I always knew competition would show all the shadows in my life. That’s why I feel so deeply that personal development is the root and the starting point for all the external results we want to achieve; either in the arena or life in general.
In the arena, we cannot fake anything and we cannot pretend. It is us, our horses, the clock, cow, judge, obstacles; whatever your discipline is. There are no faking results. That is one reason why I love competition, it calls out all the BS. It shows where I lack, either in the actual arena or in the many “arenas” of my life.
If you’re not confident, your riding performance will show that, if you have anxiety about being seen, your performance will show that. In so many ways, our development as a human is needed if we are to overcome our own set of obstacles to really shine and thrive!
This brings me to a quick story about why I was not performing well. I think after many years, I finally have my answers as to why. To back track, this takes us roughly 4 years ago. I went to the USA to work for a few futurity trainers and I came home thinking I knew everything there was to know about barrel racing.
I did learn a lot, but when it was my time to shine and show off how much better I was than everyone else, it was a total disaster.. No kidding. I had a 4 year old futurity horse I could hardly get a qualifying run on and if we did manage to turn three barrels, it was definitely not fast. I was so embarrassed and confused after every run being a let down. “What was I missing in this?” I asked myself. I reached a state of very unhappy and hopeless. Before I ran I wondered why I was even going into that arena and as you can imagine my performance kept reinforcing this mental state I was trapped in.
Eventually, after many realizations and major humbling, I overcame this mental block. Slowly we scratched off the possibilities that were causing this unfortunate hiccup. First we looked at the horse; after a vet and a variety of therapeutic treatments later, she was in the clear. Now who else do we have to blam? Oh ya, it was me.
This brings me to the big thing I realized was missing those many years ago. I am trying not to be embarrassed to say this, but it was self-love. Like, the real self love. To help explain the definition of what I was going through, I will tell you what it is not. It was myself not taking care of “me.” I was unable to fill my own cup up, so I turned to external factors. I wanted my barrel racing to fill my self esteem. I wanted other people to make me feel qualified enough to be here(like being born isn’t enough already..). I wanted support from a partner to allow me to feel loved and supported because really, I was unable to do it for myself. I thought I needed all these things to reach victory in the arena. I learned that even if I had all these things on my side; they wouldn’t fix the bigger issue going on within myself internally.
This was a “me vs me” journey I had to face.
Before this realization, I always felt personally attacked when my barrel racing runs didn’t go well. I took it to heart as a reflection of my self-worth; hello unnecessary pressure. I became so reliant on “winning” that if I wasn’t getting that “win” I was miserable and felt no love, either from others or simply myself. If I wasn’t winning in the arena, I could hardly stand to look at myself. Sounds crazy right? But it’s a very real thing we face in lots of areas, not just riding. But like I said before, our life outside of riding reflects ourselves on the inside of it too!
I learnt that we can get caught up wanting external factors to make us feel certain ways about ourselves; worthiness, beautiful, love etc.. But the problem is, when we don’t get those things we lose it all. But, here is the ticket; if we create those feelings within ourselves first, nothing outside can take that away from us; not a run, not a person, not any external circumstances – it is solely an inside job.
A quote from this book I’m reading called Spirit Hacking By Shaman Durek said “?If you’re wanting people to honour your time and your gifts, then you need to honour your time and you need to honour your gifts.” Aka it starts with you.
Moving forward, I have become so sure of myself and my journey I don’t take defeat in any arenas of life personally anymore. I take everything that happens as a necessary lesson for me to grow and I am just grateful I get the opportunity to try again. I will change and pivot in order to become better. The difference is now, my internal state is solid while I am traveling down this path that is inevitably full of ups and downs.
Once I became so sure of myself, and let go of the “need” to win; the craziest thing started to happen – I actually started winning! I started riding with confidence no matter the outcome, I just felt lighter and at ease with my journey. All the pressure of competition just swept away from me because the competition result didn’t have the weight of my self worth riding on it. This new me started with self love. And that’s loving all aspects of this, the highs and lows. It’s understanding the path we’re on and feeling at ease with it knowing it is all for our higher good.
