You’ve had some very good advice here. My comment is don’t forget your own energy. If you consider the barn as a place of relaxation and rest, somewhere to chill out, to be removed from the stress of work… guess what? Your horse very quickly picks up on what you are doing and thinking. Also, do things that interest you, such as patterns of poles on the ground, because the horse will pick up on your mental concentration. We seriously underestimate how our mindset and mood affects a horse.
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Little late to the party and a bit of a tangent, but if your student is nervous to use the whip for “what if he bucks” reasons, would it be beneficial for you to hop on to visually show the rider what happens?
Personally, I know I’m alot braver getting on after seeing another rider school the horse. It doesn’t matter how many times a coach says “horse wont explode/buck/whatever”, sometimes I just need to see it in person.
I know, I know…. we should believe what our coach says because that’s what we pay them for. Sometimes the mental roadblock of “what if…” is strong and I find that is what helps me. Just my two cents!
Back to the original point of the thread - I’m enjoying reading these exercises. Always nice to read what others have in their toolboxes!
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Adding to the highjack, I had surgery, older horse had been at a trainer friend, I was in rehab but felt I could ride him a bit.
It was very windy, rattling the rafters, he was tight as a banjo string and walking on eggs, I still didn’t think much, he is broke to death.
Started walking around the indoor and he was seeing and hearing ghosts and almost levitating and I started thinking, maybe this is not a good time to come back from the injured reserve list?
Going by a corner, a cat in plain sight was stalking some birds on the rafters, cat jumped, horse jumped sideways 20’ and, once I got him going forward again, old fool still on springs for legs, I told friend trainer, maybe we better part company willingly, not next time he levitates and leaves me sitting in mid air like a cartoon character and got off.
Friend said, he is fine, won’t do anything got on and didn’t make it half around that the barn doors rattled, horse rattled in place in sympathy and she too wisely got off. 
You know what was missing in that scenario, forward motion!
Horse’s MIND needed to be going places, NOW! and not paying attention to any other but the job on hand.
We just were not the ones right then to want to make a point of it, another day, another time, just not then.
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This is one of those days where, while it’s super nice to walk for 10-20 minutes on the buckle for a warm up, “today is not the day”. Horse’s brain needs to get to work! 
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Right that, with a young horse in training, we would have made that a training session.
With old fatso and us not much younger, well, there are other days, other places to better pick our teaching moments, not let circumstances do that for us quite like that.
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Very late to the conversation here, but here are my 2 cents. Horse needs to react when asked.
When I teach a horse that is not forward i teach whisper, speak, yell.
Inother words, light leg aid means forward. Now. No response, a little kick. No response, a good tap with the whip so the horse jumps forward. It has to be clear. if you nag and nag,the will tune you out.
Barring soreness or tack fit, the horse mut go. They can feel a fly and react. All horses I deal with who are behind the leg are numb to the aids. They learn so quickly to be quick off the aids, some need a refresher wth different riders if thy are school horses, but the mostly get it quickly. Same as walking up when you lead them. At my shoulder, not lagging behind or pulling ahead.
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I haven’t read all the replies.
If a horse is behind the leg it doesn’t understand go or stop. Yes, it’s quite possible that the horse that has too much whoa doesn’t understand stop! A horse with a faulty “stop” response is like a car that has an e-brake kind of on all the time - the go doesn’t work very well.
Honestly, I find a lot, a lot, a lot of horses are behind the leg because people have trained them that pulling on the reins (thanks, side reins) means “curl your neck down”, rather than stop like it should. When I watch other people ride I notice like 90% of people have to kick the horse every stride. It should not be like that!!!
I would re-install both stop and go responses. The best way to do this is to teach the horse (on the ground) to go from the whip-tap on its side. Like tick, tick, tick, tick until the horse steps forward and then you take the whip off. (First times use the rein to walk forward too so it understands). Repeat. Repeat. Until the horse crisply walks off as soon as you whip tap on its side.
For stop, you use the whip tap on the front of the horse’s front leg at the same time as pushing back on the reins. Then release when the horse takes one step back. The whip tap is for reinforcing the rein aid to teach the horse to react more quickly. When you push the reins back to ask the horse to step back, the horse should be light in the hand and the aid should immediately translate to a step-back response.
Then when the horse understands from the ground you do the same thing from the saddle. Put reins in one hand, use whip where leg would normally ask for go, and tap, tap, tap, tap fast until the horse goes forward, then release. You want the go response immediate so you might have to get in there and do some halt/trot or trot/canter. Don’t release the aid if the horse is not ACTUALLY going forward (if it’s dragging itself along that doesn’t count).
For stop under saddle you start from walk/halt. If the horse is heavy you step back. Repeat repeat. Might need a helper on the ground to reinforce with the whip tap on the legs of the horse is really heavy. Then you do trot-halt transitions the same way. If it’s heavy, you step back.
None of this is done “in a frame”. This is about re-training basic signals. You can only ask for one thing at one time - like you would train a baby horse that doesn’t know anything.
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Very late to the topic. Assuming no physical issues, first be sure the rider isnt riding with one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake. Some lunging the rider and letting them feel what active is without them pulling on the reins. The horse should be going from the hind legs into the hand not the other way around.
