Southern Equine Connection

OK, so you’ve decided to get someone to help you with your horse showing or riding. But now have to decide if you need a trainer or a coach. When it comes to showing horses these two things can be very different. Do you need someone to work with your horse or work with you, or both?

Here are some things to consider while you decide.

Do you need someone to train your horse and teach you to ride?

Then you will need a trainer to work with you both. Most trainers are both, trainer and coach, they train horses but they also train riders. Your horse will probably live at the trainer’s barn so he/she can work with the horse daily.

Coaches on the other hand normally work with the rider only, teaching you to ride properly so as to get the desired result from your horse. Some coaches will ride your horse if necessary but as a rule they work from the ground teaching the rider. If you are going to work with a coach you will need to have a horse that is fairly well trained already.

What discipline are you interested in?

You will have to decide which discipline you want to ride and find a trainer or coach that does that form of riding. If you don’t have a horse yet you need to determine what you want to do with the horse and buy the breed or type that will do what you want. You don’t want to buy a horse and then decide you want to do something that your new horse is not suited for.

There are so many riding disciplines it can take some time to determine which interests you the most. The internet is a great source of information to help in your search for riding facilities.

You have to determine what you and your horse need, then you can decide if you need to look for a coach or a trainer.

Once you have decided on a possible trainer or coach you need to spend some time with the person. This is someone you will potentially spend a lot of time with, so it needs to be someone you can get along with, someone you can talk open and honestly with about your expectations. Be sure you are comfortable with this person and your personalities are compatible.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 12th, 2009 at 1:08 pm and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.