I hope you can move forward, no matter what happens and still feel ok about yourself. You are already complete. When it becomes an inside job and you rely on yourself to bring you the internal feeling of success, nothing can take that away. And that’s when you know you have reached true success! When that happens, life becomes easier and the things you want will come to you as they are supposed to. Always remember to enjoy the ride.
Tack and equipment are a big part of training horses. We have many options out there today to choose from and every horse and rider is different. We all feel differently about every piece of equipment, so how do you choose what you need?
We are going to discuss tie downs. Some always say yes to tie downs, some say it depends and some try to stay clear of them by any means necessary.
It’s important to keep in mind that some tools are temporary. We evolve just like our horses, so what may have worked in the past might not work anymore and it’s our job as the trainer and rider to figure that out. The use of tie downs in barrel racing has been around for years and years. They range from thick flexible leather nosebands to thin solid steel hitting the bridge of their nose. Like any piece of equipment, they can be dangerous and torturous for the horses in the wrong hands.
Tiedowns have a place in the tack room but not on every horse. It is our job to decide when it seems fitting to use a tie down and for what purpose.
– Does your horse need more balance and stiffness? Then perhaps a leather tie down will improve your communication and create that wall for them to feel secure and stable.
– Does your horse toss their head anytime you use the reins? Then maybe it’s time to understand your bits better and uncover the reason why your horse is tossing its head before you mask the behaviour with another tool.
Horses communicate without the use of speech, therefore it is our job to listen to them in other forms. This is through our intuition, our energy, verbal cues, posture, body language and other hidden components to language horses respond to that we as riders can be unaware of. At the end of the day, tools are simply tools and there isn’t one magic tool to make a horse perform how we want. It takes understanding them and working with them, not against them.
It’s our job as trainers to educate the horses, if they aren’t educated then we have no one else to blame but ourselves. Use the tools, but don’t rely on them to do all the work.
When there are no shortcuts, there are also no holes.
Do the work, take your time, teach them the way, guide them, allow them to make mistakes and correct them as you go. You can create a beautiful working relationship where you and your horse can shine as brightly as possible. It’s time to shine!
Make the right thing easy and the wrong thing hard.
The path of least resistance is real. We see it all around us, from the rain running down in a stream away from our barn, to the natural ways we can train and work our horses. We have to approach our day to day in a way that will set us up for success. At the end of the day we want to feel accomplished and successful, right? I know I sure do. So how can we better our odds of feeling this way after work, after a day at a race or competition, or a training session with our horses?
How can we apply the principle of “make the right thing easy and the wrong thing hard” to our advantage? How can we use our own path of least resistance to set ourselves and our horses up for success? This idea is something I learnt from training barrel horses and something my mom has taught me from her time training dogs. The more I thought about it, the more I realized it applies in many areas of our life.
Let’s uncover how it works! Imagine again the path of least resistance, it’s easy right? It flows naturally, it all goes in the natural direction. Meaning, you can get the work done with the least amount of effort and struggle potentially involved. There are simply less obstacles for you to overcome. Meaning, we can control and structure our days and training sessions in that way. We can make the right thing easy like the path of least resistance and the hard thing full of it, with all the obstacles and resistance.
This is a part of the foundation to training horses. We want to show our horses the path we want them to take, we have to clearly identify the path of least resistance. It doesn’t matter what discipline, but we always have to remind ourselves of this principle.
A riding example is making perfect circles. They’re important for me as far as training barrel horses, but choose whatever aspect of training you’re working towards. But here, our goal is perfect circles. We want to think of the circle as the path of least resistance or the most comfortable path for our horses. We begin by setting up our circle correctly, once they are going we allow them to go on their own, but if they fall out or into the circle, we correct with our leg and/or rein which is a resistance for them. But once they are in the proper position again, we give them the opportunity to hold themselves naturally in a way that is the most comfortable for them.
