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c h r o n o f h o r s e . c o m ja n ua r y/ f e b r ua r y 2 015 37 competition, you ought to be confident in your ability to take your schooling at home up to the level above that as well. ☐ Have I set clear expectations? "Deciding what you want before you start the competition is an important habit to develop," O'Connor advises. Hoping to "do your best" every time you enter the ring is a given. But it's much more constructive to set quantita- tive, defined objectives, and you can't do that in the heat of the moment or retroactively. "let's say i expect that i am going to get a dressage score of 70 percent," o'Connor says. "i expect that on a good day i will be within 20 seconds of the time on cross-country. "But you have to decide that before you get into the start box, and not after," he continues. "at gives you the ability to accurately judge your performance." In The Transition if you've confidently checked off all three boxes, you'll be well equipped for a step up. But sometimes things don't go to plan, accidents happen, or you realize that despite your best efforts, you just made the wrong call. Everybody makes mistakes, so when your time comes, you need to be mentally equipped. o'Connor tells his students to approach setbacks in two phases: first assessment, then development. "e assessment part is the hardest part of the equation," o'Connor says. "once you identify an issue, then you've got ways to work through it. But a lot of people, and this includes professionals all the way down the levels, have trouble assessing the true problem." ese questions can help: Was it a training issue? "if you have the horse capable of jumping the fences, any failures that happen are usually a level of communication or a lack of understanding the question," o'Connor explains. "if you can recog- nize that moment, you can set that process up or a similar exercise at home. "for example, if you have a horse that continu- ally jumps from left to right or isn't straight on the flatwork, at some point you're going to end up being given a situation [in competition] where you've got a table turning left to a right-handed corner. [e hole in your training] will show up at that moment." "so the rider must recognize what the mistake was, and you might need someone to help you with that," o'Connor advises. "it's really important." Was it a confidence issue? we've already established that the rider's confidence should be solid, but some problems can still be fear-based on the horse's part. "for example, 'my horse doesn't like water or ditches,' " o'Connor says. ese problems can often be solved through patient addi- tional schooling of those elements, but sometimes a rider will have to acknowledge the alternative.

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