22/03/2024
What makes a Champion?🏆
Taking aside the actual technical/psychical skills, these are some attributes that will underpin your system. Depending on your character, some will be more natural than others, and some will need developing.
Feel free to add more in the comments….
✔️Grit. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Things go wrong all the time (annoyingly), whether that be a run-out, a horse going lame or circumstances testing you, get stuck in and make it happen. Who are you when things go wrong?
✔️Open mindedness. ‘The second you think you know it all, you know nothing at all’. Always stay coachable, be willing to look at new perspectives, be open to feedback; whether you take it on or not is a different matter, but never stop trying to learn.
✔️Sweat the small stuff. Call it marginal gains, the 1%’s, world class basics, whatever you like but if you don’t care about the small details, you’re going to be leaving gaps in your training because ‘success is made up of thousands of small wins, not 1 giant one’.
✔️Train for the future. It’s all well and good to manufacture a clear round for this weekend, but without a doubt it will come undone at some point. Training long term is the fastest way to real success. Acknowledge what’s happened previously but don’t anticipate it.
✔️Accountability. Who are you when no one is watching? Holding yourself to high standards when you nobody else is watching or when you think you can ‘get away’ with a sloppy transition etc, is not going to help you long term.
✔️Logical. It’s important particularly working with animals and lots of moving parts, we stay process driven, logical, and do not become emotional. When we let emotions get in the way, we get erratic, loose control of our aids or the pressure, and nothing good comes from that. Rather than panic that the fence has gone up or when in a pressurised situation, stick to your training system. You are responsible for your horses welfare and education, and if something is going wrong, understand why, then find the solution.
✔️Expectation. Most people will speak about discipline leading to success but I prefer the idea of setting expectations for yourself and then holding yourself to account. What do you expect of yourself, your horse, that event, that transition, and don’t settle for any less. Be clear with your words to yourself, how many times have you joked about ‘just staying on’ or ‘getting round’, you’ve just set the expectation.
✔️Effort. Everyone likes the idea of improving, but will you actually go above and beyond to put the effort in? It is a coaches responsibility to teach you the technical skills to ride, it is up to you, the rider, to actually apply them, though hopefully your coach is inspiring you to want to put the effort in.
✔️No excuse culture. There is generally always a reason for something not going to plan. You can have an unfortunate pole, frustrating pole, annoying pole, but not an unlucky pole. Luck is about determination meeting opportunity. Did you give the horse every opportunity? Nobody learns anything from excuses, analyse what actually happened in a logical way and you’ll find a reason, a mistake or a gap in training, not an excuse.
✔️Self aware. ‘There is no self improvement without self awareness’. I think it’s really fun to link a mistake to a weakness, connecting all of the dots in your web, looking at X happened because of Y. Did you apply the correct aid? Was it at the right time? Was there too much pressure? This is one of the fastest ways to improve.
✔️A good loser. ‘When you’re not winning, you’re learning’. Every time something doesn’t quite go to plan, don’t label it as a bad day, use it as an opportunity to learn and make sure you don’t make the same mistake next time.
