Can you feel it coming? The time when your students get bored of the arena walls? The days in February when it is too chilly to venture outside even for a snow hack? While it’s important to maintain some fitness in our ponies and students over the winter, as coaches we need to add some interesting ways to challenge our students and provide meaningful learning opportunities even when icicles are forming on your nose.
There are many different ways you can keep your equestrians entertained. Some are competitive, some are social, some educational and a few are just team building fun. Adding something fun during the non-competitive season keeps our students happy, fit and learning—and ready to compete next summer if that’s your goal for them! Some ideas include:
Drill Team
Design a musical ride routine to rival the RCMP. Great things happen when you put together students of all levels (minimum riding requirement is the ability to trot, unassisted) and get them to work as a team to prepare for a performance. Routines can be pretty simple: pinwheels, hoedown spins, thread the needle, etc. Make up fabulous names up for the moves, that’s part of the fun!
There are several happy byproducts from this exercise. Watching the experienced riders adjust their pace to accommodate the junior riders builds teamwork within a barn; what other opportunities do junior and senior riders have to work together toward a common goal? Seeing the teams talk, plot, plan and encourage each other to work together to perform the pattern correctly helps build that team atmosphere. As a long slow distance workout—aerobic exercise, lots of walk and trot, no stress—competitive students benefit from the stamina building exercise for their equine partners.
You can even add in the thrill of performance to get green riders used to riding in front of a crowd. Costumes and music add to the excitement!
EC Rider Level Theory
Coaches often help students prepare for EC Learn to Ride /Rider Level tests during their rides in lessons, but there is a lot of theory that can be covered in a warmer (not subject to toes popping off like ice cubes) environment. Pick a topic that your students need more time on and hold an hour or two-hour in-barn session looking in-depth into that topic. You can cover topics like:
Saddlery—pull every crazy bit and piece of equipment you have accumulated over the years out and get students to identify/fit them. Have a saddle fitter come in and show the kids (and adults) how to fit a saddle properly and why!
Feed—go to the local feed store or your own feed room and ask students to identify the grasses and legumes in your hay. Have them separate some sweet feed and identify its parts. Figure out how much specific horses need to eat based on their age, size, workload, temperament, etc.
Lameness & Injury—get the students to find blemishes on the school horses (they all have SOMETHING!), identify them and talk about the cure/rehabilitation for them. Teach students to jog a horse to check for lameness. Talk about how you would check for soundness, what a vet is looking for and what to tell a vet when you call. Have a vet come out and talk about common injuries and lamenesses.
Bandaging—this one could always use some practice. Have everyone practice their stable, shipping, first aid, tail, polo wrap, etc. You just need a few tolerant horses who don’t mind standing still for a while. School ponies love this one. It requires no real effort at all and there is always at least one student hugging them while the others work.
Barn Safety—have the students make a fire or Emergency Action Plan for the barn. Get everyone to help make a list of rules for the barn. Have the students go through the first aid kits, for people and horses, and identify everything and list other “nice to haves”.
Clipping and Show Prep—if you have ever seen someone clip a horse for the first time, you know it’s their first time. The horse has a very “patchwork quilt” look to them. Unleash your students on a few of the school horses in early March to learn to clip. They may need a touch-up after to get them looking presentable, and they might have to wear a blanket for a month, but hair grows back. And students have to learn somehow! And if you’re teaching clipping, you might as well also teach some braiding at the same time.
There are so many more topics you can come up with. Look through the EC Rider Level manuals and run with your ideas.
Video Clinics
Whatever it is you do, videoing it and watching it is one of the best ways to help students make the connection between what you tell them and what they are doing—especially those visual learners in your barn. Students get used to hearing us coaches say the same thing over and over (and over). They no longer hear the constructive criticism.
Usually, they’ll watch themselves for the first time and say, “Ohhh, I DO lean forward too much” or whatever it is we’ve been nagging about.
Have your students do their thing on video watch the video and then do it again after some discussion. They will improve, they can watch the video in a warm place and the riding is kept short but effective. One cool idea we have heard of recently is to have students ride a dressage test in front of a dressage judge and video camera. While a writer (coach) writes comments and scores on the test, the judge’s commentary is recorded on the video. When the video is replayed, the judge’s commentary is heard while the ride is being watched. The students get a great insight into what the judge is seeing and thinking. This works with any judged discipline.
Sunday Smackdown
Some students find competing fun, but aren’t so big on the training and learning between competitions. For these students, we need to add some sneaky learning opportunities to work on the skills that need more practice—without making it seem like hard work. After introducing a new skill, a fun way to encourage students to perfect the skill is to set up a “Sunday Smackdown.”
Pick an empty boring weekend day and challenge students to a competition in-house demonstrating the new skill being worked on.
- Jumping “skinny jumps”—run a Joker’s Wild type jumping class with several skinnies worth extra points.
- Finding a deeper seat in dressage? Hold a “no stirrups dressage test.”
- If students are learning speed control, set up a “closest to optimum time” course.
The list goes on!
Or do something totally out of their comfort zone like a hockey on horseback shootout or mounted games challenge. Whatever. Make it fun, a little silly and something the majority of students can try. Prepare for the taunting and rivalry and make sure there is a fabulous prize to go with bragging rights. Like a big jar of mints for the winner to keep in their locker for ponies. Keep it creative, not expensive.
Competition Theory Clinics
Mental Training—find a local sports psychologist to talk to your athletes about competition preparation, anxiety management, breathing, focusing, journaling, etc. They don’t have to be an equestrian to understand competition and athlete stress. It may be a bit more than your junior students are ready for but those super competitive 15-year-olds, and the secretly competitive adults in your program may find it very empowering.
Nutrition—bring in a nutritionist for people. Riders don’t typically eat well on competition day. Between the early start, the attention to their horse and the availability of good choices in the middle of a field, food often gets overlooked. As a coach, it’s difficult to work with an athlete who has no fuel left in the tank. Mistakes happen pretty quickly when your body is forced to run without energy!
Lunging—we don’t lunge as often as we might. Often when we ask students to lunge a horse, we end up having to teach them how to do it safely before they start. Lunging lessons (including how and why to put on all of the tack) have value in so many ways.
There are so many more topics that can fall under these clinics, too—grooming for a show, what to pack in your show trunk, specialty equipment (what, when, how, why), etc.
Games (Mounted, Prince Phillip Games, etc.)
Start a games team—Canadian Pony Club has about 40 games under the Prince Phillip Games umbrella that are relatively easy to learn and teach. Most just require some simple equipment: a few pylons and sticks, a barrel or two, some empty plastic cups and an old feed sack or two. Games teach balance, confidence, agility and can help provide another competitive opportunity. And who knows, if your kids and ponies get good enough, you might find a whole new field to branch out into!
School horses generally enjoy the change, too. Those calm and predictable old pros at their job in your discipline can get a lift out of the change of job too. Put a line of bending poles in from of them and a kid on top holding a baton and screaming and kicking like a banshee and they turn into weaving, lead-changing fireballs. And you swear you can see the smile on the ponies’ faces. Change is a good thing.
There are many more ideas out there. Have some fun. Encourage your students to shake off the show clothes and formal rides for a day and let loose. You’ll find the team building and joy for the fun are only a few of the great benefits of shaking things up a bit. Go for it.
Let us know what you are doing for fun this winter so we can share it with all of our coaching friends!