Sue Franks Feel To Ride: Recent Episodes
Sue Franks
Most riders would like to have or build a connection with their horse. However, with current time constraints or lack of confidence, sometimes we need strategies to help grow that partnership and connection with your horse. If you are looking for ideas, guidance and encouragement on ways to build your partnership come join Sue Franks. Sue has been training for the last 42 years across multiple disciplines. Tune in weekly and get started on your journey.
Sorry for the delay!
Today's podcast is about how to ride a 20m circle.
What bend you want?
how the horse should travel.
And so much more!
This podcast is all about how to ride the two barrels!
Braking down the steps on how to ride this maneuver and also you will find out what the judges look for when competing.
Today's podcast is about courage.
how do you know if you are courageous? you are courageous if you are scared to do something and yet you still do it.
Being Courageous is doing something that makes you uncomfortable.
forms of courage included; you may have mettle, resolution, spirit, tenacity and resilience. they are all forms of courage.
thank you for listening. stay tuned for next weeks pod cast.
Welcome, today's podcast is all about patience.
How to cope and be patience not only with your pony But yourself!
Today's podcast is about riding a straight line.
I know it sounds easy... but it really isn't.
Tune in and discover how to improve your dressage test's centerline score!
Today's Podcast is all about Working Equitation, what the sport is and what to expect at your first competition.
Today's podcast is about dealing with frustration, frustration when riding, competing or just having fun.
Frustration is common. Horse riders tend to be perfectionists; however, perfection is not possible when riding horses. What is possible is excellence.
When you aim for perfection, you won't meet your expectations, and you will get frustrated probably more at yourself than your pony. Riding is a sport where you are dealing with not just yourself, but you need to make your body do what you want it to ride in a correct function to help your horse. But you're not just dealing with that. You are on a living, breathing animal who has its own point of view.
this can create a few issues or problems.
a lot of the time, frustration is caused by a lack of knowledge. when you get frustrated, it creates tension in your body. This slows down your progress and will get in your way. this frustration will transfer to your pony, and then your pony gets frustrated.
how do we get rid of our frustration, because quickly frustration becomes anger?
If you find yourself getting frustrated, try some of the following.
Take time out. Drop the reins on his neck and take him on a walk. Let everything settle down.
Hop off him. tie him up with some hay and have a drink.
Practice some breathing. 4 square breathing works for me. (in for 4, hold for 4, out for 4, hold for 4 and repeat)
Don't forget to adjust your attitude when you are frustrated. Your attitude is everything when it comes to success.
To adjust your attitude and celebrate your little victories! Let the horse know that you are happy with him.
Stay emotionally calm and quiet. Don't get too emotionally involved. Remember not my circus, not my monkey.
When we take our horse out in public and lose our beautiful quiet horse, this can be extremely frustrating, if you have done the work at home bring that back and give him something he knows. get his attention back to you.
We can also take things personally because it's your pony and you love them, don't let your judgement be clouded. you're doing a job training your horse.
Thank you for listening tune in for the next one!
Hi Everyone this is the next podcast, and it will help walk you through your first test in western dressage!
To start, let's learn the distance between our letters; from the end, its 6m,12m,12m,12m,12m,6m. This will help you work out where to place your circles; you need to know your distances to hit your markers and help your score. Remember the arena is 60m by 20m.
At the top of the arena, there will be two people a judge and a scribe. Before you start your test you will present yourself to the judge, they will ask your name and/or your horses name or you tell them your name and your horses name. For example, good morning, my name is Sue Franks and this is Smart Nu Release. After introducing yourself, the judge will wish you luck. Now, remember that sometimes they might not be finished writing the comment for the person before you. This is a great opportunity to ride around the arena and get your horse settled and maybe even settle your own nerves a bit.
Once you speak with the judge you will ride off, and the judge will ring a bell, this is nothing to panic about it just means you have 60 seconds to enter the arena. When you are ready, you will enter at A.
Even if you know and learnt your test, you may have a caller. Your caller is an important person; they help you! they will call clearly, and with precision, you also want them to call before the movement. Which sometimes means they will call 2 movements ahead. Remember the Rule Book states that the caller isn't responsible for your test. And because your caller is human, sometimes they will make mistakes, which you just need to let go of, as you should know your test. Just smile and continue. no matter how the test went, always thank your caller, they do their best.
When you ride you may make mistakes this is called an error in course, and the judge will ring the bell. When the bell is rung, you must stop and go up to the judge. They will then tell you where you went wrong and where to start again. now if you make an error don't give up! you only lost 2 points.
when you enter you may halt and solute, try to keep your horse straight on the centre line. By staying straight, it will make a good first impression. You will also want to drive into the Halt to make it square. solute and continue with the test. to create a good centre line, work out where to enter from. On A or slightly before, this will all vary depending on the size of your horse and how much control you have over the shoulder.
after you finish your test you go down the center line again and solute indicating the end of your test. Once compleated, you will walk out on a loose rein. Don't forget to wait before walking off. thank your caller as you leave!
