Let's Talk About Collection

For months now I have been obsessed with collection.  Let me just preface this entire post by saying I get the concept.  I have had a horse collected underneath me.  I'm sure I've even collected Walker.

BUT I have a very hard time collecting Walker.  He doesn't have the nice round back that I want him to, and he's very good at putting himself in a frame and resisting collection from the back.

Some days I feel like we're at the top.
Most days we're at the bottom

When I was younger, my instructors never worked on collection with me.  It is a weird difference between the English and Western worlds (or at least this has been my observation), that in the former, they wait until you've mastered everything else to work on collection (hence the pyramid of training) while in Western, that's the first thing on the agenda.  I'm sure this isn't true about all barns, but it just seems to be the case with me.

This has all left me pretty confused/incapable.  The first time I ever worked on collection, the horses were so well trained that they understood that going into a frame meant collecting from the back.  I have no doubt that Walker knows I want him to be collected, but he has decided that I don't have the seat strength to do so.

I understand that collection is about driving the horse into the bridle, not pulling them into a frame, and that it requires a lot of seat.  Well clearly Walker requires A LOT of seat because I'm simply not satisfied with our results.

I have decided that part of the problem is probably a speed thing.  How can you expect a horse to really round their back and reach up underneath themselves when they aren't really going fast enough to need to reach up underneath themselves?  I realize that horses can be collected regardless of the speed, but I don't think it's helping much in mine and Walker's situation.

Has anyone ever had any problems with collection?  Do you have any tips or tricks for the horse that resists? Or better yet, do you have any tips for teaching me to be stronger with my seat or a better way of illustrating how I should be using my seat? 

My experiences with Walker thus far have taught me that you need to be 10x stronger in everything you do with him than with most horses.  You can't just squeeze.  You need to squeeze HARD.  You can't just expect him to be forward.  You need to KEEP him going forward.  So I'm assuming that my seat is just not strong enough.

How do you get your horse to collect effectively?

And I forgot to mention it, but I won a contest over at SheMovedtoTexas for a Absorbine Showsheen Try-Pak!  I'm very excited since I never win anything!