how to slow a lope

How would you slow your lope? I do alot of round pen work and stuff, so I want a way to slow him down without being in his mouth or anything. I do speed events with him, but I also want to be able to have a nice ride. Thanx

It might be hard, he might have too much energy so you could try to tire him out before a ride. Some horses just naturally have a very fast, hard canter.

I do check him and he does good if we do small circles, but when I widen the circles, be gets faster...

Technically, you don't slow down the lope/canter. The lope/canter slow down when the horse becomes more engaged, balanced, supple, stronger.

Speeding up is a typical reaction to losing balance.

I just saw a clinic about this very problem in April. There were four girls that were all working on this problem at the walk, trot and canter. I am trying to remember exactly what the clinician said. It was something to do with their seat. I think they had to open their hips and really sink into the saddle, not slouched or anything but to have more of their butt into the saddle and ride more with the rythym of the horse. It was amazing how much the horses slowed down when they practiced this.

Lots of loping. Then add whoa and back. Then more lope. You can also add some roll backs in to encourage working off the rear instead of dumping on the front end and simply pulling themselves along.

The horse can learn the difference between nice controlled loping and running a pattern at speed.

Half halts are a good thing to teach too. If the lope starts to feel chargy, half halt to the correct cadence.

Repeat, repeat, repeat.

There are many performance horses around here that have fantastic lopes. Yet, they can chase a can or a calf with great speed.

I'm nervous about commenting because I am such a new rider (9 months now), but I have been riding a very well trained horse, and this is what he taught me! I have been recently working on slowing down the trot without using the reins at all. We started with a walk -- I would urge him to a faster walk with my legs and seat, then slow the walk by easing my leg pressure, sitting back and forcing my weight back and down. After he did this well several times, we went to the trot and did the same thing. At first I had to really overexaggerate this (or at least it felt like I was overexaggerating it), and take my legs completely off him, but it really did work well. If he slipped down into a walk I would just put my legs back on a bit. I assume that this would work at a lope as well? Forgive me if I am completely clueless.

What she said.