The secret weapon at your fingertips

Years ago, a friend loved to take videos with a camera with cube-like cartridges. She would film everything from generally messing around to practice rides to show runs.

The problem for this non-techie, non-mechanical girl was I had to learn to run the machine to play them back, and then I had to hook up the TV to the device, and then I had to hook up the camera to wherever it hooked into.

That was a lot for me! But I did love studying my videos when she filmed them.

But now, as you know, filming is so easy.

For riding, of course, we don’t need anything but the convenience of our phone, ideally held in a horizontal position – and then we need to study it.

The study part is what this video is all about.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

When we watch our videos, we often see things that make us cringe, like the errors we made or our facial expressions. It’s easy to dread watching them because all we think about is what went wrong or what we think looks terrible.

But what if you studied your video from these perspectives with the desire to learn and to keep polishing your ride?

1. Do you know how a nice ride would go before you begin? Or were you preoccupied with things that might go wrong?
2. How did you prepare yourself? Did you get you and your horse in an engaged state before “serious” work began?
3. Acknowledge what you and your horse did well. See those things as your strengths, and look forward to building on them.
4. Was your horse “with” you at the ride’s beginning, middle, and end?
5. Notice critical elements of your horsemanship, like seat, upper body, and hand positions. Did you maintain these in a flow throughout your ride, or did you inadvertently lean forward, back, to the side, or look down when you were unsure of what was happening? Changes in your body reflect changes in your focus and emotions.
6. Where did things go well, and what did you do before that time?
7. Where did things go off the rails, and when did they just begin to happen?
8. After an error, could you return to the present moment and leave the faux pas behind?

These are just a few questions you can ask yourself as you watch your video. Because you crave learning (instead of criticizing yourself), pick just one or two places to adjust next time, with an ever-mindful eye on owning and developing your strengths.

Leave a comment for me. Let me know what you think.

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