BD Presents Exclusive: Becky Moody on Training

As we lead up to our flagship training event, BD Presents,  taking place at Hartpury University and College on 23 & 24 November, we caught up with Olympic Bronze medallist Becky Moody to discuss her training ethos and give you a sneak preview of what you can expect from her at this event.

What do you find most rewarding about the training process? 

It's that every different horse teaches you something new, and there's just always so much to learn. Yes, it's challenging, but it's also really rewarding because you're constantly trying to find ways to do things better. The relationship with each individual horse, feeling it develop, change and flourish is really cool. 

Touching on that relationship, what does developing a partnership with a horse mean to you, and how crucial do you think this is to the training process? 

It's absolutely essential. It takes different amounts of time with different horses. Sometimes you get on a young horse, and you just don’t feel it quite click as easily. I've had horses where I've really felt my relationship change and grow over the years. But also it's like any relationship; it goes through good bits and bad bits! It's about working out how to work your way through to the good bits. That's how I see a training session. It is a bit of a discussion, you have to work out the best way through things as it's so variable with each horse.  

Has there been a time when you've worked through a moment where the training is not progressing for yourself or with a client?  

That's certainly something both with my own training and with my coaching that we come up against all the time and we have to be realistic and open about that. It doesn't always go to plan, because learning doesn't. The process of learning is sometimes about getting things wrong and working out how to fix them.  

I've got three 10-year-old horses at quite different points. They've taken me on very different journeys that have helped me become a better rider; each has helped me with the others.  

Jagerbomb has been a bit of a teacher's pet. Apart from being that little bit lacking energy and motivation when he was younger, he has always been straightforward. The other two have been more challenging. With the stallion, it's been a bit of a roller coaster. It’s probably only within the last six months that I've found a more consistent key with him, and it's kept working. That was really rewarding as he was talented, and it's not that he had a difficult temperament, it was just about finding the right way to work with him. And then my third 10-year-old has ridiculous amounts of movement, so it's been about taking the time to get him physically strong enough. Mentally, he was always trying to do it, but physically, his body just couldn't quite keep up.  

Working with clients, I always joke that coaches should have an honorary degree in psychology because so much of it is about dealing with how the rider is feeling and coping with the situation to enable them to help the horse in the best way. The nature of what we do is quite up and down and learning to deal with that side of things is really important. 

I think that is why finding the coach who is right for you is so important. One of my biggest beliefs, which has been instilled in me by David Hunt who’s been a real mentor to me, is that you should enable your client to go and do it on their own, because when it comes down to it, turning down that centre line, you are on your own. 

How important do you feel that it is to have someone that you can go to for support with your training? 

It is massively important. David has been, as I said, not just a coach, but a real mentor to me for over 20 odd years now. I'm also so lucky because I work alongside my sister Hannah who I can bounce ideas off and talk through problems with. Then with Carl Hester as well, when talking about competition planning, he's a good person to talk to.  

Training and competition structure are something you do want to be planning with your coach so you feel like you and your horse are going out at the right time as that's going to help develop them and build their confidence for the right reasons. It's not necessarily about the marks. It's about the education of the rider and horse. Having a coach that you feel you can have that conversation with is so important. 

Why is it important to train on a timescale that works for you? 

It comes back to the three horses I’ve just mentioned. They've had very different competition paths and are a good example of how horses need to take different paths.  

I think this is where we need to have a really open discussion in terms of, the coaches, riders and judges. Obviously, the judges have to judge what they see on the day, but sometimes a rider needs to go to a competition for educational purposes and with the mindset that ‘the mark is not important to me but I'm going to make a tactical decision to help educate that horse in the best way and just go for a learning experience’.  

Perfection doesn't happen very often and we must understand the path we're on as we strive towards that perfection. It is such a journey and we have to communicate about the best ways that we can go on that journey.  

If you had advice for someone who is new to training with their horse, what is the one piece of advice you'd give that person? 

I think it would be to find a coach that you gel with. This is a team effort and everyone needs help. The best riders in the world are some of the luckiest because they are based with people who help them all the time. I think people should never shy away from getting help.  

Understandably, finances are relevant to this. Not everybody can afford two lessons a week. But even riding with people who are better than you is a great thing. I can sit and watch a warm-up at a big show for hours. Sometimes it teaches you about the way you want to do things. Sometimes it teaches you about the way you don't want to do things but certainly, learning is a big part of developing and watching is a big part of learning.  

I also think that constructive self-analysis and using videos is a great way of learning, but it does have to be constructive. I’ve had some clients say  ‘I can't watch it. It's just too depressing,’ but you must be able to watch it and look at what is better and what you need to improve on.  

I had quite an interesting time during COVID and now, with David, we train online using a PIXEM camera, which is brilliant. But even before when I was just sending him videos, often I’d watch them and think, ‘Oh, I cannot send that’. Then I'd go and make it better myself. So, even without sending it, it was helping me improve. Still, when I sent the better version, I would get plenty of constructive criticism back!  

Looking back on what you've achieved, is there something you know now that you wish you could go back and tell yourself when you first started out? 

It probably does come back to don't worry so much when it's not going how you planned. It is a difficult thing to do this and, when you add in the unpredictability of another living creature, there are so many ups and downs.  

When things are going good, it's amazing, and I love it, but I don't go that high and stay quite grounded, because then when things aren't going so well you're more stable in the middle. Understanding there are going to be ups and downs, and having the team around me, has certainly helped me keep going on a few occasions.  

Thinking again about those moments when things aren't going quite right within training, how do you navigate them? 

I think the small things don't stress me because that is just part of training people and horses. Sometimes if you get too caught up in the moment, you just have to stop and think it through logically. I sometimes say to people when they're getting emotional about something (which let's face it, we all do because it means so much to us) just stop and imagine this was not your horse but a friend's horse or that you're helping a client. What would you say to them? How would you react? That makes people step outside their own heads.  

You learn that frustration doesn’t get you anywhere. When you feel like you're getting frustrated, if you're the kind of person who can take a break and go again, that's great, but if you feel you're not going to be able to get in that space, just take yourself for a hack and come back to it another day. Being able to deal with it on the day is something to work with your coach on because if you're having a tricky competition, you’ll need those tools. It comes back to getting people into a mental place where they feel they have the tools to deal with the situation. 

As we approach BD Presents, can you share what you're looking forward to? 

Oh, tricky one. I'm feeling a tiny bit nauseous about it! It’s the biggest coaching thing that I've done, but I'm really looking forward to working with the different horses and watching Sophie and Joe's side of things as well. 

And I think bringing Bomb will be fun. It'll be his first time out after Paris so I'm sure that he'll be absolutely delighted to see everyone.  

I'm just looking forward to trying to make it as fun and educational event as we can so that everyone feels like they've taken away something that will help them. 

Coming back to your advice about watching and learning, BD Presents is just around the corner, how valuable with this event be for our members?

I'm also really looking forward to watching Sophie and Joe. I actually know Joe a bit from many years ago. He's incredibly clever and it's a really different but equally fascinating way of working with horses and understanding them so I'm really looking forward to that side of it. 

With the variety of horses that we're going to have there, it will hopefully be more relevant to more people; a while ago I did an Instagram Q&A and one of the questions was, did I have any videos of Bomb when he was younger? I found a video of him doing the regionals as a five-year-old and I know that many, even then, would not have considered him ordinary, but they certainly would not thought that there was an Olympic horse in the making. It's so important to talk about that. I know I am incredibly lucky. He is an amazing horse because of his temperament and work ethic but you can change a horse so much with the right training and the right support and I think that's what everybody can strive to do.