IEA Show Regionals: Baby, It's Cold Outside

This year I have been the schooling rider for the Oak Haven Farm Interscholastic Equestrian Association team. In practical terms, this means that I warm-up and school horses before the shows.

When the students go to the show, each team brings their own school horses to compete. Before the show begins, the show management take all the horses' names, put them in a hat, and draw out a random horse for each kid to ride. Because of this procedure, the kid in question may or may not get a horse he knows to compete for any particular class.

To keep everything as fair as possible, competitors are not allowed to warm up or school the horses before the show. This is where I come in. Each team needs a schooling rider to warm up the horses their team brought before the show. 

It's pretty straightforward, and a fun way to spend a weekend: all the excitement of a horse show with none of the pressure. And less work, since the competitors help with the care of their team's horses. 

The only drawback this particular weekend is the fact that I had to school at 6:00am when the temperature at the show grounds was 46F.

Practice to Perform

Photo credit: Ruth Buchanan

This blog will be about the general happenings in my life. Mostly it will be about my riding career and life at the barn. Sometimes it will be about jiu jitsu and life at the gym. Occasionally it may be about family and life in general.

I hope all of it will be interesting enough to read.

Current News

The big news in life is that I am showing my horse today. I'll be taking her to a local schooling show, and it will be our first show of 2015. It will also be our first show moving up to First Level.

Thankfully, I don't tend to get nervous during a competition except for while I'm driving to he venue. I think part of the reason for that is because I'm usually pretty well prepared and another big part is because my philosophy of competition.

Philosophy of Competition

Some people I've seen seem to have the mindset of "I'm going to compete so I'd better train really hard these two weeks before hand so I'm REALLY GOOD for the competition.

Now don't get me wrong. I know there is a process of training so you make sure you're in peak condition for the event. But in general, this is how I tend to approach the situation: "This is how I ride and today I just happen to have a judge watching and evaluating me."

"Practice the way you want to perform" is the way one choir director always phrased it.

I think this can apply to a lot of things in life. If you manage an office or a restaurant and your boss' boss is coming to visit, it will be a lot less stressful if your employees already do things according to policy. If you build buildings you won't have to stress about the inspector coming to the site because you know you and your team always build everything to code.

So when my horse steps into the ring today, I know we'll be ready to do our best!

But for right now I'd better go study my tests.