Is your competition season not going as you’d hoped? Here’s how to fix it...

There are many components that make up a successful competition season. Horse and rider fitness and nutrition, sufficient training and preparation, and perhaps one of the biggest factors for ensuring a great season: being clear on what you want to achieve. Goal-setting is key in how to be a successful horse rider.

If someone asked what you are going to do with your horse when you ride today, what would you say? Having goals can make the difference between riding around aimlessly for 30 minutes, or making the most of your time and dismounting feeling like you’ve made progress.

“Goal setting is good for motivation because if you know where you’re headed, then it’s a lot easier to put in the work that you need to get there,” explains clinical psychologist Dr Krissie Ivings of Aspire Rider Confidence & Hypnotherapy and author of Tame the Chimp, Shoot the Parrot & Silence the Mouse.

Of course goals and aspirations can come in all shapes and sizes – one rider might be aiming for qualification at next year’s Badminton grassroots or a Horse of the Year Show ticket, another rider might be aiming to score plus-65% at prelim dressage – or their first win at county level showing.

Krissie says it’s important when choosing goals that you pick things that light you up personally.

“They shouldn’t be goals that you think you ought to do, or other people are pressuring you into,” she says. “They have to be really personal and the best way to choose is to be clear about what you want to achieve with your horse.

“It’s useful to be realistic, be honest and talk to your coach about what would be reasonable for you both. Goals should be achievable but challenging; they’re exciting enough to get you inspired, but they’re not so completely out of reach that you feel overwhelmed by them.”

Krissie recommends having a range of goals over short and longer time periods such as four weeks, six months, and the season.

“In eventing you might aim for a BE90, the next part might be aiming for a regional final, and the next could be qualifying for Badminton grassroots – that gives you an A, B, C,” she says, adding that for her horses she maps out a month’s plan broken down by weeks on a wall chart in her kitchen.

“You then might want to set interim goals, for example practising showjumping on grass by entering some competitions, or if dressage is your weakest phase, then getting in some extra training sessions with your flatwork coach.

“It’s being specific and saying, ‘If my goal is X, what are the steps I need to take?’ and then mapping out your timetable. Many people work on what they enjoy doing and don’t work on the things that they find the hardest, which is human nature, but it’s about being willing to work on the things that are holding you back.”

Avoid drifting

Many riders have found themselves leaving the yard having not ridden or completed a task, blaming it on running out of time.

“Drifting is so incredibly common, where you haven’t got clear goals and you haven’t got a plan, you just do things as you feel like each day, which is fine – if that’s what you want,” says Krissie.

“Then you have the people who want to get out and do stuff but they go to the yard, they don’t have a plan, they maybe run out of time. Sometimes that’s down to simple lack of planning, but sometimes it can be avoidance and your subconscious saying you don’t really want to do it.

“Goal setting is helpful for that because it means you have to be honest with yourself and recognise if it’s on your plan, why isn’t it happening?

“Avoidance is usually hidden and it’s kind of a little whispering in your head. Life can get in the way and that’s OK and you get back on track, but if it hasn’t happened ‘because, because, because’ and it’s all vague or not based on real reasons, this forces people to confront it.”

Modelling how to be a successful horse rider

Dressage rider Laura Tomlinson has won Olympic, World and European medals – including team gold at London 2012. Laura is now campaigning her exciting up and coming rides Soegaards Bon Royal, Full Moon II and Issey.

“When I was at the top of my game with the likes of Mistral Højris and Andretti H I would set goals and have a competition plan, and obviously in the back of your mind you’re dreaming of top six placings and medals and stuff,” says Laura.

“Now where I’m on upcoming horses that are a bit more of an unknown quantity, my goals are performance-driven rather than based on marks and placings. I’ll set them based on where my horses are at the moment and what I think I can make a difference to in a certain amount of time, focusing on things I can control, rather than things that I can’t.

“I’ve just competed at Addington CDI and my goal for the next show isn’t placings or score-related because it’s a different panel of judges and so it focuses the mind on the wrong stuff.

