Practice is the way we train ourselves to react when it comes time in the rodeo arena or team roping pen. What we do over and over using repetition time and time again is basically the response that we’re going to call on come rodeo time. Our reactions are set by the repeated team roping patterns that we allow ourselves to execute.

When I was a little kid, growing up and learning how to rope, I basically learned everything by watching other people. So the patterns that were set at a young age on the fundamentals of my roping, like my swing and my delivery, were all mimics of what I saw the better ropers in our area in Southern California do.

I must have been watching the right guys, because I think I developed a fundamentally correct swing and learned how to explore the depths of that ability by learning the correct fundamentals pertaining to my swing and delivery right from the start. It’s so much easier when you build on a solid foundation.

I think it’s a lot easier for little kids, such as myself at that time, to learn that process. I’ve watched little kids grow up over the years, and the ones who develop a lot of ability with the fundamentals of their swing and delivery early on get set into a pattern that they use their whole life.

When people are learning how to rope at an older age, it’s even more crucial to be taught the correct fundamentals of the swing and delivery. The right fundamentals in those areas are such an important foundation and pattern that must be developed in order to get to a higher level and learn to become a winner in the sport.

The next stage of my development in applying the principles of training my reaction through a repetitive pattern process was learning to time cattle for heeling, and learning to ride position to set up the shot. Roping is so much easier when you’re in the right spot.

That’s why it takes not only lots of runs, but lots of correct runs so your way of doing things is correct over and over again. If you watch the guys who’ve roped the longest, like Allen Bach, Walt Woodard, Mike Beers, Rich Skelton and even myself, you’ll notice that over a long period of time of repetitive rodeo runs and competition, they just get better and better at reacting to situations, riding position and setting up runs. More runs under our belts has made us better.

It’s like an ongoing training of that reaction—what to do at the time it needs to be done. You very seldom see the older guys mess up their runs, simply because they’ve practiced the correct fundamentals for so long that they just keep getting better as time goes on. They’ve seen it all, so they know how to react to whatever happens.

It’s of the utmost importance for the lower numbered ropers who are trying to develop those skills to get that process started correctly, with their riding position, swing and delivery. It’s so important to set those patterns in motion, so when the gate cracks in competition you react and do the same thing over and over again.

Even at our level, with the guys who go to the NFR (Wrangler National Finals Rodeo) every year, our practice is set up to keep doing those fundamentals correctly over and over again to stay sharp. Our reaction has to be immediate and fast, from that first jump out of the box, because things happen so fast in a 4- or 5-second run.

The statement is made so often at roping schools that, “I came to this roping school to learn how to rope fast.” But you have to have the correct fundamentals and be able to execute them over and over again before you can pick up the pace. You need to be able to make 8-second runs all day long before you start trying to make 6-second runs.

That’s why we practice so hard and work so much to prepare ourselves and our horses. We do that so that when the money’s up, we can react correctly and make consistent runs time and time again at full speed.

How you practice determines how you’re going to do when you put the money up and try to win. When I’m at home every day, I rope with my daughter Bailey. She’s learning to set the right fundamentals of her roping as a No. 3 roper, so I have to practice at about half the speed that I’d be at with David (Key) or Jake. Instead of trying to make 5- and 6-second runs, we’re going down the pen and making 8- or 9-second runs. I also need to practice full-speed runs, so I go rope with David to get those full-speed runs in. I need those rodeo-reality runs that allow me to work on keeping my reaction sharp to those full-speed runs. STW