I didn’t have specific New Year’s goals or resolutions for 2020, just a global commitment to make small changes that might make a big difference in my life. After my first ride of the year I decided to keep an online riding diary in Apple notes as one of my small changes. Very simple, date, what we did, the good and the bad, usually less than 5-6 lines. And I did it all year long. I found myself starting looking at the previous 1-2 entries before every ride and found it to be super useful for reminders of DO THIS and DON’T DO THAT. Yesterday, I went a step further and read through the diary from January through December. I saw some real patterns that I wasn’t consciously aware of like finding a good exercise or position reminder and then having it waft off into the distance because I forgot it. Pole work, I am looking at you.
It was interesting to see my progression from collectibility inside, to pole work outside, to struggling to put it all together in the dressage court. Then buying a a Pivo and having a few come to Jesus moments about sitting up, getting the poll high, then rediscovering Centered Riding, half-halts, and that working gaits need stretch within them, alignment leads to the easy stretch, which leads to better swingy working gaits, which leads to better collectibility. Got that?
I definitely found a riding diary to be super helpful and will continue the habit with a few changes. First of all I will keep looking back a couple of rides before every new ride but I will also look back a couple of months every now and again to see the bigger arc and also for things that slipped the net. I’m going to change the format slightly as well. Still keeping it online and short but using some of the prompts in Dressage Naturally’s Happy Athlete Progress Journal (Christmas gift)that were interesting (listen to a podcast about goal setting and some of the prompts in the journal HERE).
Do you keep a riding diary? What format and what have you found to be most helpful?
i need to do that. Or maybe step it up a little and be moee consistant
ReplyDeleteI've found it a lot easier online. I think because I am on my iPad all the time so there is no excuse not to write a couple of lines.
DeleteI used to do this a long time ago when I was competing more with Katman. One of the other bloggers (BEC) used to do it with her barrel horses and a few of the things she found she needed to do- I could relate it to driving and used it to improve in our sport as well. She kept a notebook in her trailer- I used a small legal pad as well as the driving blog. Right now? I have No clue where said legal pad is. Zero. Looks like its time to hit the store for a fun new binder and paper for one I can keep in the tack room. Where better to be able to glance thru pre-ride/drive and add to as soon as we're done....
ReplyDeleteThat's interesting about reading back thru it for the year and noticing the patterns. It could certainly help. I bet we probably all do some form of patterns of doing these exercises or methods for a bit before slowly fading away from them- because we may expect it to be working and our riding has changed enough that we think it is now just part of our daily routine and we no longer have to go back and do this anymore? I know I have had riding habits from looong ago, come back up in my driving. I thought I fixed that and moved on. WTH hands??? Lol
Yeah, I found the looking back over the year really interesting and how bad habits persisted or good training patterns disappeared. Interesting stuff!
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