If it takes 10,000 hours of practice, how can we get enough practice in the show pen!

If you ride 5 times a week, an hour a time, it’d take you 40 years to get the 10,000 hours.

Sharon: I just attended the first Reining show in Ontario for the season, hosted by the ORHA (Ontario Reining Horse Association) along with three other lovely members of our Jonas Performance Horses group, Karen, Lisa, and Lisa, and of course – our illustrious coach, Jen. Lisa and Lisa are focussed on ranch, Karen and I on Reining.

If it takes 10,000 hours to get good at something, and if you ride 5 times a week, an hour a time, it’d take you 40 years to get the 10,000 hours. I think both Karen and I can safely say we managed the 10,000 hours well within that time frame – I started riding at 7 and worked on a horse ranch for years, Karen has had horses most of her life. So we’re squared there.

But showing a horse. Oh. My. This is Karen’s third year and I’ve been showing off and on since 2010.

Each reining run in the showpen is around 4 minutes. If you attended four shows a year, rode in four classes at each show, at the end of the year you’d have just over an hour of showing experience under your belt… I haven’t got enough fingers to calculate how many years it would take to get to the 10,000 hours of showing!

We practise at home and try to put ourselves in the show experience mindset, but it’s not the same. Our brains secretly know the difference….

At the weekend, Karen did a fantastic run on the Sunday where everything came together for her. But on the Saturday,  she forgot to do her lead changes… something she didn’t realise until after she came out of the pen, smiling, saying she thought she had a nice run, wasn’t sure why she got a 0, until we asked her ‘So how about those lead changes?’ 

Luckily – Karen has a fabulous sense of humour. And I spent probably the next 30 minutes lecturing Karen on how to practice in your head before you go into the class.

On the same Saturday, I showed my new horse for the first time. It wasn’t good, I didn’t ride her in the show pen the way I do at home, horrible score. Jen worked with me on what we needed to do (get in my show skin and ride like I do at home).

My next class came up and I was determined to do it right. Halfway through my pattern as I was doing a large fast past the gate where Jen was stood with a look of bewilderment on her face I realised – and said out loud ‘I am doing the wrong pattern!’

I had to laugh and go give Karen a high-five!

Sunday though – me and my horse also did a run I am proud of – it came together for us – there’s still a lot to work on and we look forward to the next show.

But all this got me to wondering, how does the coach feel when they see this happen to their students – when the hours and hours of excellent prep work, coaching the student, maybe correcting and training the horse, only for the student to leave their brain at the gate and do something bonkers like forgetting the pattern!

Jen: Oh, the joys of showing! You prepare and perfect at home only to go to the show to have things fall apart or unravel. 

For my students it’s about them learning to be comfortable in their own “show skin”. 

This includes learning to set the judge, the competition, and the audience aside - and going in the pen to do their job as a team, with the rider in control. It can be a long process to become familiar with your own show skin but if you’re not in it and getting in there then you never will be!
When all these elements align then the rider and horse team can come together with confidence and clarity. 

I think the best piece of advice I have for anyone struggling with this is to recognise it takes practice, practice, practice, plus patience and focus on the end goal.

You have to be in it to win it – and doing it is the only way to get better at it. Ultimately, you’re not competing with others only yourself – your goal is constant improvement increment by increment, over each run.

And finally don’t be too hard on yourself, remember why you got into showing in the first place - it is supposed to be fun!