Top trainers weigh in on how competitive amateurs can get the most out of their lesson time.

For legions of busy, overachieving adults, just carving out time to get in the saddle can be extraordinarily difficult. It’s even harder to navigate the logistical concerns of getting to a trainer. So when all the stars align and you manage to get in a lesson, it’s all the more important to make the most of every moment.

Of course, lack of time isn’t the only pressure facing most adult riders. Amateurs face physical, emotional and mental pressures different from their junior or professional counterparts.

“Our sport, partly because it’s expensive, attracts people who have been successful in other areas of their life,” said hunter/jumper trainer Shelley Campf. “Many amateurs think, ‘At my job I can do anything if I try hard enough and I want it badly enough. On my horse it doesn’t work for me.’ ”

Riding may be a respite from the workday, but that doesn’t make it stress-free. That competitive drive, combined with assumption of full financial responsibility, gives amateurs plenty of incentive to ride up to their potential.

“I work with a lot of high-profile business people,” said eventer Carol Kozlowski. “They might tell you they ride for pleasure, but they take their riding and competition very seriously. They want their lessons to matter.”

Luckily, many top instructors understand these challenges intimately and have accrued an arsenal of advice for how to help amateur riders make every lesson worthwhile.

Devoting The Time

A successful lesson starts from the moment you call to set up an appointment. If you’re trying to make a tight start time after work, you may be setting yourself up for a stressful 45 minutes.

“I’m as guilty as the next person of trying to pack too much into the day,” said Kozlowski, who, in addition to teaching at her Mothersfield in Geneseo, N.Y., also sits on the U.S. Eventing Association’s Executive Committee and co-chairs the USEA Safety and Equine Welfare Committee.

“There’s nothing worse than scrambling around, making an instructor wait for you. At the same time, a dose of flexibility on either side isn’t a bad thing,” she said.

For dressage trainer Jeremy Steinberg of KGF Equestrian in Kirkland, Wash., this means finding a trainer who can work with your schedule.

“If your trainer won’t stay until 8 p.m., and that’s the only time you can come, or if he’ll only give you one time, you might have to look for a different situation,” he pointed out. “You should be able to take a deep breath and relax during your lessons.”

Riders who can’t get to their trainers regularly have even more incentive to capitalize on every rare opportunity. Campf, of Oz Incorporated in Canby, Ore., sets up her long-distance students with a local coach who can keep them on task between regular sessions. And Kozlowski encourages her long-distance ship-ins to find a few days for intensive training when they can. Her students who commit to two or three days for a “mini camp” progress faster and haul their horses away feeling more fulfilled.

Some students can get to regular training but simply can’t escape from the real world. John Zopatti’s serious dressage students in Wellington, Fla., include amateur Kristy Lund, whose job as a small animal veterinarian often demands that she be on call nonstop. She can’t turn off her cell phone during lessons, so she’s set a special ring tone for emergency calls from her clinic. Over time, she’s turned that pressure into enjoyment of every moment it doesn’t go off.

“We could be in the middle of anything—learning one-tempis—and that phone can ring, and she’ll have to drop everything to go take care of a sick cat,” said Zopatti. “But when it doesn’t happen we’re very focused, and we’ve been able to find a little pocket of time to fit into the day to be very focused just on riding and get a lot of instruction in.”

Be Ready To Roll

Once you’ve set your schedule up to allow for optimum concentration and gotten “in the zone” mentally, a little organizational preparation can go a long way toward a meaningful session. Kozlowski asks her students to bring their competition bridles, bits or any tack they use occasionally in case she decides to try different equipment.

Some trainers may just refer you to a tack shop when selecting gear, but most will have an opinion on what will help you meet your goals. Even if purchasing top-of-the-line equipment isn’t in the cards, Campf points out that keeping your own saddle and boots properly conditioned will extend their life and add grip.

“I see adults on both sides, some who tend to over-indulge themselves, and some who go the other way,” said Campf. “Some think they’re not worthy of getting a new saddle even if they need one. But if your saddle is so awkward that you have to work so hard to hold your position, that’s a major problem. It’s one thing not to buy a new saddle for financial reasons, it’s another because you don’t think you’re worth it.”

Of course there’s more to being ready than showing up with yourself and your mount properly dressed. The more in tune you are with your horse and riding, the more you’ll be able to accomplish. The best trainers are attuned to mental challenges that some adult riders face like fear, nerves and lack of self-confidence, all of which can block the rider’s ability to make an honest effort and be open to hearing constructive criticism.

“Being a good student means listening, asking questions when you don’t understand something and being able to recognize faults in ourselves that it’s our teacher’s job to point out,” said Campf, who chairs the U.S. Hunter Jumper Association’s Trainer Certification Program committee. “If you’re having a rough day, communicate it with your instructor. With a kid I might tell them to fight through it, but with an amateur I’m more sympathetic to what they’re feeling, and we can work another way.”

“Listening and communicating is so important,” echoed Zopatti. “I’ve taught places before where I’ll say the same thing 10 times, either because the student doesn’t understand or doesn’t believe me. If you’re not capable of it or I need to explain it another way, that’s one thing, but sometimes the rider thinks, ‘I’ve tried that before, and it doesn’t work.’ If you’re paying for someone’s opinion, just try it. If what you’ve been doing isn’t working, try a different way.”

