At some point in your career, you’re going to have to learn to be an aggressive team roper if you want to have success--especially in the rodeo arena. You have to learn to reach. You don’t have to be wild, but there is an art to reaching. A guy who can reach at the rodeos if he needs to has a huge advantage. A lot of times there are reachers and there are guys who are conservative. If you ever want to be a Jake Barnes or a Speed Williams, you better learn to reach. This also pertains to jackpot ropers who find themselves out of the average, trying to salvage a go-round to get their money back or needing to make an aggressive run to win a bottom hole in the average.

You need to learn to reach on the dummy first. If you can’t reach on the dummy, you sure aren’t going to be able to do it on your horse.

Then you need to take it to your horse. When you start reaching, your horses will tend to start to duck and get too aggressive. You’re going to take the run out of your horse pretty fast, because he’ll start anticipating. You need to be able to control your horse when you’re reaching, in order to control the handle for your heeler.

If you reach and don’t handle a steer decent for your heeler, you’ve defeated the purpose of reaching. If your heeler has to kick in there to have a chance to catch him, you might as well have run in there and given your partner a quicker shot.

I wouldn’t suggest beginners reach too much. But you need to push your limits and grow as a more versatile, complete roper. Take it slow, and develop your long and short games.

The psychological aspect comes in here, too. Let’s shake the “I can’t” attitude. Let’s learn to be aggressive and be winners, and keep a positive attitude about our roping.

We all lose a lot more than we win. But the champions practice keeping a positive, winning attitude. When we mess up at a roping or rodeo, we aren’t thinking about going home because we haven’t won anything in a couple weeks. We go to the practice pen and sharpen up ourselves and our horses. We can’t wait to get to another one, to get things turned around and get back on a winning streak.

I don’t allow anyone in my house to say, “I can’t.” Most people can’t reach because they’ve never tried it or worked at it. We live in such a negative world. We’re trained to question ourselves. Don’t fall into that trap. None of the guys who make it to the top in this sport or any other have an ounce of quit in them. We all have a “we can” attitude. Champions are not negative.

We’ve all had times when things didn’t go our way. A lot of times, that’s because of how our horse is working or the type of steers we draw. There are certain steers you aren’t going to win on. The odds are stacked against you. That’s tough, because there’s nothing you can do about it. If you draw the eliminator, you can’t let that wreck you. You need to stay positive and give it 110 percent anyway. You never know. You can’t give up. And even if you don’t get it done, you can’t beat yourself up about things you can’t control.

We all win and we all lose. When you lose, keep your chin up and go on. It doesn’t mean you’re worthless and can’t rope. Maybe you didn’t get a break. But don’t make excuses. Learn, and go forward.

We’re all human. We’re all going to make a certain amount of mistakes. We train ourselves not to make mistakes with muscle memory, but we all fall short from time to time. Let it go. Move on, and make something happen.

There are other times when your back was against the wall, you threw caution to the wind and won when you weren’t expected to because you were so aggressive. That’s really fun. And that’s possible if you’ve prepared yourself and your horse, and have a “can do” attitude.

This is going to take some time for a lot of people. Learning to renew your mind doesn’t happen overnight. Every next step you take to push your roping up a notch, whether it’s learning to reach or reading the barrier and the start better, takes time. Stay focused, stick with it and you’ll get there. STW