Eventually the horse knows that that path of least resistance is to hold the circle correctly on their own. The cool thing about this is we allow for mistakes, we allow for things to go off track and we give ourselves the opportunity to correct as we go. This approach helps me understand how I am influencing my horses. Am I being fair and giving them the chance to decide what the path of least resistance is for them? Am i allowing for them to make the mistake before i guide them on the better path? This way they, like us will actually learn through our process and develop a better understanding of right an wrong.
When I apply this ideato my own personal life, I feel my goals are more attainable because i know which path is the least resistant and i try to strategize my days to make it happen!. We have the control toplan our days to allow for success, just one small successful step is all it takes.
Eventually with consistent effort, we will be able to set up everything in our lives to guide us down the path of least resistance. We can accomplish the things we set out to do, we just have to set ourselves up for success by making the right thing easy and the wrong thing hard.
I always knew competition would show all the shadows in my life. That’s why I feel so deeply that personal development is the root and the starting point for all the external results we want to achieve; either in the arena or life in general.
In the arena, we cannot fake anything and we cannot pretend. It is us, our horses, the clock, cow, judge, obstacles; whatever your discipline is. There are no faking results. That is one reason why I love competition, it calls out all the BS. It shows where I lack, either in the actual arena or in the many “arenas” of my life.
If you’re not confident, your riding performance will show that, if you have anxiety about being seen, your performance will show that. In so many ways, our development as a human is needed if we are to overcome our own set of obstacles to really shine and thrive!
This brings me to a quick story about why I was not performing well. I think after many years, I finally have my answers as to why. To back track, this takes us roughly 4 years ago. I went to the USA to work for a few futurity trainers and I came home thinking I knew everything there was to know about barrel racing.
I did learn a lot, but when it was my time to shine and show off how much better I was than everyone else, it was a total disaster.. No kidding. I had a 4 year old futurity horse I could hardly get a qualifying run on and if we did manage to turn three barrels, it was definitely not fast. I was so embarrassed and confused after every run being a let down. “What was I missing in this?” I asked myself. I reached a state of very unhappy and hopeless. Before I ran I wondered why I was even going into that arena and as you can imagine my performance kept reinforcing this mental state I was trapped in.
Eventually, after many realizations and major humbling, I overcame this mental block. Slowly we scratched off the possibilities that were causing this unfortunate hiccup. First we looked at the horse; after a vet and a variety of therapeutic treatments later, she was in the clear. Now who else do we have to blam? Oh ya, it was me.
This brings me to the big thing I realized was missing those many years ago. I am trying not to be embarrassed to say this, but it was self-love. Like, the real self love. To help explain the definition of what I was going through, I will tell you what it is not. It was myself not taking care of “me.” I was unable to fill my own cup up, so I turned to external factors. I wanted my barrel racing to fill my self esteem. I wanted other people to make me feel qualified enough to be here(like being born isn’t enough already..). I wanted support from a partner to allow me to feel loved and supported because really, I was unable to do it for myself. I thought I needed all these things to reach victory in the arena. I learned that even if I had all these things on my side; they wouldn’t fix the bigger issue going on within myself internally.
This was a “me vs me” journey I had to face.
Before this realization, I always felt personally attacked when my barrel racing runs didn’t go well. I took it to heart as a reflection of my self-worth; hello unnecessary pressure. I became so reliant on “winning” that if I wasn’t getting that “win” I was miserable and felt no love, either from others or simply myself. If I wasn’t winning in the arena, I could hardly stand to look at myself. Sounds crazy right? But it’s a very real thing we face in lots of areas, not just riding. But like I said before, our life outside of riding reflects ourselves on the inside of it too!
I learnt that we can get caught up wanting external factors to make us feel certain ways about ourselves; worthiness, beautiful, love etc.. But the problem is, when we don’t get those things we lose it all. But, here is the ticket; if we create those feelings within ourselves first, nothing outside can take that away from us; not a run, not a person, not any external circumstances – it is solely an inside job.
A quote from this book I’m reading called Spirit Hacking By Shaman Durek said “ ??If you’re wanting people to honour your time and your gifts, then you need to honour your time and you need to honour your gifts.” Aka it starts with you.