Attach a bucking strap and have them hook a pinkie into it to ensure their hands are not drawing back at all.
Then assuming the rider isnt restricting in any way, walk three steps, trot three steps, walk three steps as many have mentioned.
Some riders may think they are asking for go, but in fact are asking the horse to go but dont really want it lol.
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When my OTTB would get T brain in cold weather I’d use jump poles etc to make ground poles for all sorts of stuff. Because he was the type of horse who would focus on the job, he’d zoom in on the ground poles and think very hard how to navigate them as I’d go over them again and again from all directions, incorporating trail class worthy side passes, backs, pivots and lateral work. The brain energy he would use would bring down the physical exuberance of cold weather energy.
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I’ll be trying this with my guy. He’s forward, but likes his hind end out of gear at the start. Since his hind will be under him, he’ll transition up easily, and happily. This time of year, he’s naturally enjoying moving out in the comfy indoor.
A little late here, I just saw this. I perused the recent posts - a lot of good ideas. I’ll add something new.
Some horses are just lazy. I understand the whisper, talk then yell approach but some horses, especially some smart horses, just tune out the yell. A forward horse is an active horse. You can start making the horse active during the warm up even at the walk. With these horses, I like to put them to work right away even on a loose rein. Walk, lengthen that walk, then just walk. Very soon after, I pick the reins. Make SURE you are following the stride of the horse by extending and then bringing back your arms to follow the motion. I walk to a fence at 45 degrees and to a 45 degree leg yield. The hind end gets a whip tap if the horse isn’t stepping under behind. At some point, I straighten and note that the walk is more active. Rinse repeat in the other direction. Walk down the 1/4 line leg yield in one direction then the other. Do a turn on the haunches. A turn on the forehand. Always following the horse’s mouth - the horse will learn that it has to pick up feet and shift weight around pretty quickly. Make sure he’s bent and relaxed and not stiffening against you. Flex to the inside, outside, inside, outside without losing march. Some horses horses slow down when they have to think about things. ANY horse that isn’t lame can manage to do everything above in a forward way.
At the trot, try riding in a diamond shape. If you’re going right, throw in a left hand 10 meter circle at N and South. Remember to give forward with the outside rein to encourage not block the change of bend. These sorts of exercises loosen a horses body and encourages them to move forward. Leg yield, shoulder-in and other lateral work can also help loosen the horse up followed by a lengthened or medium trot down a longside or diagonal. Some horses learn to go really forward down a long side - keep it going around the short side.
Canter - I worked with trainers from Germany for a couple of years and when they had a horse behind the leg, they would spend weeks just galloping in ovals and posting trot in a seriously forward way until the horse thought that was the default way of going. Then they’d add working gaits but could always get the horse forward again when needed. It worked pretty well. But these were horses ridden 5 days/week in a program. They knew their lives involved learning to do a job which can often not be the case in horses ridden less frequently.
How’s it going? What exercises have you been using?
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I think the “whisper, talk, then yell” can get you a resentful horse who is only going along with it because he must, rather than an engaged and cooperative partner.
Nowadays, I’d much prefer to get the horse thinking and involved by using lots of transitions and direction changes and lateral work.
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I’ll do a whisper aids exercise for warm up sometimes. Using the lightest aids, I’ll ask for serpentines or circles or changes of rein as we walk around the ring. At first the horse often completely ignores my aids, but after a few minutes they wonder what I’m doing and start to listen to me and respond to the whisper aids. I don’t use stronger aids during the start of this exercise unless the horse is going to get into trouble if not redirected. I just ask with whispers, stop asking with any response, then ask again.
It won’t work for every horse, or every situation, but I find the horse really tunes in to me and what we’re doing.
Other days I do the immediate response exercise where I focus on the promptness of the response and ignore the quality. This invariably morphs into softer aids and increased focus on quality of response.
Neither exercise is suitable for very green horses just learning about the riding thing.
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My mare goes through phases where she gets really stuck. It usually precedes leveling up on the work quality, so I just have to recognize it and soldier through. Most recently, she started this with me, and an interesting thing with the way she pushes back against the forward aids, is that I need to make sure I maintain the connection to the bit. My first instinct is to throw more rein at her, but she just uses that as a place to evade and lock her body against me more. So anyways, she’s recently been in this phase (based on last ride, I hope we are out of it), and what worked well was transitions in shoulder in, being really picky that she keep her poll up and be quick with the up transition. I think it forced her to activate her hind legs; then once she was active, I asked for a canter out of shoulder fore, and started canter on the bit, rather than allowing some stretchy warmup canter.
Amelia Newcomb has some great exercises for horses behind the aids
Transitions transitions transitions. Walk trot walk trot. I do counted strides and when I signal changes as the horse “gets it”. For a lower level horse walk 10 steps, trot 4, walk 10, trot 4. Over and over. Hard to do it for too long as it requires brain effort for horse and rider so I never did more than 10 minutes.
As you go on through days or weeks you change the count. You add figures like a circle. You might do trot, canter, trot.
It works. No muss no fuss.
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