[00:00:00] Hey there. If you're an agility nerd, you're in the right place. You're listening to fostering excellence in agility. I'm Megan, your resident agility competitor, coach, and mentor. And this podcast is where I break down all things agility and guide you on your path to excellence. Are you ready? Let's go.
Today I want to talk about having expectations of a clear round or expectations of a qualifying score. So this episode is going to be about mindset and how we're preparing for competition and what data we're using and how to use the data to help us progress forward toward our goals. [00:01:00] It is not a secret that we need clear rounds and qualifying scores in order to work our way up the agility ladder.
However, this is an immediate gratification seeking thing, right? We want the cues, we want the clear rounds so that we can have some immediate gratification for all of our hard work. But I am here to let you know that agility is a long game.
It is a long game sport. It is not just about the partnership that you have right now. It is about all of the partnerships you will have throughout your time in this sport. You are in it for the long run when you start agility. And I think that that is the first thing that we have to accept here, is that it is a delayed gratification sport that something we want right now [00:02:00] might not come.
for any unknown amount of time. We might also get a taste of that instant gratification and that outcome that we're seeking and then not taste it again for a while. We might be so close to getting it again. That it's almost painful when we don't. But also isn't that what keeps us coming back for more?
The new puzzle, the new thing to figure out, the new challenge, the new dog. So while it is a long game, we have to train ourselves to look for the gratification that comes from the process of getting towards our goals.
So let's dive in to how we gain gratification from the process instead of the outcome. If we [00:03:00] can't focus on paper results, What should we be paying attention to? Personally, my view of this game is about how well I can predict my dog's line, and the better I can predict my dog's line, the better I can build a handling strategy around that.
And then, if I can execute that strategy, my run will go very closely to my predictions that I made during my walkthrough. So I like to focus on the percentage that my run went according to plan and this comes out Brilliantly because it doesn't hang on. Did you run clean or not?
It doesn't Matter if your dog knocks a bar or misses a contact It doesn't matter if there was one refusal or they went off course because it's only A small percentage [00:04:00] of your run and you can look at your run as, you know, one fault you still on 20 obstacles fine. It was still 95 percent to plan or if it was a knocked bar.
It didn't even impact your plan at all. You still ran 100 percent according to your plan. So looking at my runs as how much they went according to my plan gives me a way to really easily find the things that went really well, find those positives, and also gives me a way to see if there's any patterns in what keeps failing to plan.
The other half about learning to enjoy the process is about digging deep into how you are preparing to run clean. How do you go about running [00:05:00] courses and training? If you're running courses in Large chunks where there's often a mistake and you're having to reset for that mistake and then try again.
That's not a really effective route into practicing for more clear rounds. So a few strategies that I have for more effective coursework training comes down to picking courses that are within your skill set. And then aiming for clear rounds on those. So sometimes I may be training on things that are easier than what I'm actually capable of so that I can practice a clear round from start to finish without having to stop, fix anything, or troubleshoot anything.
I can just confidently run the course and gain some experience in what that feels like. If I'm not able to [00:06:00] Produce clear rounds in training, it's gonna be a lot harder to produce clear rounds in competition. When the distractions are up, the nerves are up, the arousal is up. Another way to get in some more effective coursework training, especially if you don't have control over what's set up, is to go about the course in a way that I refer to as chunking.
So, if the course I feel like I have all of the skills for, but putting all of those skills together without stopping feels difficult, I'm going to aim for chunking. And that means I might choose to split up a 20 obstacle course into sections of 5 obstacles. So, I'm going to walk the whole course. But then when I go to get my dog, I'm going to run 1 5, quickly reward,
then I'm [00:07:00] going to run 6 10, quickly reward, 11 15, quickly reward, and 16 20, and then reward at the end again. And if that goes really well, if all of those pieces of the course went cleanly, if I have time to try again, I might try to do this in three sections of six or seven obstacles, or two sections of ten obstacles.
So that over time, I'm building up my ability to run longer pieces of difficult coursework cleanly and without stopping. The flip side of that is that if any of my chunks aren't clean, I can pivot the training session, troubleshoot anything that needs to be solved. Make any adjustments, and then try that same setup again.
So if I got to the point where I was doing [00:08:00] 10 obstacles and 10 obstacles, but I had a mistake in my second set of 10 obstacles, I'm going to do whatever troubleshooting, thinking about it, making my adjustments, reinforce any good habits that I might need, and then I'm going to try the 10 and 10 again.
This is probably going to take up most of my training time, so that's where I'm going to make my note. So that the next course that I try chunking on, I'm going to start with 10 and 10. And if that goes clean, I can do the whole thing. Or I can do 15 and 5. There's an unlimited amount of ways to split things down so that we are able to practice running clean, even if it's in pieces, rather than starting at one, seeing how it goes, and then having to kind of work through it the entire training session.
