I can’t seem to stress this enough and it’s a common thing almost everyone does!

When lunging, STOP! (Read that again, and again).

When lunging your horse in the round pen quit asking the horse to slam on the brakes and turn away from you! It’s not good for the horse, it’s not productive in any way, if you’re riding it’s similar looking to a roll back but they are not alike at all. Rollback requires a nice STOP on the hind end then crossing over in the front, remaining on the hind end until pushing off to head the other direction. This round pen action is just simply you cutting your horse off in mid stories, no prep time, no warning and the horse scrambling to move away.

Instead of doing this just ask your horse to stop and stand before reversing and let it take a break before asking it to reverse direction. This will get your horse on its hind end faster than whatever train wreck y’all are trying to accomplish by this amateur maneuver (and 90% of you are guilty of doing it). This incorrect action will cause your horse to have anxiety and a lack of respect in you because your lack of allowing the horse time to process what you’re asking. You’re basically showing the horse you’re on a power trip and they don’t know what they did wrong.

Save your horses legs and brain but just letting them STOP. Your horse will start moving more relaxed and start lowering its head because it’s confident and trusts you will give him ample time to process then react to a new cue. You’ll notice your horse will enjoy lunging much more once you do.