While you ride and work with your horse, it is important that you are mentally engaged in the riding, evaluating what is happening with your horse and how you are responding. A good way to keep yourself accountable for this is to keep a ride journal. In my journal after every ride I write down a few things about my ride: what felt really good with the horse, where we made improvement over our last ride, what didn't feel so good about the ride, how I responded to this situation and how effective it was. Did it get better, stay the same or did I make it worse? Every ride, I evaluate myself, what did I do that was an improvement from my last ride or rides, where my weaknesses were and what I should have done instead. While I am riding, I always commit 100% to what I am doing in the moment, then evaluate it when I am done. This way I give the horse 100% of me, if it was wrong, I note it and avoid doing it again, if it worked, great, I note that and keep it up.
Now it is really important to be brutally honest about your ride and yourself; this is your journal and if you truly want to grow as a person and a horseman, you first must be honest with yourself, because as we all know, "the horse doesn't lie".
Enjoy the Journey
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment