Retraining a Standardbred to Stop Pacing & Start Trotting – Mini Course
Does your standardbred pace under saddle?
Are you struggling to teach your standardbred to trot steadily?
Feeling confused, flustered or a little frustrated with trying to figure out how to retrain your standardbred to stop pacing?
It’s time to breathe a sigh of relief; you’re in the right place!
We have stood in your boots and we understand how overwhelming retraining a green standardbred to trot without falling into the pace can be (probably a LOT more complicated than you imagined when you first brought your horse home!)
With nearly two decades of experience retraining standardbreds, with the majority of our off the track standardbreds being ex-pacers, we’ve created a go-to system for helping our standardbreds to build confidence & consistency trotting under saddle.
Did you know that your standardbred may have a really long history pacing… perhaps since they were a foal?! So although the idea of retraining a standardbred to trot might sound simple, it may be a very deeply ingrained habit that we have to work to ‘detrain’ before we can ‘retrain’.
If you stop to think about the big picture of everything your horse knows and has done up until this point in their life, it’s easy to understand why your standardbred finds trotting under saddle to be quite challenging.
Factors impacting why your standardbred paces under saddle might include:
- Genetics (did you know there’s evidence of a pacing gene?!)
- Training in cart from a very young age
- Wearing specialised gear to create an efficient pacing action
- Lots of familiarity and time spent pacing during training and racing (practice makes perfect… and habits!)
- A lack of experience trotting (some standardbreds won’t actually know how trotting feels, if they paced from foalhood!)
- Developing muscles and a body shape which makes pacing feel more comfortable than trotting.
YOUR STANDARDBRED DOES NOT NEED TO HAVE HAD A LONG, OR EVEN SUCCESSFUL, RACING CAREER TO FIND PACING NATURAL.
Even standardbreds with limited harness racing careers may be quite familiar with pacing, due to all of the reasons listed above, and therefore find the pace to be their ‘default’ gait of choice.
Knowing all this, we can see that teaching a standardbred to trot when they have been bred and trained to race as a pacer will take time. Your horse needs lots of practice to learn unfamiliar movement patterns and to develop new habits.
It will also take steady training to build the strength and coordination your standardbred needs to feel comfortable and balanced when trotting (our programs are not right for you if you’re looking for a ‘quick fix’ – we believe in retraining standardbreds so they’re set up for epic, long-term success!)
It also helps to have someone show you exactly what activities you should be doing with your standardbred to create a relaxed learning environment, as pacing is more likely to occur when your horse is stressed, anxious, adrenalised or confused. And also how to do these pacer retraining exercises correctly.
Going it alone is really tough; it adds hours and hours of unnecessary trial, error, confusion and frustration into your standardbred retraining journey.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to learn from someone who has been through the process before you?
To take a shortcut on the path to standardbred success!
By learning from experienced standardbred people, you can avoid getting stuck in a rut and all of the exhaustion that comes from having to figure out every little skill and strange standardbred behaviour on your own.
That’s where your friends here at Raising the Standards are ready to lend you a helping hoof.
In our standardbred pacing retraining course we’ll teach you:
- The what and why of standardbred pacing; a complete overview of everything you need to know to be a great partner to your horse
- A look at harness racing gear for pacers and how this impacts retirees
- Pacing movement analysis; an up-close look at the pacing action during racing
- The Pacing Piggybank Theory; how this simple way of thinking about pacing can change everything about your approach to retraining
- Key ‘establishing trot’ exercises used by leading standardbred retrainers
- The Stop-Reset Method; a step-by-step look at this powerful strategy for retraining the pacer
- The Roll Method; learn this expert fall-back approach to retraining pacing for horses with a different learning style
- Extra training tools you can use to teach your standardbred to stop pacing
The standardbred pacing retraining course is full of standardbred tutorials; a collection of standardbred training videos and PDF downloadable worksheets.
There is so much value jam-packed into a small $29 investment!
With over 7 years of experience delivering online standardbred courses to riders from all around the world, we’ve had hundreds of students – normal, everyday riders just like you – enrol in our standardbred programs and find great success following our methods.
Megan, NSW
– Jess, Victoria.
How much does this standardbred pacing training cost?
Enrol in our retraining the pacer online course for just $29.
You will have unlimited access to work through this program in your own time.
There is no set expiry and you will be able to access the learning content on an ongoing basis.
What if I’m not ‘tech savvy’?
Never fear; this standardbred pacer retraining course has been designed to be user-friendly.
When you enrol you’ll create an account on our standardbred tutorial website.
Whenever you wish to access learning material, you simply enter your email and password to log in.
Content is organised into lectures, so you can work through modules one at a time & never lose your place, nor feel overwhelmed.
The course content lives in our student portal, for you to access any time in the future.
We’ve had riders ranging from juniors to people in their 70s successfully take our standardbred retraining programs. It’s all laid out in a very simple way.
If at any time you’re having any trouble you can reach out via email and our friendly, responsive team will be happy to help!
This retraining the pacer program is designed to suit busy lifestyles.
We get it; life really is crazy busy!
And for some of us, we have to squeeze horse time into an already bursting schedule.
This is why we’ve set learning content out in a simple way, so you can pick up where you left off last time and go back over interesting lectures.
There’s no set schedule you need to stress about keeping up with. Make teaching your standardbred to trot a process which fits into your life.
LEARN ON THE GO!
You can log into our standardbred tutorial website on any device, which makes learning portable.
You’ll have the flexibility to watch a standardbred pacing retraining video on your phone at the paddock and have a go straight away (it’s like having an instructor in your pocket!)
Or make use of that ‘boot up’ time lying in bed each morning by looking through standardbred training videos (coaching from the comfort of your pillow… ahh, not a bad way to learn!)
