I’m looking into learning to rope and I’m wondering if anyone has any ideas on how long it might take before I would be ready to enter a rodeo. I know it’s going to take time and practice, and I’m not trying to rush through it. I’m just curious about how long it might take or if anyone has any tips on throwing the rope. I’m looking into either team roping or tie down roping, but starting with breakaway roping might be the best way to go. I just bought a rope and started trying to throw it and I do not know how to ride a horse yet, but I do work with cattle once in a while. Once I start riding lessons, they’d be at most twice a week. If anyone has any input, it would be greatly appreciated.
If you try to reinvent roping by trial and effort, that won’t really work, much less make you a competitive roper in your lifetime, against those that have spent years learning how to from experienced ropers.
You will have so much to correct once you get with real ropers, your best bet is find a western riding center/club, even 4H and see who can help you find a proper starter rope, teach you how to handle the rope and how to throw it so it hits a target and do so safely.
Ropes are called the devils rope with good reason, you can get hurt with them.
Roping is easy if someone guides you, then you learn more by practicing proper roping skills you learn first.
You don’t need a horse to start to learn to rope, you can practice with an upturned bucket, but you need someone to show you how to handle a rope and move your arm right and swing and release and all those details you won’t know unless someone shows you and will cause you frustration.
I tell you a funny story.
Just had my second total knee replacement and spent several days in a rehab hospital, laying there most of the time, while my leg healed enough to work, was dead meat initially.
Since I had all that time, I had a thinner nylon package rope handy, so I built a loop and feeding thru the make up Honda spent hours roping my leg to help it move around, on the bed, off, going places.
Worked like a charm, my leg was functional very fast, generally takes longer for it to start working after surgery and I think all that fun roping toes helped, plus was comic relief for everyone.
Seriously, find any one roper that has helped kids learn to rope and have them show you the basics and what to work on next.
That will get you going properly and some day you will surprise yourself.
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I hope your knee recovery is going well. I’m definitely not planning to learn on my own. But since I don’t have time for lessons yet, I bought a classic heat 4 strand 30ft rope to try and see if I could get a good loop going and practice just with that for a little while. Do you think that it might be a good idea if take one or two lessons on just throwing the rope from the ground and practice that for a few months until I have the time to really start taking lessons? All I’ve done so far is attempt to throw the rope at a cone as my target but that’s been unsuccessful because youtube isn’t great to learn this kind of thing on.
You don’t need lessons as a lesson, you need about 15 minutes of someone showing you how to handle a rope, how to move your arm, swing from your wrist properly, let the rope feed out and throw, yes you throw the rope at things, don’t just turn it loose and hope it gets out there.
Once someone starts you well, then is practice, practice, practice, even watching TV in the evenings, keep practicing.
Every so often have someone see that you are not making mistakes, keeping good form.
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