Austin Eventing

“We like to think of our champions and idols as superheroes who were born different from us. We don’t like to think of them as relatively ordinary people who made themselves extraordinary.” ― Carol S. Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success I had few thoughts while driving to the barn today, listening to the book this quote is from. A excellent trainer I know recommended this book to me and I wanted to share a few thoughts it has helped catalyze. As our Austin Eve

Mother Nature decided we needed a break from our regularly scheduled Weds group jump lessons, so we were rained out. In lieu of lessons, we decided to offer in-house lectures here at Manor Equestrian Center. Daniel Bedoya, Sr accepted my invitation to join me for the lecture. Daniel is the owner of the barn that Austin Eventing operates out of and if you don't know much of his history, check this out: http://www.horsegazette.com/Monthly_Features/Aug-2003/Bedoya-index.htm

Thank you to Austin Eventer Lorrie A. for her recap of this weekend! Like most horse shows, this one started before dawn, but with fog thicker than a death shroud, and a GPS with a mind of its own, the universe seem to be saying, “How badly do you want it?” I guess the universe doesn’t get that eventers are a determined lot because the team of Austin Eventing pushed on to Coyote Springs, although we arrived with only ten minutes to spare for the first rider’s dressage warm up

It’s pretty simple. As Eventers, we have often joked about being able to bubble wrap ourselves and our horses. In our on-going pursuit of raising the safety bar in our sport, though we have not fully committed to the above outfit, we are continually taking huge strides to protect our riders and teammates. Personally, I would love to see this kid’s outfit out there on XC, but then my students would lose my attention completely! Who could stop themselves from popping all of t

’ve been meaning to write this for a minute. I want to talk about fitness. Both for riders and horses. As you know, I recently came back from California where I spent a considerable amount of time learning how to properly condition endurance horses. Us Eventers tend to take pride in fitness levels of our horses (with good reason) but it seems some folks don’t give their own fitness levels as detailed attention. “You are either helping you horse, our hurting your horse. Ge

We’ve chatted a little about the need for physical conditioning of both horse and human in this sport. Another aspect of being successful in Eventing is the mental combat we enlist in when we put our foot in the stirrup. The emotional draw to this sport is unwavering for most of us. Our unequivocal partnership with our partner and horse, our support and growth from our coach, and our sense of belonging from our fellow teammates all pile together to create an empathic jour

As I mentioned in the last post about human conditioning, I was lucky to have spent 6 months in Sunny California helping condition sport horses, including endurance horses. As an Eventer, we spend a lot of time talking about conditioning our horses. Most of us throw around the term “interval training” on a regular basis but how many of us know why exactly we use interval training?? I mean, most of us have just accepted the golden words of Senor Jimmy Wofford and just DO int