Moving forward, I have become so sure of myself and my journey I don’t take defeat in any arenas of life personally anymore. I take everything that happens as a necessary lesson for me to grow and I am just grateful I get the opportunity to try again. I will change and pivot in order to become better. The difference is now, my internal state is solid while I am traveling down this path that is inevitably full of ups and downs.
Once I became so sure of myself, and let go of the “need” to win; the craziest thing started to happen – I actually started winning! I started riding with confidence no matter the outcome, I just felt lighter and at ease with my journey. All the pressure of competition just swept away from me because the competition result didn’t have the weight of my self worth riding on it. This new me started with self love. And that’s loving all aspects of this, the highs and lows. It’s understanding the path we’re on and feeling at ease with it knowing it is all for our higher good.
I hope you can move forward, no matter what happens and still feel ok about yourself. You are already complete. When it becomes an inside job and you rely on yourself to bring you the internal feeling of success, nothing can take that away. And that’s when you know you have reached true success! When that happens, life becomes easier and the things you want will come to you as they are supposed to. Always remember to enjoy the ride.
What i’m referring to is the knowledge and the insight will always improve. It will evolve just like all creation. The knowledge now will be more advanced in 10 years, maybe only in 30 days, maybe every day on a smaller scale.
I went to a rider biomechanic workshop today, the information we are gaining is revolutionary to old school methods.
We are opening our eyes more.. By actually closing them a lot of the time.
We are becoming aware of so much more through subtle advancements and principles that affect us first as a human and more specifically, a rider. We are growing our landscape of possibilities with horses and that is the same for all of humankind. Just because it “what was” doesnt mean it needs to remain “what is”.
It’s race day, the early morning sun is shining, horses are eating and all is well. We haven’t competed yet so we have nothing to be angry, upset or disappointed with. We are in a place of optimism, possibilities and potential, “yay I think I am really going to crush it today”.
Then, we get on our horse, things start to go south. They’re hot and anxious, they’re distracted, they’re anything we don’t necessarily want them to be in order to perform well. All of a sudden, your mood has done a 180 along with your vision of the day. You’re now getting tense with your horse. Your smile is now a tight, clenched jaw and your eyes are staring at your horse with anger and frustration like why aren’t you doing what I want you to do?!! (side note, it isn’t all about what YOU want THEM to do) moving on though..
Before you know it, you are taking a back seat to your emotions and you’re allowing your horse to control how you feel about yourself and the situation. Your body and mind don’t lie. When physical aspects of ourselves change, so does our mind, that’s why they say it is impossible to be tense in your face and also be relaxed. (give it a try). Open your mouth, take your tongue off the roof of your mouth and relax the lower part of your face. Feel better?
So what does this have to do with anything?
I see often, riders developing a sour attitude, being overly serious and taking out their new emotional frustration on their horses. Things don’t always go to plan, horses are horses after all and competition brings so many uncertain elements that we simply cannot control every aspect of.
We are leaders, I preach this often. We have to approach the situation how we want our horses to be as well. That means relaxed, focused, present, light and soft etc. It is one race, one competition. It’s not the end of the world if every element didn’t go to your plan.In life nothing really does, so take it as a life lesson and learn to adapt to change however it’s going to come. Being able to be resilient in new situations will give you an advantage in the show arena.
Next race day I want you to be aware of how your horse influences you and how you influence your horses.
If your horse is acting less than ideal, how are you managing yourself to take back control of yourself? Are you going down to their level and becoming the rider you didn’t want to be in the morning? Are you getting quick and aggressive with your hands because your horse is “misbehaving”? “Are you being the example?
That can mean you hit a barrel today, that’s ok. We have to gracefully accept it. We have to trust ourselves and our horses, we have to allow the results to happen however they’re going to happen, we can’t control that. But we can control our attitude. We are the leader and we have control over many things, mostly our outlook and how we handle it.
I love horses and competing because the lessons I take into my day to day give me insight into becoming content and fulfilled no matter the uncontrollables that come my way. Next race, I want you to catch yourself getting caught up in the uncontrollables. How are you responding to life and your horses?
