07/08/2025
How to Use Shows as a Tool to Systematically Improve Your Program
A lot of people treat showing like the end of the road. They think of it as the big test where everything they’ve worked on either passes or fails. But the truth is, showing isn’t the finish line—it’s the laboratory. It’s the first step in peer review for your horsemanship program, the place where you discover what’s real, what’s missing, and what needs to be better if you want a complete system that works for any horse, anywhere.
When you start thinking of shows this way, they stop being about ribbons and start being about information. And if you know how to gather and use that information, you’ll systematically improve your program in a way you can’t do at home.
1. Pressure Reveals the Holes You’ve Been Ignoring
At home, you can make almost anything look good. The environment is controlled. The routine is predictable. If a horse gets nervous, you can wait it out. If something doesn’t feel right, you can avoid it.
But when you haul to a show, all that safety gets stripped away. The new environment, the long wait times, the noise, the energy of competition—it all creates pressure. And pressure has a way of showing you exactly what’s real and what’s just managed.
Maybe your horse is heavy in the face because you’ve been “holding him together” at home without realizing it. Maybe your stops fall apart because your foundation wasn’t solid enough to hold up when things got fast. Maybe your horse gets spooky because you never truly taught him how to stay connected to you in new surroundings.
That’s not failure. That’s your program talking back to you.
2. Treat Every Show as Data Collection
Most riders leave a show with either celebration or frustration. They either focus on how great it went or how terrible it felt. Both reactions miss the point.
A show is feedback, not a verdict.
Start thinking of every class as an evaluation of your training system, not just that horse on that day. After each run, ask yourself:
What held up under pressure?
What broke down?
Was the horse confused, or did he lack the physical ability to do what I asked?
Did my cues hold up, or did I have to compensate with extra effort?
Was my horse mentally present, or did he check out when things got stressful?
Write these observations down. Over time, patterns will emerge. If the same issue shows up on multiple horses, that’s not a horse problem—it’s a hole in your program.
3. Separate the Horse from the Program
One of the easiest traps to fall into is blaming the horse.
If a talented horse does well, we pat ourselves on the back. If a horse struggles, we call it a “bad fit” or a “problem horse.” But if you’re serious about developing a complete program, you have to look deeper.
A good program brings out the best in the majority of horses. Not every horse will be a superstar, but a solid method consistently produces horses that are confident, capable, and prepared to do their job. If your results depend on finding “the right horse,” you don’t have a program—you have a lottery ticket.
4. Use Shows to Build, Not Just Measure
Many riders make the mistake of thinking that training happens at home and showing is just the place to show off the finished product. But shows are a critical part of training if you use them correctly.
Every haul, every class, every new environment is a chance to teach your horse how to handle pressure. It’s a chance to test your communication and refine your timing. It’s where you confirm whether the buttons you installed at home are truly functional or just decorative.
The key is to set realistic goals for each show. Maybe the goal isn’t to win, but to have your horse walk in relaxed. Maybe it’s to improve one maneuver under pressure. Maybe it’s to see how your horse handles an environment he’s never experienced before. When you use shows this way, every outing becomes a step forward—not just for that horse, but for your entire program.
5. Adjust Your Program Based on What You Learn
Information is useless if you don’t act on it. After each show, take the data you’ve collected and adjust your program at home.
If your horses consistently struggle with focus in new environments, add exercises at home that mimic distraction and teach them to stay with you.
If your maneuvers fall apart under speed, break them down into smaller pieces and rebuild them with more clarity and balance.
If your horses get physically fatigued, evaluate your conditioning program and how you’re preparing them to handle long weekends of work.
Over time, these adjustments turn into a system that produces consistent results—not just in one horse, but in all of them.
6. Understand That the Horse Will Always Tell the Truth
You can convince other people you’ve got it all together. You can convince yourself for a while. But you can’t convince your horse.
The horse doesn’t care about your excuses, your intentions, or how good you looked last weekend. They only care about what they’ve been taught, how they’ve been developed, and how they feel under your program. And when you show them to the world—when the pressure strips everything else away—they will reflect the truth of your horsemanship for everyone to see.
The Real Win
The real win isn’t the ribbon. The real win is walking away from a show knowing you learned something that will make your entire program stronger.
When you start using shows as a tool instead of a test, you stop chasing moments of success and start building a foundation that produces good horses over and over again. And that’s when the results stop being a surprise. They become a reflection of a program that works—because the horse feels the truth, and the truth finally matches the story you’re trying to tell.
