By Valerie Pride
Hopefully, wherever you are, you have access to some summertime opportunities at low-key, grassroots showing excursions that provide us with real experience and expertise! Daytime or nighttime, it’s real time spent with your horse to gain valuable insights and advantages for the fall season finales.
It’s amazing what pressure can do to an otherwise disciplined and focused mind—human or equine! Performance anxiety is real. You can win the warm-up in all three phases, and then somehow it all goes wrong. The good and bad news is it all happens to all of us. So rather than be victims, let’s go do something about it. The journey is critical, humbling, educational, satisfying and the whole point of life; winning is that high that keeps us going through the journey.
Getting to those wins takes planning. A natural way to work out the horse calendar is to identify a destination event and work backwards from it. As much as this season highlight might mean to you, what is actually more critical is identifying the small local steps along the way that are going to get you there at the peak of your performance. I pick these for my horses almost with more scrutiny than my season-ending venues. Horses don’t need to be often tested; they need to be often trained and educated. There’s a big difference! A dressage TEST, a show jumping TEST, a cross-country TEST—that’s what you should expect to find at horse trials. But you have to learn to prepare and study (OK, and sometimes cram!) for the test. Let’s break down ways that schooling and local shows are affordable and priceless all at the same time.
Luckily, horses are very trainable. As a rider, it’s your responsibility to make sure you’re training them with confidence and harmony. Attending a fix a test or schooling show allows you to gain insight from that knowledgeable person on the outside looking in, when someone on the inside can’t help you out! Their job is to pick up on the overall observations that might be lost on you as you concentrate on the details that you stash from your daily lessons. Competing at a local grassroots event gives you and your horse all of the nerves, without being in a stadium with a surround sound system and a Jumbotron and isolated from all of your horse’s new best friends.
Use these schooling shows to learn how to navigate the show jumping and cross-country warm-ups. The point of warm-up is to jump six jumps and have your horse ready to jump a clean round, not to jump 27 fences to calm your fears or because your horse is surprised by the height, width, turns and landings.
Most schooling shows and grassroots events save the best areas for the actual competition arenas—that means warm-up is not going to be ideal. Embrace it. Wrap your head around this and rally. Focus on making sure your horse is on your aids in warm-up and go jump your round. Come out, talk to your trainer about what really happened and then go fix it in a second round! The devil is in the details. Fine tune your plan A. Have a plan B. Make that part of your course walks and implement them on your fake courses so that it’s totally natural during the real-deal rounds!
With eventing specifically, the cross-country is always the most difficult part. Make every run and every jump count when schooling and keep it minimal. Need to practice making time and being bold? Walk your minute markers and practice your direct lines so you’re protecting those precious legs. Use local shows to identify a point in the distance to gallop to and make it happen! Wear a watch and get comfortable using it. Make these habits so it doesn’t require any mental capacity at a big event when your mind is maxed out. Your job is to make your horse believe they can do whatever comes next. Don’t make the time every time; make sure you’re both prepared to answer the questions, and if that means taking a few extra seconds to set up, who cares? It’s an investment in your future for fast and clear rounds!
I use the local summer events to give me valuable feedback for where my horse is at this moment. Practice all the things so they’re all available to you, take advantage of every opportunity, and praise your partner so when you compete next time, they can’t wait to rise at the biggest of occasions. I know you both can do it. Prove me right!
Kick on until next time!
Photo:
Valerie at a schooling show.
Photo by Lisa Madren Photography