This is up to you so please choose the right thing. Choose to accept, choose to go easier on yourself and especially on your horses. They are doing it all for us, it’s only fair to respect their efforts no matter what happens. Pat them, give them love, be the leader, show them by example what it means to love the job and love every good or bad thing that comes with it.
Let’s not be so serious and let’s remember why we show up every day and on weekends.
Make the right thing easy and the wrong thing hard.
The path of least resistance is real. We see it all around us, from the rain running down in a stream away from our barn, to the natural ways we can train and work our horses. We have to approach our day to day in a way that will set us up for success. At the end of the day we want to feel accomplished and successful, right? I know I sure do. So how can we better our odds of feeling this way after work, after a day at a race or competition, or a training session with our horses?
How can we apply the principle of “make the right thing easy and the wrong thing hard” to our advantage? How can we use our own path of least resistance to set ourselves and our horses up for success? This idea is something I learnt from training barrel horses and something my mom has taught me from her time training dogs. The more I thought about it, the more I realized it applies in many areas of our life.
Let’s uncover how it works! Imagine again the path of least resistance, it’s easy right? It flows naturally, it all goes in the natural direction. Meaning, you can get the work done with the least amount of effort and struggle potentially involved. There are simply less obstacles for you to overcome. Meaning, we can control and structure our days and training sessions in that way. We can make the right thing easy like the path of least resistance and the hard thing full of it, with all the obstacles and resistance.
This is a part of the foundation to training horses. We want to show our horses the path we want them to take, we have to clearly identify the path of least resistance. It doesn’t matter what discipline, but we always have to remind ourselves of this principle.
A riding example is making perfect circles. They’re important for me as far as training barrel horses, but choose whatever aspect of training you’re working towards. But here, our goal is perfect circles. We want to think of the circle as the path of least resistance or the most comfortable path for our horses. We begin by setting up our circle correctly, once they are going we allow them to go on their own, but if they fall out or into the circle, we correct with our leg and/or rein which is a resistance for them. But once they are in the proper position again, we give them the opportunity to hold themselves naturally in a way that is the most comfortable for them.
Eventually the horse knows that that path of least resistance is to hold the circle correctly on their own. The cool thing about this is we allow for mistakes, we allow for things to go off track and we give ourselves the opportunity to correct as we go. This approach helps me understand how I am influencing my horses. Am I being fair and giving them the chance to decide what the path of least resistance is for them? Am i allowing for them to make the mistake before i guide them on the better path? This way they, like us will actually learn through our process and develop a better understanding of right an wrong.
When I apply this idea to my own personal life, I feel my goals are more attainable because i know which path is the least resistant and i try to strategize my days to make it happen!. We have the control to plan our days to allow for success, just one small successful step is all it takes.
Eventually with consistent effort, we will be able to set up everything in our lives to guide us down the path of least resistance. We can accomplish the things we set out to do, we just have to set ourselves up for success by making the right thing easy and the wrong thing hard.
Shelby invites you to a Weekend Retreat for the riders who feel they are getting in their own way of success. August 20-21 we are hosting a weekend riding and wellness retreat in Caledonia Ontario. Tap into your deeper senses to learn how to become the leader you and your horse need. We can let go of the fear and start showing up how we know we can, full of confidence, positive talk, calm, unbothered by things that maybe used to throw you off your game. This is for riders of all levels, please learn more by reaching out t We Can Hustle on all platforms or this link:
I have been thinking and questioning “What makes a great barrel?” and this is probably a question that a lot of us have. The reason we finish a turn well is because we approach it well. BUT HOW?! These are the things that I’m going to tell you that I think are the key ingredients to make an amazing barrel.
A proper turn starts with the approach
So let’s get into it.
1: The one thing that I start off by telling everybody, is the approach.
I think if you approach a barrel correctly and properly, we’re setting ourselves and our horses up for success. And it starts with the approach if we don’t approach the barrel, right and something goes wrong, and it’s not smooth and easy, we’re not going to finish it right.
What I mean by that is if you go into tight, you’re gonna have to go wide. If you go in with your dropped shoulder and your horse’s hip is kicked out, your horse is gonna have to take an extra step or two and regain balance to actually come around the barrel as effectively and as quickly as possible. We all know, our mission here is to run a barrel pattern as fast as we possibly can.