Get That Camera Rolling

And since you’re paying top dollar for that expertise, you’ll want to get as much bang for your buck as possible—not just in your lesson, but after. There’s no better way to evaluate your own riding than to see it with your own eyes.

“The first time I saw a video of myself riding [in a training session with Jack Le Goff] I was horrified,” recalled Kozlowski. “I thought I was hot stuff, and when I saw the tape, I was mortified. Here I thought I was sitting up and looking great, and it wasn’t the case at all.”

Competition tapes (hopefully) document your horse at its best, but taping training sessions can show how you and your horse got there. Zopatti recommends his dressage students tape as many lessons as possible and insists they video clinics.

“A student might come back and rave how their shoulder-in was so much more open and free, and we can watch the video and see what was different that made it work better,” he said. “Or I’ll teach a clinic and tell a rider her horse is crooked, and she doesn’t believe me because she’s been doing it that way so long. The camera doesn’t lie—if you can see it on a video, then you can make the connection.”

Steinberg also advocates taping clinics to help riders benefit from a talented horseman who might just be less verbose than they’d like.

“Sometimes a clinician will do what I call ‘traffic direct,’ where he’ll tell you instructions but not explain why,” he said. “Maybe the horse will feel good at the end but you don’t really know how you got there. If you have a record, you can go back and figure it out.”

But riders should be mindful that trainers may take exception to their students using tapes for anything other than a private study session. Edited or out-of-context footage may portray individuals and horses in an unflattering light. Ask permission of your trainer or clinician before you press record and again before you upload any clips to the Internet.

Take Notes And Do Your Homework

Whether you video your lessons or not, be sure you have a written record of exactly what you worked on last time around. After an “ah ha” moment during one of her own lessons, Kozlowski always jots down all the details before she drives away from the lesson.

“Often there will be a couple phrases that resonate that you think you’re going to remember—but you won’t,” said Kozlowski. “That’s especially important if you’re not getting instruction on a regular basis. There’s nothing worse than getting on my horse five or six days later and trying to recreate that light bulb moment and saying, ‘How did we do that again?’ ”

That process of note taking can be especially useful during clinics, and Jack Towell of Finally Farm in Camden, S.C. finds that the students that get the most out of his lessons may not be the riders themselves but the auditors on the fence.

“If you’re taking notes, drawing diagrams of what we worked on and keeping track of what the horses’ needs were, it will give you a chance to think about it,” he said. “Most of these adults are pretty smart, and thorough notes will give you something to work from.”

Eventer Sharon White, who teaches a large contingent of amateur students at her Last Frontier Farm in Summit Point, W.Va., stresses the importance of getting personalized assignments for your practice time.

“It depends entirely on your situation at home,” she pointed out. “The homework I give to someone who maybe doesn’t have a flat space to ride on is completely different from someone with an indoor. Maybe you have two horses, and while you ride one the other goes crazy—all of this matters.”

While it may be frustrating for students without access to an indoor to train at the mercy of Mother Nature, it’s not necessarily a disadvantage. Campf encourages students to think of the colder periods or months between competitions as “homework months” to troubleshoot problems and train at a slower pace.

“I try to encourage my students to respect the ebb and flow of the seasons and not feel like you have to drill constantly,” added Kozlowski. “You can’t maintain that pitch for your training nonstop.”

Goaltending: The Bigger Picture

At the end of the day, the best way to keep your lessons productive, honest and rewarding is to develop and articulate honest, realistic goals. Riders who can honestly assess their own weakness will be able to progress more rapidly than those who aren’t as self-aware.

“Maybe your goal is learning to ride an accurate 20-meter circle,” said Steinberg. “As a student you should come week to week or month to month with a list of goals you want to accomplish, and you should work on them and change them.”

Towell always tries to set concrete goals to keep riders motivated. At a recent clinic he helped a beginning adult who struggled to see her distances. First he helped her quantify the problem—they estimated she could see a distance 50 percent of the time—then found a goal to work toward over the afternoon—increasing that average to 65 percent. When she left, the rider estimated her average closer to 85 percent, leaving her especially satisfied and inspired.

On the flip side, though, highly competitive riders need to be cautious of becoming overly reliant on numbers as benchmarks of their progress. When the scores they earn in competition start to carry more weight than actual self-satisfaction, riders might need a reality check.

“I tell my students that I personally approach competition as a test of my training,” said Kozlowski. “I hardly look at the scoreboard—your result at a competition should be a measure of where you need to go with your training. If you do your homework, the rest will take care of itself.”

It’s also a struggle to set and keep realistic goals when you might share a barn aisle with others who appear to be at the same stage but progress more quickly. Steinberg combats this struggle by keeping an open dialogue with his students about their goals and frustrations.

“It’s tough to get away from the mentality of, ‘I did first level last year, I should do second level this year,’ ” he said. “That’s tough for someone who’s not riding 10 horses a day.

You run into horses that take a little longer to learn something. You have to keep everyone down to earth so that they know it’s all right to sit at the same level for a yearor two.

“It’s hard to see your friend go and do a test and get a 70 percent when you feel you’re working just as hard and doing a 60 percent—maybe she can afford a more competitive horse,” he continued. “That hits amateurs a little harder than others, and you need to keep it all above board.”