Megan Foster
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[00:00:00] If you train, compete, teach, or simply love the sport of dog agility, you're in the right place. Hey there, I'm Megan Foster, creator of Fostering Excellence and Agility. Join me as we explore training, communication, handling, mindset, and all the little details that help build stronger and more confident teams both in and out of the ring.
Whether you're just getting started or working toward big competition goals, this podcast is here to support your journey with your individual teammate. Let's get started.
Hey there. Welcome back to the podcast. A few episodes back, I talked about training alone and what that looks like for me, and one of my non-negotiables is filming your training. And so I wanted to dive just a little bit deeper into why it is so important to video all of your training or as much of your training as possible and give you a few quick tips to try and make that [00:01:00] process just a little bit easier.
So first and foremost, y- your brain is not a reliable source when we're recalling things, and this is just because we so often tell stories about what happened that may not be serving us. And this can sometimes be that we are not recalling, uh, a problem that's happening, and sometimes we're recalling a problem that isn't happening, and it really just depends on the story that you hold about that specific behavior or thing that happens in agility.
And so the video is just there to check h- the story that we're telling ourselves and if maybe we should be updating that story. The video is your second set of eyes. It is catching the things that you miss in the moment. [00:02:00] This can be signs of fatigue, signs of pain, discomfort, changes in the environment.
You know, a lot of times if our dog was doing something in one way and then all of a sudden their behavior changes, we might miss the leading factor, but the video usually doesn't. So that second set of eyes, that wide view that the camera has where we are usually more focused on one specific thing in our training, it can really help us understand what happened in that training session after the fact.
And if you listen to the troubleshooting call, that's gonna be super valuable. Instead of trying to dig a hole in one of those troubleshooting steps, you can just look at the video and pinpoint the problem without really needing to do any further diagnostics [00:03:00] That second set of eyes is going to catch all of your handling stuff.
It's g- you- it will tell you if your timing is correct or not. You can't hide that from the video. It is going to tell you whether you executed correctly or not. And in my case, did I really do a blind cross or did I just front cross like I always do? Again, my brain is not a reliable source all of the time, so even if I walked a blind cross and then I went out there and I ran it with a front cross, my brain might go, "Yeah, of course you did the blind, and it went great."
But the video, you go back and you look and there it is. Megan did another front cross Criteria. Again, this is another really easy way for our brains to be unreliable on, on us, and also it can be really hard to see very specific criteria when you're running. [00:04:00] This is something that I've really had to adjust to in the last couple of years since needing to wear glasses.
I don't see the running contact hits in quite the same way when I'm also running. And I've pretty much have had to learn that whatever I see in my brain, it's actually a little bit higher, the hit is a little bit worse than what my brain recalls, which is really just an interesting sort of processing situation happening between my eyes and my glasses frames and my brain and all of that, and maybe it will continue to improve.
But it is really important that I don't just go with the information that my eyes gave my brain, and then my brain gave the rest of my brain, right? So it's very important that I have the video to double-check what I see, and that [00:05:00] also allows me to calibrate within myself and go, "Okay, well, if I see it here, it's actually the hit was a little bit higher, or the hit was a little bit lower, or if I think she hit with her front feet, it might actually be her rear feet," things like that.
So it allows me to learn and get better while my body adjusts to having glasses. The highlight reel. Your brain, if it is going to be a reliable source of information, needs evidence to support the story that you want to have about yourself, your dog, your training, your skills, your strengths, your weaknesses.
So the video allows you to collect evidence in order to tell the story that you want to tell, and that's really important The video is going to help you explain things to your agility instructor, [00:06:00] your agility coach, maybe a vet med professional so much better than you'll be able to explain it with words.
When we explain what's happening in w- in words, you can maybe see exactly what's happening in your head because you were there. But whoever you're telling it to might be coming up with an entirely different visual. When you have the video, there is no argument. What's there is in the video, and everyone can see it.
