Training Goals and Keeping a Rid

Training Goals and Keeping a Riding Log

Summer is upon us, and during this season most people will ride more often and longer. In addition to more recreational riding, there is an increase in competitive events. Days blur together as the summer season heats up, and we all increase our outdoor activities. With so much going on, it’s often easy to overlook an important aspect of your training and recreational riding – setting goals and keeping a log or journal.

What’s so important about keeping a record of your riding? It keeps you focused. Concentrating on certain aspects of your training and recreational riding can mean the difference between a long summer with little progress or a great time of achievement and accomplishment.

The more skill you attain, the more you will enjoy yourself and your horse. I have never met anyone who didn’t take pride in their successes that were fairly achieved through a good work ethic. The accomplishment of training your horse to ride better, softer, more fluidly, and more responsively should be a goal for you. In order to do this, you must have a plan for what you want to accomplish. Once that’s mapped out, you must have a way to track your progress. In order to fairly an accurately follow your plan, you have to keep track of what you do on each ride. This is especially true if you can only ride once or twice a week, or sometimes have to go a week or two without riding.

Every ride, regardless if it’s for pleasure or training for a competition in your selected equestrian sport, should have a purpose. You should know before you mount up what you want to work on and how you’re going to achieve it. You must plan the ride, and then ride the plan. Even if you’re trail riding for pleasure, you should have some simple training goals in mind. For instance, you may want to work on your horse’s trot, or perhaps you want to work on his lateral movement. In order to do this, you must have a plan for when and how often you may ask these movements of him. You should not head out with the idea that you will “do some trot work today.” If you don’t know any more than that, then how can you expect your horse to understand what you want? You need to be specific. A specific goal will result in specific training steps and achievements for you and your horse.

Once you’ve decided what you want to work on, then enjoy your ride and work on the movement you’ve chosen several times during the ride. You can do this even if you’re just taking a trail ride. This doesn’t mean that you have to drive yourself or your horse crazy with trying to achieve one or two things on the ride. It only means that you’re going to practice those movements several times and enjoy the learning process. The rest of the time you will enjoy the relaxation of the trail and so will your horse. By approaching training in this manner you will find that you teach your horse in a relaxed manner, and you’ll find that he learns more.

Once you’ve completed the ride, you need to record it in your training log or journal. Doing this will make you examine how well both of you performed. For example, let’s say that you wanted to work on your horse’s trot, and you set a goal of lengthening it, holding it longer, and riding more balanced and in time with your horse. You practiced it four different times while trail riding. Write down the distance or approximate time that you held the trot, how it felt, and if you were in time and balance with your horse. Then record how well you think your horse did. Did you improve from one session to the next? If so make sure that you log it and record your feelings of the ride. Be honest with yourself, too. If you didn’t ride very well that day, then don’t blame the horse for not improving his stride.

Next write down if you accomplished your goal. Accomplishing your goal should mean that you’re satisfied with where you and your horse are at this time and place in your riding ability, and that you don’t feel you need to work on it again for a while. If you can not honestly say that you feel success with your goal, then you need to make a note of your feelings and make a commitment to continue working your goal the next time you ride.

Before your next ride, you should look at your journal. Refresh your goals and note which ones you worked on last. If the goal was accomplished, then move on to the next one. If it wasn’t accomplished, then you need to make sure that you work on it again during this ride. When you’re finished riding, record your impressions of the ride, and once again ask yourself if it was better than the ride before? Of course it was. One of you had to improve and since this is about you and your horse, your ride must have been better.

Now you’ve begun to make steady improvement in the training of your horse and yourself. You’ve created goals and started to achieve them. Most importantly your horse has the chance to work on something until he learns it. Too often, because the rider has no real plan, the horse is never given the chance to learn and finish a training project. Consequently, the horse and rider are always in a state of battling with the same old issues over and over again. I know of many riders who complain about the same challenges with their horse year after year. Things such as being herd bound, not moving out when asked, wanting to be in front of other horses on the trail, jigging, failure to pick up a lead, poor stops, poor back-ups, etc. These are training issues to work on and solve, not problems you should live with indefinitely.

So what does all of this accomplish for you and your horse? To sum it up in one word: SUCCESS. By recording your goals, your training progress, and working until you accomplish something positive and successful, you and your horse will have better rides. And at the end of the season you can look back and see the progress that the two of you made. Instead of working on issues haphazardly, you’ll have worked on them in an organized manner. You’ll be able to see what it took to reach your goal. You can see how many rides you took, how often you trained on a specific goal, what it took to achieve success, and how much progress you made.

Because you trained correctly and consistently, chances are excellent that you overcame some of your riding issues and will be able to move on to other goals and more progress. At the end of the season, you’ll feel content your accomplishment and pride in yourself and your horse. What could be sweeter?