It starts with us staying centred, approaching the barrel in a nice balanced, upright way, and giving the horse the best chance of success.
I feel like second might be the most common struggle barrel, because we do approach it on a straight line, there’s no angles, it’s very direct. Horses and humans tend to a anticipate the turn and cause a lot of issues with either slicing into it, or a we make a huge pocket, and then our horses hit it on leaving, and there’s just so many things that can happen a second. So we’re gonna use second as our example.
#2: Point of Focus
I make sure I look directly behind my barrel and that is my focal point. That is the ONLY spot I look at and where I want my horse’s head, front feet and back feet to travel to. How I think of approaching it is “shoulder up, drive forward. shoulder up drive ahead.” (this is on repeat in my head) So if you were to draw a line behind, that’s kind of my focal point of where I really am pushing my horse to. I do that all the time so my horses learn to run up to that point. Keep it consistent and don’t start the turn until the horse is clear of the barrel. Always have a focal point where YOU look. It will help with muscle/mind memory.
#3 Straight Lines
Straight lines are the second ingredient to a barrel race. They need to stay square and centered between my hands and my legs, when we’re doing straight lines is it’s not just about their head, we really want their body too. I really feel it with my knees and my thighs, I am staying centered, I’m staying straight and I’m driving my horse forward. I am sitting back pushing my horse along and encouraging him that forward motion like I said earlier, really important to get that forward motion.
Lines are really important to keep the shoulder traveling under everything and to keep it all one working unit. This is part of having your horse work in train tracks with its front and back feet. When we’re approaching and going around the barrel its just making sure that you feel that you have full body control between your hands and legs.
Our horses are listening to us they want to do what we want! Love your horse, treat them kindly, guide them, direct them to be the best horses that they can be. It starts with us right now by doing these things; listening to podcasts, watching videos, learning from everyone, what you like and what you don’t like, just keep growing.
We also have a community going on that’s off social media. This is for those people that they don’t like Facebook and Instagram. Leave a comment, send me a DM and we’ll get you in. The community is getting filled with amazing riders that are looking for the same things. Personal development, learn and improve and just gain more knowledge on this sport and on the industry. If that sounds interesting to you, please let me know and I’ll send you the invite link and get you in our private off social media community!
Reflecting on the first 3 day race of the year. You could sense it in the air that everyone was so happy to get out, connect with each other and their horses.
The moments I want to talk about, as I look down to my leg with a few new barrel knocking scapes is this:
We can be our worst enemy. We think the thoughts of others and we tend to assume the worst. We think “they’re” watching our every move and they’re full of judgement. I’m here to say this, no one cares as much as you think they do. We are all trying out here and it all looks different. Nothing about each rider is completely alike so we cannot expect to be someone or somewhere we are not meant to be right now. Just know you are not alone. We are all facing some sort of difficulties. We are fully in this together.
Now back to the leg with new barrel bruises and scrapes; Embrace that. Even though it sucks to hit a barrel and we all feel we are capable of doing better. Make sure you don’t forget to still appreciate your efforts. That cut on your leg is the proof you’re trying. You’re in the arena which is a victory within it self. Celebrate that.
Cheering for others, supporting others and loving others will come back to you. It cost you nothing to smile, to say congrats, to tell someone they’re doing great, even when you know they don’t believe what you’re telling them. Be a reason someone notices the things they’ve done right, or begins to appreciates their horse a bit more. The domino effect is real, pass on your energy so they can become that reason for someone else too. Supporting, cheering, collaborating with others creates a community full of positivity and encouragement. We can all cheer for one another.
Take every opportunity to learn. Every run is a new chance to figure something out. Do it for you. Don’t think you need to know it all by now. You are still growing and you are still learning. As long as you’re breathing, you’re going to be learning. Give yourself a break in this moment and know the lessons learnt now are preparing you for the future you desire. We take small steps, the 1% everyday. Don’t think you need to know it all now. Enjoy the run with the expectations of experiencing it and you are learning from it.
