When I first started taking riding lessons at the age of eight, my purpose was simply to spend time with horses. I’d watched every horse movie ever produced, read every horse book written, and I felt my life was incomplete without these incredible creatures in my life.
I knew it instinctively, as many of your students know it about themselves.
As time went on, I developed new goals in my equestrian life. First, it was perfecting my position in the saddle; then it was mastering complicated maneuvers, like serpentines and lateral work. Later, I developed an interest in competition.
Everyone who takes riding lessons shows up once a week for a reason. Their motivations might be simple, as mine were in the beginning, but more often they are complex combinations of different needs.
Some of the most common reasons your students want to ride include:
- Time spent outdoors;
- A unique form of exercise;
- Desire to compete;
- A way to bond with family;
- Physical therapy;
- Emotional therapy;
- Relaxation; and/or
- An opportunity to get out of the house.
Of course, there are numerous other motivations to get in the saddle, and your job as a riding instructor is to identify these motivations and goals within your students.
Why does motivation matter?
When I was working for a barn in Katy, Texas, as the only English riding instructor (with three western instructors), I encountered this problem for the very first time. One afternoon, a student of one of the other instructors came up to me and asked if she could switch to my lessons.
When I asked why, she said, “I really want to show, but my teacher doesn’t teach us anything new in our lessons. She just wants to let us ride and I need to learn.”
This was a profound moment for me, even though it cost me my job. I told the student she would need to discuss it with her instructor (who also happened to be my boss, the owner of the stable), and when she did, my boss fired me. But that’s not the point.
If you don’t know your students’ motivations, you cannot possibly develop a satisfactory riding lesson plan. You’ll wind up giving them too much of what they don’t need and not enough of what they want.
How do you learn why your students want to ride?
This might sound like a complicated question, but the answer is actually very easy:
You ask them.
Nothing gets you the answers you need like asking the right questions. If you try to discern your students’ motivations via covert methods, you are far more likely to make a mistake.
One way is to ask your students what they liked and didn’t like after every lesson. This can get tedious, however, and the shy ones will not answer honestly. A better idea is to give students an anonymous method of delivering their feedback.
Years ago, I started leaving a plain black box in the tack room with a slit cut into the top. A pad of paper next to the box allows students to write down their feedback and slip it anonymously inside. I open the box after each class to see what students have written.
You can also take polls during lessons. Ask for a show of hands from every rider who wants to compete. Then ask for the hands of students who are interested in “just riding.” You can use this polling technique to discern any type of motivation, and it is less confrontational than asking students to put what they want into words.
You might also like:
- Should Riding Instructors Let Students Ride Outside Lessons?
- What do your students
want to learn? - Questions to Ask Your Students
- What Do Your Students
Wear to Riding Lessons? - The Number One Way to Make
Students Happy in Riding Lessons
About the Author: Laura Jane Thompson is the Chief Equestrian Officer of Riding Instructor University and the Feature writer for the horses section at Suite101. She believes that any horse business can succeed provided its owner practices smart strategy.
