Everything Horses and Livestock® Magazine February 2017 Vol 2 Issue 1

Everything Horses and Livestock Magazine

you will want to incorporate intermediate goals into your training cycles as well as short-term goals in your daily and weekly activities. Think of goal setting like climbing a mountain. Your ultimate goal is to reach the summit; but to reach it you must break the climb into segments (intermedi-

3. Goals are not just for your shooting events. It is just as important to include goals in you and your equine partners training. Benchmark goals can help you monitor your progress on a regular basis, and daily or weekly training goals can help you stay focused on both you and your horses training ob- jectives, especially when life sometimes makes it difficult to see the forest for the trees. 4. Create specific goals. Specific goals, rather than vague ones, will provide clarity to your training program. Rather than saying, I want to improve my shooting skills (vague), specify, I want to move to the next class or level in mounted shooting this season (specific). 5. Specific goals need also to be measureable. If you want to move to the next class or level in mounted shooting, then you have a way to measure that goal – by gaining individual wins at shooting events. Measureable goals often involve time tar- gets, e.g. I want to shoot ten out of ten targets. 6. Speak your goals with a positive tongue. Rather than saying, I cannot miss any balloons today (neg- ative), state, I will shoot each balloon one at a time, as each one comes to me (positive). 7. Set goals that you have control over. This means focusing more on performance and process goals than outcome goals. Outcome goals have to do with placement in the overall results, performance goals have to do with achieving a certain number of popped balloons for example, and process goals Continued on Page 41

ate goals) and then divide those segments into in- dividual steps (short-term goals). The feedback you gain along the way will allow you to readjust your short-term and intermediate goals to stay on course for your long-term goals.

21

EHALmagazine.com | February 2017 | © Everything Horses and Livestock