World champion Jordon Briggs reflects on lessons learned throughout her barrel racing career and offers advice to all levels of aspiring barrel racers.
Growing up, I was pretty hard on myself — I still am hard on myself — but I used to have a pretty crappy attitude when I did bad. Now that I’m older, and I see people throw fits after their runs, I think back like, ‘Oh gosh, that’s what I used to look like.’ I think one of the keys to being a good competitor and horseman is constantly controlling your emotions. Don’t take losing personally. When it’s your time, it’s your time. The better attitude you can have when you’re losing, the quicker it’ll turn around to be better.
My husband, Justin, has been really good about telling me his team roping philosophies. The best one is to have short-term memory. Don’t dwell on the bad runs and carry them around with you. I still struggle with that, but I used to be really bad about anticipating my mistakes. If I hit the second barrel twice in a row, then I would anticipate the crap out of it several times before I could get over it. I dwelled on those mistakes. Having short-term memory, forgetting about the bad runs and constantly keeping the good runs in your brain instead of the bad ones is a hard thing to do. It’s a high-level mindset.
I can’t say it will be easy, but I do believe you have to go through those bad runs and experience those mistakes. You have to throw your fit and anticipate bad runs until you learn to move on and be better. That’s how having a good mental game is built. I see so many people who can train horses for other people; they train really nice horses. But when it comes down to the competition end of it, they’re not very good. All of those learning experiences from bad attitudes, to anticipating bad runs, that’s all mental. Period. It’s completely mental. You can have yourself beat before you even show up.
It’s hard and it’s a learning experience, just learning to go through bad runs and making mistakes and striving to be a little better each time to build your mental game. For me, I think about trusting my training. I work on my mistakes, don’t get me wrong. Even with ‘Rollo,’ I work on my weak spots the day or two before my competition so I can feel confident in trusting my training and not dwelling on the bad stuff. Then I can tell myself, “I worked on it, I fixed it, and now I’m going to go in there and run like we know we can.”
When it comes down to it, the key to winning, being a great competitor and having a strong mental game all comes down to being prepared — mentally prepared and having your horse physically prepared.
Focus on your training, set your horse up for his best success, and ultimately, just have fun. That’s what barrel racing is all about; it’s an opportunity for us to have a relationship with our horses and enjoy the process along the way. Don’t compare yourself to anybody else. Just compare yourself to the work you put into it the week prior to the competition.
This article was originally published in the August 2022 issue of Barrel Horse News.
