Obviously every rider who gets into competition wants to become the best, if it is in dressage, jumping or eventing. Is every rider a potential super star? Or is there some other quality, something else that only the favoured few are born with? Recent studies on successful folks give powerful pointers that successful riders do share some common qualities that lesser people do not possess.

1. Determination

Successful riders practice, practice some more and than push themselves to the edge by practicing some more. If you need to get to the very top of whatever field you are engaged in, your commit all of your soul, your energy and your time to taking yourself up the ladder of talent, one rung at a time. If you’d like to be a top rider, you need to eat, drink, breathe and live riding: nothing else should be permitted to divert your attention all through the days, the weeks, the months and the years. You should train under the supervision of a recognized expert who is constantly perfecting your methodologies. He or she should be someone of exemplary eye for detail and an overriding passion for all things equine.

2. Physical and Fitness and Psychological Alertness

You cannot truly be the best horseman unless you’re the fittest. Only the mediocre believe that saddling up a good fit horse and riding is all that it takes. A decent fit horse needs a good fit rider. The top riders at the Olympic Games and other events put themselves through the grind also: they are regulars at gyms, swimming, jogging, something or the other that when pursued rigorously leads to peak health. Most riders at the top of the totem pole nowadays use the services of nutrition experts and fitness gurus. For themselves, apart from the pros they hire for their horses. If you’d like to give yourself an edge, begin with an effective fitness program.

3. Grit

Folks are keen on attributing reasons for success. Frequently, you will hear comments at events and competitions talking about how so and so “usually wins as he (or she) comes from a rich family who can afford the best horses and the best coaching facilities”. Etc. You won’t hear many comments about the grind the winner went through: the hours of sacrifice and toil, the hours of single-minded perseverance. Practically every single winner has overcame through reversals at some stage or the other of their life. Plenty of them actually came from modest backgrounds: they did not have loaded folks and stables of pedigreed horses. Irrespective of family and financial background, every single person at the very top got there by expending blood, sweat and tears.

If you lack the steely determination to be successful, you’ll drop out at the 1st difficulty that you run into. On the other hand, if you are absolutely single minded about doing whatever it takes to become a winner, you can do worse than begin with a definite plan of action. The core elements of your scheme should include:

1. Riding as much as feasible under the watchful eye of a high quality coach;

2. Sticking to a correct fitness programme like pilates and selective diet;

3. Persevering. Reversals are a part of life and every endeavour in life; someone “a Chinese person, I think “terribly correctly declared that failure is not falling down, failure is refusing to get up after falling.

Every time you trip and fall, get up and take the next small step. It is the first of the leftover steps to success.

Horses are Heather Toms ‘ passion and she enjoys sharing her extensive knowledge through her 100’s of articles with other horse lovers like all things about horse rugs .