I asked what your struggles were. You answered.
And now I’m here to share with you how you can overcome the concerns you shared with me. They were as follows: the mental game, consistency, confidence.
The Mental Game.
Mastering the mental game is easier than you think. Don’t tell yourself it’s hard. It’s not. You can do it. I did it. And I’m no one special. What you tell yourself matters. If you give energy to the bad, or to negativity, you feed that to yourself and and learn to believe that as well. You master the mental game through confidence. And you can’t get confidence without…
Consistency.
To gain consistency, you do the same thing, day in, day out. Know and believe it will work. If you don’t think it will work, it won’t. If you tell yourself you can’t, you CAN’T and you won’t. Don’t ask perfect strangers for the “quick fix”. There isn’t one. A bit won’t fix an undereducated horse. A bit won’t fix a shouldering problem. But work (in the form of educating yourself and your horse), for sure will.
LET ME TELL YOU A STORY…
In November of 2021, I went to a horsemanship school. I was given an older lesson horse named “Mac” to ride and train for the month. He was a big TB crossed on something else (it was anyone’s guess). It was pretty clear he’d likely been a lesson horse in a past life. He had learned that he could find a release in kicking up. The first couple days we went back to groundwork, then I got on him, and realized the benefit of the groundwork in how soft he was laterally.
I spent the next two weeks working on freeing up his feet, and mostly killed cats. We’d trot, I’d reach down the rein, bend him, ask for the hips and then try to hurry him out and get his shoulders to come through. To back him up was like trying to back up a 10lb rock in deep dirt, with your pinky finger. So I quit that. Didn’t mess with it. I just kept at my lateral work (killing of the cats) and worked to free up his feet.
The last week I was there, I needed to revisit the back-up. After all he was going to be the mount for an older woman and her friends. He weighed nothing. I hadn’t worked on the back-up for TWO WEEKS! But I did work on the things that I KNOW AND BELIEVE to be effective in helping horses get soft, learn to respond to your rein, and respond to your leg.
My point in sharing this story is this: Working on what I believed in, and sticking with it for 30 days, made the difference. I didn’t say, “well I can’t back him up in a snaffle, so I’m going to get a bigger bit.” Instead I kept working on what I know to be effective and it helped EVERYTHING else about him get better.
Too often we are on to the next “quick” fix and don’t stick with anything long enough to really become consistent at it. Choose a way – choose something- do the same thing long enough to notice that it works. And when you become consistent, you will gain, CONFIDENCE.
Confidence.
To become confident you must be consistent. Consistent in how you ask – when it comes training your horse and yourself. If you ask the same way, do the same things and practice the same things, you’ll get there.
This one video course is designed to help you learn what you need to do to train yourself to master these three things you all told me you struggle with the the most.