Geoff Teall on Riding Hunters, Jumpers and Equitation. Geoff Teall
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Consistently getting the lead you want at the canter
Completing a 3’ course
Riding well without stirrups
Developing independent hands
Moving up into a new competitive division
Placing in the national finals
Training a green horse
Try to set realistic goals, and allow yourself a reasonable amount of time to attain those goals. When you reach a goal you have set, raise your sights. After every success, increase your expectations and set a new goal to work toward.
The Quest for Perfection
Many riders make the mistake of focusing on the outcome of a particular round. They worry about what happens in the show ring more than they care about what happens at any other time. They are so concerned about a potentially poor ride they become a ball of nerves in a constant state of anxiety. Neither they nor their horses can enjoy themselves while competing.
I want my students to be able to perform well when it matters most. But, a great round does not come from obsessing about it beforehand. Instead, it comes from the confidence of solid preparation.
Practice Pieces
Before show season starts, decide what type of course you want to do by season’s end. Analyze what kinds of questions are going to be asked of you and your horse as the year progresses. Identify what sorts of reactions and skills you will need in order to do well. Then, break that “end-of-season” course into pieces, and get to work on them.
For example, in a typical hunter course, you need to be able to jump straight lines, forward lines, and slow lines. You need to jump at least one fence off a turn. You need to be able to navigate diagonal lines. You may need to be able to do broken lines or in-and-outs. For handy hunter classes, you may be asked to trot a jump or make tight turns.
You do not do yourself any favors if you start the season without ever determining what sorts of challenges you can expect to see in the ring.
Once you know what the pieces are, you can set about learning the skills and devising exercises to help you master them. Don’t practice courses over and over again. Instead, practice skills that will help you put the perfect round together when you need to.
Use a single part of a course as an individual exercise and practice learning to do that part well. (See chapter 11, Course Work, to discover how to break a course down into its various parts. You will also find specific exercises to improve your understanding of those parts.)
Practice at home until you have mastered the skills you need. Then, when you are at the show and you see a particular type of line or fence, you and your horse will be able to excel, and all your hard work will pay off.
Beware! Don’t Over-Prepare
As you practice and work toward your goals, bear in mind the dangers of over-preparation. This is where learning to manage your time comes into play.
I always tell my students, “You only get so many ‘breakthrough’ rounds, where everything is exactly right. You will only have four or five best rounds, when everything falls perfectly into place, in a career.”
Being over-prepared is when you have practiced too much and your riding becomes rote. It lacks spark and energy. It lacks brilliance.
It is very easy to over-prepare. In today’s show ring, over-preparation is a huge problem. It is not at all uncommon to see horses knocking down jumps because they are bored or sore.
An over-prepared horse and rider team delivers a lackluster, unimpressive performance. They are robotic in their movements. They have hit their peak too early—at home in the practice ring, when it didn’t count.
4.4 The ability to deliver your best performance on a particular day is a direct result of your goal planning.
Peak Planning
Plan your training so you and your horse peak at the horse show and not at home the week beforehand. A part of the art of competing and the art of training is to get that breakthrough round at a moment when it really matters. Careful preparation is the key to ensuring that you and your horse are in top form when it counts.
4.5 Lessons are about learning, not about achieving perfection.
When planning a peak performance, as with everything else related to your goals, you must start at the end. Articulate what you want to accomplish during the upcoming season. Have a sense of what you and your horse must be able to do in order to reach your ultimate goal. Identify the different stages of training necessary to get to that goal and work on them.
Your ultimate goal is to ride perfectly when you need it most. That is not during a lesson. Lessons are about figuring out pieces of a puzzle, filling your bag of tricks, and developing skills and tools.
Horse shows allow you to put the pieces, tricks, skills, and tools together. To that end, if you think that you need ten horse shows in order to do things right at the “Really Big Event,” you must take each of those ten shows into account.
Plan your year all the way to the end. If it is January now, and you want your best performance to happen at a big show on October 15, you must address the following questions:
Am I entered in the right shows to make qualifying for the October event possible?
How can I, between now and then, participate in enough horse shows to qualify, but not so many that my horse ends up tired, sour, or lame?
How can I compete in enough shows so that I am experienced, but still have enough time at home to work on my basics and make sure that I have honed my skills?
How do I arrive on October 15 having shown in enough pressure situations to be able to be competitive, but without overdoing things and being worn out?
How much time do I need to rest before the big event in order to be sure that my horse and I are fresh?
There are no easy answers to these questions. But, you do your horse and yourself a huge favor if you address them early in the season, instead of careening toward a major event with no forethought. Ask yourself the pertinent questions. Then, based on your answers, arrive at a plan.
More importantly—as the show season progresses, follow your plan. If you find that your plan was too ambitious, by all means reevaluate. But, don’t allow early successes to make you overreach your original intentions. That is how horses get injured or sour, and how riders get burnt out.
The Merits of Competition
The notion of a particular round counting more than another concerns some riders. “Why emphasize competition?” they wonder. “How will competing make me a better rider?”
Of course, competition is not necessary. One of its great merits, however, is that it gives you a fairly accurate way to gauge your own progress.