16/07/2025
"At Heritage, my team sits down at the end of the year/beginning of a new show year with each of our students and their families, where we’re saying, ‘Where do want to be a year from now?’ You have to have goals, some long-term and some short-term, and you have to create a show schedule that allows you to successfully—or what you hope is successfully—achieve those goals. You’re picking out shows that either have an atmosphere or a venue of some similarity to the championship event you’re trying to go; are close to home; or offer classes that you think you may need—or a combination of these factors. At the start of the year, that’s what we are doing at Heritage. We try to create a roadmap for each and every customer that will allow them to feel like they can reach these goals—or exceed them. We’re not showing just to show.
Because what I’ve found is that we’ve become a little bit of a society where when we’re not showing, we’re not practicing. When you’re not showing, it is not the moment to disappear or to take your foot off the gas. If I go to big event, and I don’t receive the results I was looking for, I come home and have to reassess: Do I have the right horses? Is this the right program? Am I teaching the tools that are needed to get the results? I take a look at myself and say, ‘That didn’t go the way I wanted.’ I hate that feeling, and I immediately think about what I can do to make that change.
That’s sort of the overachiever in me and the underdog mentality that is still ingrained in my own mind. It’s that fear of failing. I was that kid that didn’t want to go to school without doing my homework, and today I don’t want to go to a show without doing my homework. The kids I most admire are the kids that are telling their parents, ‘I don’t want to go on vacation. I don’t want to miss a day of riding.’ I don’t want to go to an event unprepared, and I love hearing that in Division 1 athletics, if you don’t go to practice, you don’t play. That’s the mindset we should be instilling.
To that note, I think it’s very important, and I’ve always said this, that you identify: Are you in this for sport? For recreation? Or somewhere in between? You need to be very honest with yourself about where you fit into that spectrum.
The sport is bigger than ever, which is a great, healthy thing. I think we’re of the mindset that, if you’re fortunate enough and can have enough horses, you don’t have to stop showing. The problem is, there’s only a certain amount of learning that is happening when you’re just competing. The art of learning how to compete is indeed an art: There’s an atmosphere, there are pressures, there are times allowed, and there are demands that come with showing that you can’t replicate. But it’s impossible to hone the skills for you and your horse over a single schooling fence in what has become an increasingly smaller schooling area."
🔗 Read the full article from Andre Dignelli at https://www.theplaidhorse.com/2022/07/19/ask-andre-are-we-showing-too-much-and-practicing-too-little/
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