There's no changing it, and that can be really helpful when you're taking a problem to any professional you're working with, whether it be for vet med and diagnostics or just trying to improve your agility skills with your coach. Another super important thing about filming is that you can get very clear data on just how long you're training, [00:07:00] how long you're rewarding, and how long you're allowing for rest and recovery between reps I probably sound like a broken record talking about reward time and recovery time, and just training time in general, but it is really important.
And having that clear data can help us build better habits, can help us change our current habits, and really be more efficient in our training, which is always what I'm aiming for. So tips for filming. Have multiple tripods. If you are the person like me who cannot be held accountable for remembering to bring the tripod from one location to the other, from the house to the car, to the car to the training bag, to the building, b- all these places, just [00:08:00] have one in each of the places you intend to train.
Because forgetting the tripod is such a curse, and if we're trying to build a new habit of filming as much of our training as we can, then let's just remove one of these barriers. Have a tripod wherever you need a tripod Whenever you can, choose wide angle. Choose a wide angle, choose higher resolution so that if later on you want to zoom in closer, you can.
But choosing the wide angle at least guarantees you'll be in the frame. Again, it's a huge frustration and barrier to film your training and realize the most important part was just slightly out of frame. Again, because the video is catching details that we miss in the moment, that a wide angle, getting as much [00:09:00] information into the screen as possible, is going to be more beneficial, especially if you're having to do some troubleshooting after the fact or bring this to another professional who's just going to ask these questions, you know, what's happening when you aren't in the frame.
That information is going to be so useful. Stop and check whenever you're unsure. If you think you've started to drift out of camera frame, just go double-check. It's so much better to spend a few minutes being sure than to miss what you needed to see. Okay? Now let's move on to editing. Realistically, if it is for you, if you are using your videos to keep good data, to have the data when you need it, you don't need to do much editing.
Maybe the very beginning of the video and the very end of the video are not relevant because you're setting the [00:10:00] camera and moving into position, but other than that, the whole video just as it is, is fine to keep as it is If you're comfortable with editing, sure, you can get as detailed and add notes and add all those things if you want, but you don't need to If you are submitting things like online to a coach, every individual is going to have their different limits, and then you do have to work within those limits.
However, if your training sessions are around three to five minutes with foo- when you're training with food, and maybe seven to 10 if you're training with toys, that's a pretty short amount of video time, and you should be able to kinda chop off the beginning and the end and submit the [00:11:00] middle. Submit the one or two minutes that best supports your question, that best shows what you need help with.
But if you're working with me, you don't have to do any of that It's really just you can show me the one or two minutes that you have a question about. You can show me the very, uh, finely edited video where just every rep of your running dog walk is shown and nothing else. Or you can show me that entire three to five-minute session.
It really makes no difference to me. The one thing that I would probably say is universally true is that if you move the camera mid-session, you should edit that out. Um, speaking for myself, but I'm sure there are others, when the camera is moving during the session, I have to look away. I cannot watch. It does [00:12:00] make me, um, nauseous, and I'm probably not the only one.
So if there are massive changes in location, you're walking with the camera, you should edit that out. Uh, personally, I would rather everything kind of stay in normal speed. Like I said, I don't mind lengthier videos. Um, and so sometimes students will speed something up because they don't believe that it's relevant or that I need to see it, but sometimes that is the relevant piece.
And so I sort of prefer the whole thing to be at normal speed, and then I can go look for the things that I want to see and perhaps give a better answer overall. So those are my thoughts on videoing. It's so important to do so that you can have honest [00:13:00] evidence and data so that you're telling yourself the right stories
Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love for you to leave a review, share it with an agility friend, or connect with me on social media. Your support helps more handlers and teams find the podcast and be part of this community. You can also find all of my training programs, coaching, and resources at fxagility.com.
Remember, excellent agility is built one training session at a time, and every small step forward matters. Until next time, happy training
