[00:00:00] If you train, compete, or teach dog agility, you're in the right place. Hey there, I'm Megan Foster, creator of Fostering Excellence and Agility. Join me as I share key insights on all things related to dog agility and help find your team's path to excellence and unlock your best year yet. Let's get started.
Hey there, this is episode 44. What to do with your training plans when your access to agility is limited. Today, I'm going to give you some simple tips about getting creative when something like the weather or your class or rental situation. is putting a damper on your current hopes for your training plans.
Let's first talk about the weather. While I do plan my training kind of [00:01:00] around my weather app, I also live in a more mild climate. So my winters aren't as wintry and my summers aren't as summery. Therefore, I am not as harshly impacted by the weather as a lot of people are in the world. However, if I do So if I think that I'm going to be missing an agility session, I just pencil in a, an additional fitness workout or conditioning session for myself and for my dogs.
I can also focus on essential skills and foundation skills very easily in my living room. So if I'm stuck indoors. And I can't make it to the agility field or make it to a rental. There's still plenty of things that I can work on to keep just those core skills very sharp. And of course keep us in good shape for when [00:02:00] we can go back to the agility ring.
Ultimately, there's not a whole lot that we can do about the winter, but I do keep a running list of things that I can do indoors and, you know, even studying agility is a okay with me.
We can study. Agility by researching course maps that are designed by judges that we're going to see at upcoming competitions. We can work on our mindset skills and our visualization skills. So even if we're stuck inside and can't access those big courses that we would like to be running, we can still really work on some vivid visualizations and recalling.
Good runs that you've had in the past so that you can maintain, you know, what it feels like in your body and in your head [00:03:00] to have good runs. So don't discount the winter months for making some really big gains in the mindset department.
But let's move on to how to prioritize the training that you want to get done when you're maybe limited to what is set up at a class or a rental.
Um, the first thing is to go into either situation with kind of a long list of your training priorities because sometimes the equipment that you need for one training project just isn't available and so instead of having to use your class time or rental time to come up with a new plan, you can just go to the next thing on your list and then for each of those priorities, use.
I'm going to have one to three things that I can change about [00:04:00] that training session that I might be able to apply based on what's available to me. So if I'm in a class, it probably means that I have access to different people and different dogs to add some different layers of distractions to whatever I'm trying to train.
This also means that you'll have access to some different noises. You can absolutely, you know, talk to your classmates about if they can stand in a certain place or if they can all get their phones out and turn their music on. While you're running the course, there's ways to be creative and try to make small changes to things that you're training.
So even if you can only focus on one or two things, you can make each of those reps just a little bit different. When you have a rental, obviously you pro you might not have access to people, dogs, and noise. But I still practice every now and then [00:05:00] running with my holding my phone in my hand or putting it in my pocket with my own music on.
Just as a layer of distraction that can help me prepare for bigger events where there's a lot of people, a lot of noise, a lot of cheering, and potentially loud music playing as well. When we're limited to what is set up at a rental, same thing. Have that list of priorities in different ways that you can change it really easily.
Um, even though we typically can't move the equipment, we might be able to You know, add like a barrel as a distraction or add food or toys to the distraction. So bringing your own things in to kind of add to change the environment a little bit can help with getting the most out of that training session for the rental.
And then jumping back into the class situation just a little bit, I really recommend just having a quick conversation. And I'm going to be talking to you today about how you [00:06:00] can use the class time to best support your goals and your priorities. And this is definitely going to depend on the format of the class and also You know, what the instructor has planned for that class, or if it is more of a course run through, fun match type, class setup, in which you might have a little bit more freedom to focus on some specific skills during your time that's your turn.
And if your turns aren't already timed, in this situation, you can absolutely suggest that to your instructor, that you're just given a certain amount of time to work on what you'd like to work on. In class. For both class and rentals, request a course map of what might be set up. And if you own a facility or teach classes or are in charge of putting a [00:07:00] course out there, I really, really, really encourage you.
To make that map available to your students or the people that might be renting. It is a game changer and can really make it so much easier to use your rental time or class time efficiently. I used to do this when I was teaching. My students would get the course map ahead of time. So then they were able to kind of study before class so that they didn't have to use class time looking for the numbers.
Or if they did have different. Questions or different things that they wanted to focus on, they could easily kind of take that into their own hands and come to class with their own plan that they could talk with me and make that happen for them. And then obviously for rentals, it just makes the process a lot easier.
If you know ahead of time what's gonna be in the ring for you to use.
[00:08:00] Hopefully some of these tips are able to help you plan your training a little bit more easily in the winter months or when you can only access class or rental situations. Before I end this episode, I had a question from a fan of fostering excellence that I wanted to The question is, how do you know if a course map is in your pay grade or not?
This is a fantastic question and mostly it's a feeling. I really stand by listening to your gut or listening to those voices in your head and let them coach you a little bit. So if you think your dog will get it wrong, or you think you will get it wrong. You're probably right and this is the wrong question to ask your team.
So if you're looking at a course map and you have a [00:09:00] lot of question marks over your head or an uneasy feeling about more than one of the sequences, I would say that this course map is above your pay grade. It doesn't mean that you can't set it up and train it in the pieces that it takes to make your team successful and focus on adding the skills it takes for you to get around that course clean.
But it is probably not appropriate for a clear, round training course for your team. And if you're seeing it in competition, that might be a really good opportunity To use a four exhibition or not for competition, opportunity to go in and train some skills that you've been working on or pick out a piece of that course reward you, you and your dog, , and, you know, have a, a good experience with success rather than muddle, muddying along and trying to get through with skills that you don't quite have [00:10:00] yet.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, I really appreciate some feedback. You can leave me a review, engage on social media, or share this with a friend. I hope you'll be back to listen to my next episode. In the meantime, you can find all of my offers on my website, fxagility. com. Happy training.
