Larry Trocha

Does anyone here have experience with Larry Trocha and his way of training? I just recently stumbled over a few videos of him on youtube, and it looked really good to me. Have ordered a dvd by him, but it hasn't arrived yet. Just curious to hear some opinions on him!

I've got 2 of his DVDs. Lots of good advice, and some I will ignore. He's quick to increase the severity of the bit, but maybe that makes sense for the type of competition he does. It doesn't make as much sense for my riding. But he seems to be pretty level-headed, and not inclined to tickle someone's ears. His advice on training a horse to stop seems to be working well with Mia.

I tend to agree with BSMS. Some of his stuff doesn't apply to me, and his whole bit regime is complicated (though that's likely specific to his discipline).

He had a video on getting a horse to stand for mounting that I found helpful for my old gelding who'd developed bad habits (my fault).

I'm really not into reining so I haven't followed him for a while, but every now and then I'll check his stuff out.

I'm curious what the reiners think of him.

I like him even though some of his methods I do not agree with, I just choose to it differently. He doesn't mince his words and he is not into the majikal bonding thing that some trainers use to lure followers, which I like about him. Even if someone is not into showing cutters they could pick up some helpful things.

I do appreciate his straight-forward approach. It is, "You need to teach the horse this, and here is how I do it", not, "If your horse loves you, he'll do anything for you". And sometimes, hearing something so basic that it qualifies for a "Well Duh!" can get you thinking. An obvious point he made with stopping horses, which is helping me, was that you can't expect a good Whoa at a gallop if you don't have a good Whoa at a walk, and you can't expect the horse to stop better on the trail than in the arena.

When he made that comment, I made a gun out of my right hand (good thing it wasn't pastry, or I might be expelled from school) and shot myself in the head with my finger. So my limited riding time with Mia includes trying to get every stop perfect, every time - because if she won't do a perfect stop at a walk in the arena, she sure isn't going to give me ANY kind of stop when racing Trooper in the desert!

He also has an intro to horses kind of video. It included a lot of tips I picked up the hard way with a few years of owning horses. My son is thinking of trying riding. If he does, watching that video will be a good foundation. Lots of stuff where I can pause and explain how MY horses respond doing XYZ.

Thanks for the replies. It was exactly his to-the-point attitude, and LACK of talking about special bonding, that made me want to look more into him. I got the feeling he was "for real".

I like him, he also trains cutting horses and some of that helps with me any my ropers. As others said, he's simple and straight forward about it, pretty refreshing.

I love that he shows you how to get the same end result out of different horses that are doing different things, it isn't all one horse. He is very straight forward, I do pick and choose some of the things he teaches for myself. Good luck! I think you'll like him a lot =)

I like Larry. While I don't use all of his "techniques", his concepts and principals have always been a big help. Speaking of you tube videos, I would also suggest Les Vogt's channel (equinista). Lot's of good info from a multiple world's champion there to.

Unfortunately, the problem with guys that train in a more "traditional" way compared to the NH trainers is that the kind of folks that follow this style of training have no issue sending a horse to a trainer and/or taking lessons with one.
The trainers that make a lot of money off of videos and clinics have a clientele that have the "do it yourself" attitude.
So I think Larry may make a little additional income off some videos but his real income comes from actually training and showing which makes him that much more appealing to me.(same with Les Vogt)