Use this ‘short cut’ to improve your horse training results.
Despite it’s sheer simplicity, this rule is one of the most powerful principles we can utilise when training our horses.
Use it wisely and it will help you…….
Make better decisions with your horse. Have more free time having fun together. Earn your horses trust and respect, so you can feel safe. Develop your training quicker.
In short this rule helps you get more out of your horse with a lot less effort.
Here is proof it works
I never fully understood the power of this little rule until I started getting lots of teaching work and didn’t seem to have much time for my horses myself.
I missed doing stuff with my horses, so not only did I master this 80/20 rule, I have taken it to a whole new level.
Here is a bit about how I got good at this:
I had at the time four horses to take care of, ride and train as well as taking care of all the clients I was coaching each week.
I didn’t have much spare time to spend with my precious horses myself, so I really had to make our activities together worthwhile and count for something.
So what I worked out with each of my four horses was simply what kind of things do I need to be doing with each of them to make the biggest impact today.
I found that when I asked this question while I was getting ready with my horse for the session, I noticed lots of little things with my horse that gave me great clues as what would be good to focus on today. Things like – oh my horse is a bit fidgety and restless with a bit of energy to burn. Or my horse seems very relaxed and chilled and wanting lots of cuddles. My horse is disinterested and dull.
From gleaning this information I got some ideas as to what we could do together that was going to give my horse a quality session with not much time involved, since I didn’t have much time!
You can spend years mooching around and just cruising with your horse and enjoying yourself, however if you really want to master some things and your time is precious then something has to change!
Louise’s Rules for Success:
Here is what I discovered –
“About 90 – 95% of the time by just practicing a couple of really simple, basic moves with my horse, but doing it REALLY well. For example, if my horse was in chill mode or the ground was slippery and I could only practice in walk, I did it”.
OR
“If my horse had energy to burn and was eager to get going, we would do a couple of obstacles, like going over a jump, trotting poles, a tarp on the ground. We would go out there are get going alright, but I would work with the quality of the jump, the pace, my horses posture whatever I saw needed attention. Now remember it has to be kept simple – so I would just focus on one or two qualities like pace and posture and get that looking really nice, no fluffing around, just straight to the point after warming up”.
“What magically started to happen from these very simple interactions with my horse, I got way way better at the trickier things with my horse without even practising!!. I remember only being able to ride my horse in the walk for about a month, because the weather was so wet and the ground slippery I just couldn’t go faster and still remain upright. Well when the ground dried out and weather cleared when I started more trot and canter work, my goodness my horse was in better posture, more responsive, leg yielded better etc etc.”.
“What I had unknowingly stumbled upon was – Don’t go into your horse training and think you have to learn everything and do everything right away. Instead figure out what few things will give you the biggest advantage now…and master those”.
Did you catch that?
Simply focus on a small range of activities to build you and your horses skill and training the majority of the time. This simple rule will get you much further than 80% of all the other horse riders out there……with minimal effort.
To Your Success!