There's a time and a place for breaking things down and just focusing on training and reinforcing good [00:09:00] habits. That's absolutely necessary, especially if we are competing frequently, but you also have to put in the time to practice running clean so that you know what it feels like and you know what it takes to replicate in competition.
Now let's talk about the mindset of being able to move on when a run didn't quite go how you expected it to go. I talked about a couple of episodes back about the routines and things that I use to stay focused on giving myself a good experience at trials, and that is absolutely going to help you improve your ability to move on from one run to the next.
So even if that previous run did not result in a clear round or that almighty cue on paper, [00:10:00] you can break that down and see where there was improvement. Where there was a new skill that you've been working on, it showed up and it held up. Um, even if it didn't hold up, you were brave enough to try it.
So you get money in that mindset bank account. But also how you move on from If you have a small disappointment or even a bigger disappointment and not bring that into your next run, we can look at how do you do that in real life?
How do you decide to move on from something disappointing and then continue with the next thing in your day? How do you do this in training sessions? If you had a less than stellar training session, is the rest of your day ruined or do you have a strategy already? That you're able to generalize to competition as well.
Because one thing is for sure is I don't want to take any sort of baggage [00:11:00] from one run into the next run. So that I can be 100 percent for, for myself and for my dog in every run. But also so that I don't create a problem through any strange superstitions that could be brewing when I take baggage from one run into the next.
So my, my own process, uh, after every run is to walk around, cooling myself down, cooling my dog down, and I'm just talking to my dog about the run. We talk about what went well, what I did well, what she did well, what we did well together as a team. I also replay any mistakes, but I reframe them in a way that corrects the mistake.
So If I was late for a front cross that did or didn't cause an actual fault, I will start to see that sequence again in my head with [00:12:00] visualization, but I'm rewriting it. So I'm saying, next time I will start my front cross as she's exiting the previous obstacle, rotate before she takes off, and get out of her way before she lands.
That way, I'm seeing that part of the course done correctly, and I'm talking about doing that skill correctly. Obviously, this only works if you know what you need to do differently next time. Because if I don't, I need to add that to my homework list of something that I'm looking for a solution to. And that either means I need to take it back to my coaches and my mentors, or do some digging into my previous training sessions and lessons that I've already been doing.
To try and figure out, okay, how do I do this better next time? And I just talk all that out with my dog as we're walking around. She's happy to listen to me. She's getting her cool down walk. She's getting some treats. She's maybe getting the toy toss for her. [00:13:00] Everything's fine, and saying it out loud, personally, helps me remember these things.
So that I can jot down some notes at the end of the day. And, and, when I'm reviewing my video later, I don't have all of these feelings come up again, because I've already Put them all out there, box them all up, and put them away, and moved on to the next run. If watching your videos does bring up all these feelings again, I highly recommend waiting until the end of your trial weekend to look at those videos again.
You don't need to deal with any sort of feelings that come up associated with that run, at all, really. And you certainly don't need to rehash that before the end of the trial. You just need to look at them again and go over your notes in order to plan your next training session. But you don't need to take that with you into the next run.
Finally, it is [00:14:00] absolutely okay to be disappointed. If we weren't, this probably wouldn't be all that important to us and we wouldn't be putting so much effort into it. Or spending all of our money on it. Or waking up at crazy times and going to bed really late because of it. Alright, so it's absolutely okay to have these feelings.
It's how we process them and react to them that makes or breaks our mental game and our ability to progress towards our goals. So I'm always going back over the, the strengths list. That is always a good thing. It gives you good feelings. It reminds you that you are working hard and you are making improvements.
I always love having a highlight reel or two. Saved in my phone or the links readily available to YouTube so that I can watch My dog and I work together really well. That's super helpful Especially after a bad day of agility where you're [00:15:00] feeling like wow, I really can't get around any course
and my last piece of advice is to accept that you always have more to learn, because again, agility is the long game. If we could just know it all. That would be kind of boring and we wouldn't have mentors and coaches to look up to because they would know it all and they would have shared it all with us already and that would be it.
And that would be fairly boring. But the huge piece of agility that is so exciting is that it continues to change and grow and evolve. And it's almost like a different sport with each dog that we bring up in it. So there's always going to be more for you to learn. Which means that, again, instant gratification isn't always going to be available.
So the sooner we accept that and get on board with that [00:16:00] and start to enjoy the process, all of this becomes a lot easier.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, there are several ways you can leave me positive reinforcement. One, leave me a five star review. Two, share with your fellow agility nerds or three, share your thoughts with me on social media. Be sure to follow at FX agility on Facebook or Instagram.
