ride around without a plan, giving the horse no real guidance. People view the walk as a rest period, when they should instead consider it a training period.
I encourage my students to make sure the horse is swinging through the hips and back and to feel a response from the hind legs. They should be judging how responsive the horse is prior to even trotting, by monitoring the leg pressure required to achieve that nice forward walk. You want to immediately establish the quality of the response from leg pressure and make corrections as necessary. You don’t want to allow the horse to sit behind your leg; instead, you want an active response so that you can feel something from behind the saddle.
I also encourage students to use their legs independently and make sure they’re not only using pressure from both legs on the barrel. As the hind legs swing up under the body, the barrel has to get out of the way a little. To help the barrel swing from side to side I suggest a bit of alternating leg pressure to help the horse get its legs up underneath it. Horses become much more receptive if you’re helping them to move the way they naturally do. This will help give rhythm to a horse that’s a bit hot, excited or maybe doesn’t have any rhythm; it will also help one that’s a little cold, and will help a green horse to respond properly to pressure. The walk is also an excellent place to introduce the concepts of lateral movements and perfect their execution. It is a more controllable way to teach both a horse and a rider how to manipulate their bodies.
Encouraging horses to stretch over their topline in a free walk, especially if they are working hard and there is a lot of compression, is very important. You have to allow horses the opportunity to stretch their topline, but that doesn’t mean that your legs have to stop working. Your guidance of the horse and the rhythm and forward motion is still coming from your legs. I don’t mind if you walk on the buckle, but the horse should still be encouraged to walk with rhythm and with some active, forward response.
At horse shows, I think that riders should be aware that the walk is part of what the judge is looking for – it’s not simply a rest period. At home, work the same at the walk as you do at any other gait. Once again, if something’s not working at the walk, it’s not just magically going to disappear when you get to the trot or the canter.”
