Business matters

Not This Year:

How to Help Your Students Set (& Achieve) Their Goals

By Shya Beth

Say your student wants to be a top-level athlete, traveling the world and competing at the best locations in the world. Or perhaps wants to be an amateur weekend warrior, doing well in a few shows each year. Both have different targets that require different milestones, and both need a training program custom fitted to their strengths, weaknesses, financial abilities, horses, time commitments…and so much more. It’s important to plan to have a one-on-one meeting at the beginning of the year with your student, discussing their goals and plans for the coming year and show season—but don’t leave it at that. Like most things, everything looks fresh, exciting, and motivating at the beginning of January, and by early February…then the novelty of the new goal or resolution wears off, and you end up sliding back into old habits.

Paint A Picture

No, not literally. You need to come up with a training plan that doesn’t just look good on paper, but that effectively translates to real-world results. Coming up with a training plan means more than just training your student once a week and planning on what shows to attend. You and your student needs to decide on relevant, attainable, and measurable goals.

Riding is full of ups and downs, wins, and lots of losses.

If the goal is simply “I want to do good at the next horse show” there is no real way to measure that goal’s success and what to train for. That is the big-picture goal. In order to get to the big picture goal, there are medium and smaller goals that need to be planned and achieved in order to get to the big picture.

If the goal is “I want to place well and be consistent during this show season,” “move to the next competition level” or “Qualify for the finals” that is the big picture goal. From there, you and your student can plan on weekly, monthly, and quarterly goals. It’s important to include a time element for the goals that can allow for it. If a goal is to learn how to change strides, setting an appropriate amount of time needed is a good way to make sure new things are learned effectively.

Plan it Out—Effectively

We’ve covered the big picture goal—now it’s time to go over the parts that make the big picture goal achievable.

Encouraging your students to keep a riding journal or an online planning/training management platform is something that not many barns do, but it is quite a valuable tool. Training will be better when both the instructor and the student have access. Keeping a living training plan means you both can review goals, keep track of each lesson, what was accomplished, and what needs to be focused on improving. Having a dedicated section on a whiteboard, planning journal or online planning application can be an invaluable tool for keeping focused on the big picture and keeping track of how your student is progressing. It’s easy to get frustrated and not see any results when training, and have your student feel like he or she is getting nowhere.

Having a monthly review and being able to flip back a few pages to a few months ago when your student was having a hard time overcoming a particular problem and seeing how they overcame the issue can show how far they really have come, and how much closer to their goal they are.

Break it Down Into Manageable Bits

Once your students have a clear big picture and monthly plan, it’s time to take it and break it down into manageable bits— namely weekly and daily goals. From each lesson, you’ll be able to hone in and go over with your student different things they need to focus on. Consider it to be “homework” that students can practice on during the rest of the week, and is something more measurable during the next week’s lesson. It goes without saying that as their trainer your key role is assessing where your rider is weekto-week, and giving important feedback on what needs to be changed and improved.

This moves us to the next section—daily goals. From increasing the horse’s suppleness or working on a more engaged hind end to improving the sitting trot or riding form, there is a never-ending list of possible daily goals your student can practice. That does not mean that every ride must have a training goal attached—it’s important to have fun and enjoy the ride!

Keep it Positive & Realistic— Riding Should be Fun!

It’s not all about the awards and prizes. While that can be a huge motivator, the love of the horse and riding itself is what brings us all here in the first place. Make sure your students state their goals in positivity, instead of coming from a place of fear or negativity. Instead of saying “I’ll work towards not taking any rails down” for a jumping competition, say “my goal is to have a clear round” or “I won’t get nervous cantering downhill in a cross-country course,” replace that with “my goal is to canter smoothly and balanced down the hill to the jump.” You want your students to come from a place of confidence, and that begins in the mind.

Riding is full of ups and downs, wins, and lots of losses. Instilling in your students to value their own personal achievements—cantering down that hill confidently, or jumping a clear round—is just as important as podium placing at the end of the show. As a trainer, you might enter your student into a lighter level class just for them to gain experience, and it’s essential that your students realize that going into the arena the goal is not to win, but to gain experience and further their skills so that one day in the not-so-far-away future, they can win that class.

About the author:

Shya Beth is a rider, artist writer and all around horse lover based in New Jersey, USA. Whether creating horses in art, riding in the fields on her farm or writing about horses, horses are a huge aspect of her life and inspire her every day.