There’s a statistic floating around out there in the world that the majority of people who made New Years resolutions will have failed or given them up by February. We don’t want that to be you! We’re two-thirds through January and many of us could use a little burst of inspiration during one of the darkest and coldest months of the year.
These three podcast episodes are a few of the most inspirational ones we’ve listened to so far this year. Give them a listen, then get going on those goals!
Sam Watson and Horseware Ardagh Highlight at WEG. Photo by Leslie Threlkeld.
EquiRatings Eventing Podcast — New Year, New Targets | Aired Jan 1, 2020
If you’re looking for a podcast episode specific to goal setting then this one is the most classic of bunch that we’ve gathered; it could even be construed as a bit cliche this time of year, as Sam Watson readily points out to host Diarm Byrne, his EquiRatings co-founder. However, this is truly no run-of-mill ‘New Year, New You’ podcast.
Being an eventing podcast, this goat setting discussion is directly applicable to this sport. Not only that, but Sam grants us an absolutely fascinating look into how he went from considering a retirement from upper-level competition earlier this decade to completely changing his training methods and becoming a key member of the WEG 2018 silver medal-winning Irish Team. It’s really a fantastic and through-provoking story
From there Sam and Diarm go on to discuss measuring your progress via their 6RA and Zone Analysis tools which, yes, they utilize in their work with Federations and High Performance squads, but are just as important tools for an amateur rider looking improve as well.
Quotable: “One of the first parts of what we have used in our tagline across 2019, which is ‘Measure, Improve, Repeat’. One of the things for people who are starting the year now is this concept of measure. The beginning of a journey or a process of improvement … whether it’s sporting or whether it’s business, measuring and understanding where you are now is that really key, crucial first step to improvement. You’ve got to know where you are now.” — Diarm
Jenni Autry and Imperial Striker. Photo by Xpress Foto.
Major League Eventing Podcast — Jenni Autry: Get to know the USEF Managing Director of Eventing | Aired Jan 8, 2020
We’re all familiar with our former Eventing Nation Managing Editor turned USEF Managing Director of Eventing, Jenni Autry, but we’re not just featuring this podcast episode because we love her (though we do!) Jenni is someone who has hustled hard for many years, has plenty to show for it, and her story will fuel you to keep chipping away at your own hopes and dreams.
The Major League Eventing Podcast hosts Karen and Rob Bowersox interview a new eventer each week and in this episode we hear Jenni’s backstory including how she got involved with eventing in the first place, how she pursued journalism and found herself at Eventing Nation, and finally her new position with US Eventing. Jenni sheds light on what the job of Managing Director of Eventing entails, some of the projects that she’s currently working on, including revamping and strengthening the E18 and E25 programs, and of course some insights on the upcoming Tokyo Olympics.
Quotable: “You have to always believe that someone is going to work harder than you. And then you have to prove yourself wrong by being the person who does work the hardest. I always believed that hard work creates opportunities, and that’s one hundred-percent what happened to me … I didn’t think about the things I couldn’t control, I thought about what I could control. You can control the way you treat other people. You can control your attitude. When you think less about the things you can’t control and more about the things you can control, that’s something that’s really powerful and that’s ultimately how you make a better life for yourself.” — Jenni
Photos courtesy of Gamecock Photo and EN’s Instagram.
USEA Podcast — The History of Eventing with Jim Wofford | Aired Dec 27, 2019
Jimmy Wofford was one of three Keynote speakers at the USEA Annual Convention this past December and he spoke alongside Max Corcoran and Woodge Fulton on eventing’s past, present, and future respectively. If you didn’t attend Convention, you can watch a recording of the Keynote here and read our recap here, but if you want an even deeper dive into eventing history, this podcast episode is for you.
Jimmy gives an overview of how eventing has evolved from its roots as an exercise open only to members of the military to the sport we know today. We also get a particularly interesting lesson in the evolution of cross country course design — you may be surprised to know that skinnies aren’t a new invention. It’s easy to see only the current changes happening in the sport, but we shouldn’t forget about the key transformations that eventing has undergone in the past that has brought us to where we are today.
So why is a podcast episode giving a history lesson relevant to New Year-style inspiration you ask? Because yet again, here in 2020, we find ourselves in the midst of another re-design and defining period of our beloved sport and, circling back to our EquiRating Eventing Podcast episode, it’s important to know where you’ve started in order to make progress.
Quotable: “History, properly studied, is the study of the accumulation of wisdom. And we should be as wise as we can in what we ask our horses to do, how we care for them, how we train them, how we equip them, and we have a great deal of history now to rely on. There’s a great deal of trial and error involved in history and that means if we study the history we no longer make so many errors.” — Jimmy.
Now that you’ve gotten a crash course in eventing history and you know where you come from, get out there and create the future.
Have you listened to any other motivating podcasts recently? Let us know in comments, and Go Eventing!