Thank you for listening stay tuned for the next one.
This Podcast will talk about confidence, what it is, how we can build it and how our mindset affects our confidence.
Outline of the podcast
Ride with someone who rides better than you, someone with more confidence than you.
There are different types of confidence.
1. inessential confidence; this is groundless arrogance. This is when you think you are better than you are for no reason. This can harm your riding and kill your joy of riding.
2. fake it till you make it; when you have the ability but something has changed (e.g. sport, off day for you and your pony), it's good to have as long as you don't rely on it.
3. confidence comes from experience; this comes from repetition confidence comes from doing. Do what you are scared to do. Rely on yourself and build your skills and toolbox.
4. motivational confidence; this is mastering our skill set and working on yourself. Putting in the hard work, it takes to build and grow your skills. You don't have to be a super talent; if you put the hard work in, you will beat talent that doesn't work hard.
5. Self-confidence is the confidence we all want, but it's one step at a time; it comes only through hard work and not overestimating yourself, your pony, or your competition.
A tip to help you build your confidence is to keep a diary, write what happened, and write something positive.
Today's podcast is about starting in Western dressage and the things you need to know to start.
The pros of the sport, what you should wear, saddlery, about the arena, joining a club, the camaraderie it provides, the type of horse you should be using and the ease of sliding into this sport
If you’re interested in Western dressage or you know someone interested in trying this sport, this is the podcast to get you started.
Stay tuned for next week's Podcast.
This podcast is the first. It will tell you a little about my history within the horse world, what this channel will be about, and what you can expect from future podcasts. Thank you for listening, and hope you enjoy it.
The following is a written version of the podcast.
Hi, my name is Sue Franks, and I’m a riding coach the name of my business is Sue Franks Feel To Ride, so this is the first introduction to my podcast. What will my podcast cover? My podcast is gonna be about mindset, building our resilience with riders so that we can continue with our joy of riding, watching what we think about, how to overcome difficulties in our riding, our fear, some horsemanship, also interviews I would love to interview was people in the horse world I am in. as you know I do and I have done different sports, and it's interesting to see how people in other sports cope with their challenges and get through, and we can always take these challenges and use them in our current discipline.
So what we need to do now probably is let you know a little bit more about me, so you understand who I am. As I said earlier, I’m Sue Franks, a riding coach; I teach riding nearly every day of the week. Occasionally, I have a day off. I do clinics on weekends; when I’m not teaching riding or doing clinics, I’m competing and showing, and if I am fortunate enough, I get to ride with another coach and increase my knowledge because, as we all know, with horses, we don’t stop learning, which is what makes it so exciting.
Now my history; I started as a pony clubber as most of us do in Australia and I loved to pony club with a passion that was the only way my mother could punish me was by stopping me from going to pony club with as nothing else worked I went from pony club to riding hacks and dressage horses and then moved on to Rodeo. That was mostly because my husband went there, and it was easier to get money at rodeos from my riding than it was with hack and dressage and I just like riding. I went from rodeos when I had a horse I couldn’t handle or work with that needed to learn more, so I found myself an excellent trainer who helped me understand more about horses. I suppose you could call it psychology, how to work with them correctly.
From that, I moved into western performance; I don’t do it now. It was not a first love but it helped me a lot and it helped clean up some of my riding and made me more aware of what was out there in the world with horses. During this time, I won my first National Championship in western performance doing Trail particularly, then moved from there to raining.
Raining is part of western performance, a sport I still hold very dear to my heart and had a lot of success in. While competing in raining, I won several more national and state championships and adored it and the people within the sport.
From there, I’ve moved on to western dressage and working equitation. I still compete in both, and sitting out in one of my paddocks is a baby Reiner that’s not yet ready to be started. So I have not quit raining either; I just have to work out how to fit everything in.
Currently, the podcast is mostly about mindset, how we cope, which covers all sports, so there is a podcast lined up for resilience. How do we get through? How to pushed through? There will be one about how we cope with fear and confidence issues. Not just that, there will also be some horsemanship tips. I also want to include interviews of people within the field that I am currently in and have been in because when we talk to people within different horse fields, we find out different ways that they’ve learnt to cope, move forward and either reclaim the joy in the competition and just they’re general riding, as we all go through down times in our riding we just need to find something to pick us up.
I also need to mention my sponsors. I do have sponsors, and they will b