slacy09 - 2016-03-29 8:29 PM

 How do you fix that? Extra stride around. Isn't it suppose to be 3, 3, then 2?

OhMax - 2016-03-30 11:29 AM

I guess I've not heard of a specific number that you "should" have, I feel like that depends so much on the horse and style.

I would find drills to help hussel them around the turn though if you feel like they can do it better.

SKM - 2016-03-30 1:09 PM Not true. While some horses want to be tail setters, some want to be run around and others want to be more on the front end, the number of strides around a barrel can be the same no matter the style. It's when you change the style itself that you have problems. Many years ago some dear friends went to all the major futurities and videoed the short go's. They put all 1st barrels on one tape, all 2nds on one and all 3rds on another. They then went through and dissected each one. Celie Ray would go into 3rd over 1/2 a second behind and outrun everyone simply by how she did her 3rd barrel with just two strides. The 5, 3, 2 were what they found to be consistently the fastest individual barrels. Each stride around a barrel is roughly 1/10th of a second. Where most people do 4 strides on 3rd and the horse can't start running until a stride away from the barrel, Celie lost a few 100ths with her approach, had just one pivot for 2 strides and her horses were double grabbing behind the barrel instead of a stride after leaving. That's why Celie could be so far off and still outrun most. Judy did 5 on 1st so you were right next to the barrel when leaving it. That way you get lined up faster to get to 2nd. You can do 4 on 1st but that swings you wide leaving and you are having to fight to get over for your approach to 2nd. While it isn't a big deal in a bigger pattern, it can cause problems on a small pattern where you only have 4 strides between 1st and 2nd.