“My goal with one horse is to improve his balance and make the piaffe a little bit stronger. For the other, he still gets a bit jittery in the canter and mistakes can creep in, and it’s about getting a more consistent mistake-free test.

“So my goals are much more based on things I can work on, and then I can measure whether I’ve achieved my goals.”

Top showing producer and judge Vikki Smith says it can be trickier to choose goals in showing because you don’t have scores or percentages to improve on.

“I used to event and I’d say in eventing, dressage or showjumping it can be a bit more black and white with personal bests or double clears, but with showing it’s harder to measure goals,” Vikki says. “For me it’s more about setting a goal for each horse in their training and way of going, and being more specific that way.

“I will talk to my owners and set goals on what shows we think will suit and do it that way. For example, I’ve got a four-year-old and the target for her is to do an unaffiliated dressage as a stepping stone. Then she will go to her first show, then a show without a ride judge, then she’ll do her first show with a ride judge, and we break it down like that.”

Set intentions rather than outcomes

Clinical psychologist and UKCC dressage coach Dr Claire Bennett of Riding Mindfully recommends adopting an “intention setting” approach.

“Focusing on an intended action rather than an outcome allows for the flexibility needed with horses,” she explains.

“Some people like setting a very practical goal like ‘I will go to five shows at this level’ or ‘by the end of the season I will have achieved this’ – which is all very well on paper, but then your horse might have an injury and that goal is no longer achievable.

“The idea of intention setting is that you can still have practical and measurable ideas, but it’s the journey you take to get there that is important, rather than the only important thing being the outcome.”

Example:

When it doesn’t go to plan

No one needs to tell an equestrian that things can change at the drop of a hat. Lost shoes, sudden injuries, a lorry not starting on the morning of the show can all test the most patient rider, and we all know someone who has suffered an early mishap in the ring just moments after the bell has rung.

But Claire says it’s how you deal with these setbacks.

“We know that with horses the ups and downs are often totally out of our control – one minute you could be going to Badminton and then you’re not. Horse sport particularly, is really open to that ‘all or nothing’,” she explains.

“Suffering is part of being human and a setback is a source of suffering. Our tricky brains can be very unhelpful when setbacks happen – they can trap us in negative cycles and knowing how we respond to setbacks will help us tolerate the suffering.”

When it goes wrong, Laura maintains motivation by focusing on her love of horses.

“Often with horses you feel so close and yet so far, and I think that’s where your day-to-day love of the horses and the life you live with your horse has to be the focus and almost partly the goal,” she says.

“I’ve got family and a lot going on at home, so my time with my horses is golden and that’s my ‘me time’. I have to see it like that, and then the rest of it is a bonus. My day-to-day spending time with them, seeing them progress, knowing their personalities inside out, that’s as much of the enjoyment and why I do it as going to the competitions.”

But if your season is thrown into disarray, Krissie says setting a new goal can still be useful.

“It might mean having a lot of resilience and saying, ‘My horse is going to have six weeks off so my goal now is to rehab my horse’. In the meantime if your horse is out of work, what can you do for yourself? That might be schoolmaster lessons, going on a mechanical horse to work on your position, so that when you can ride again you’re ready to crack on,” she says.

How toxic positivity can undermine your efforts

If you’ve ever experienced a horsey setback and been met with a response from a well-meaning friend of, “Well, at least…”, you’re not alone, explains Claire.

“You’re all prepared for that championship, you’ve loaded the lorry, you’re about to set off, and then your horse has gone hopping lame, and your friend at the yard says, ‘Well, at least you qualified’.

“Toxic positivity basically denies the person who’s experiencing something negative any feeling other than positivity, and that just isn’t the truth,” she says.

“A lot of the time we feel many emotions, and therefore only focusing on the positive denies us the opportunity to express, share, and understand our own real reaction to these problems.

“What we need when something goes wrong is connection with others, and if somebody else is denying you that feeling, all it leaves you with is feeling like you’re a bad person,” adds Claire.

“It’s really common, especially in the age of social media, to see all these posts that imply the person wouldn’t feel so bad if they just thought about it a different way. In times like these it can be useful to talk to a professional or a coach.”

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