Breaking it Down by Speed Williams – October 2025
Balance while riding can’t be stressed enough, regardless of the discipline. One of most important things I have taught my kids, and teach my clients, is putting weight in your stirrups. If you don’t have weight in your stirrups, your butt is going to take a beating in the saddle. It is a very rough ride across the line.
This was one reason I developed the Speed Trainer. I needed to teach my kids how to stand in the saddle and not use their reins for balance. Many people use their reins to get up out of the saddle and then use their legs to hold on by squeezing, all without realizing it. That’s not to say everyone needs to ride with their feet sticking straight out. Hali did that when she headed on her roan horse. I’ve shown clients videos of this, and they’ll say, “My legs would break if they got that high.” Your legs don’t need to be straight out, but you do need weight in the stirrups with your feet away from the horse. It allows you to swing faster and smoother because you’re not bouncing in the saddle.
And once you master riding across the line without pulling on your reins, you’ll be able to rope faster. When my kids were young, they were like most team ropers and pulled on the reins coming across the line. This was the whole idea behind the Speed Trainer. That’s why the lights come on and the buzzer goes off when you pull on the reins while swinging your rope. The idea was to teach people to ride better, and not have to keep changing bits when their horse becomes unresponsive because they’re pulling when they shouldn’t be.
This year Hali has really struggled with putting weight in her right stirrup. In many of her videos her right leg is bent without weight in it because she roped injured for so long. At a rodeo this summer she stung her foot, and it took weeks to break that habit again. Her body learned to protect itself. I have clients who come for lessons every month. Sometimes they show up and their fundamentals have gone haywire. I’ll ask them what hurts: the knees, the neck, or the back. They will smile and most of the time it’s the back or the knee. It changes everything about how you ride and swing.
It’s important to pay attention to your body and what it’s telling you. Once year when Rich and I were rodeoing, I ran into a habit where anytime a steer went left or came in front of me, I would split the horns. I missed close to 15 steers. When the steer would come left and I had to use my stomach muscles, my body would shut down and I could feel it. Come to find out I had three hernias. I had surgery and when I came back, I didn’t have those problems. I knew something was wrong, but didn’t know what.
When competing, especially at a high level, it’s important to be conscience if something hurts. Team roping and breakaway are the least physically demanding events in professional rodeo. But it’s still hard to compete at a high level when you’re in pain.
At the time of this writing, qualifications for the NFR are coming to a close and there are a lot of team ropers, and breakaway ropers, working hard to be in the top 15. There will be some long sleepless nights until the end of the month with many hoping to win big paychecks at Sioux Falls.
I’m still not completely over the injuries from my horse wreck this summer. I’m having an issue with my balance and not being able to move too fast. Going too fast on the bobcat or 4-wheeler, the headache that follows lets me know I’m not at 100%. We’ve been having a lot of lessons at our place, and I’ve been working the chute and breaking down the action on video.
