Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best. –Henry Van Dyke
I just wrote a post based on this quote on my other blog, go check it out 
Then maybe follow it? ya? Ok.
This is about Valley View Vaulters, a club in California. Rick Hawthorne is the coach and I really respect this guy. He knows a lot about the sport and really knows how to motivate and inspire. He has paved the way for therapeutic vaulting in the United States.
This is why I love vaulting. It heals. Everything.
Hey everyone! Holy cow it has been over a month since I posted! Sorry…
But I have a gift.
A blog post called, “My Quarter-Life Crisis“
It’s a post on my other blog. This blog is pretty great and motivational. KyLynn and I started it without even knowing where it will go, and it’s kind of turned into a place where we vent about our dreams and ambitions, and it’s wonderful. Oh, and it also will document our journey into making our performance team (GOHA) into a force to be reckoned with.
What I’m trying to say is if you enjoy reading this blog, then you’d love my other blog. That one is updated more often too, so follow it
I have a few ideas for posting on this blog but I must admit I’ve said pretty much all I wanted to say on this, so if you have any suggestions then please comment and let me know!
Also please be sure to check out our new GOHA Facebook Page and don’t be afraid to click that like button!
Thanks for reading
My New Year’s Resolution was to reprioritize my life. I am working on wasting less time doing things that really don’t benefit me and instead utilizing my time to help others and do what I love to do.
This quote is what motivates me. This is what I want to live by:
“This is your life. Do what you love, and do it often. If you don’t like something, change it. If you don’t like your job, quit. If you don’t have enough time, stop watching TV. If you are looking for the love of your life, stop; they will be waiting for you when you start doing things you love. Stop over analyzing, life is simple. All emotions are beautiful. When you eat, appreciate every last bite. Open your mind, arms, and heart to new things and people, we are united in our differences. Ask the next person you see what their passion is, and share your inspiring dream with them. Travel often; getting lost will help you find yourself. Some opportunities only come once; seize them. Life is about the people you meet and the things you create with them, so go out and start creating. Live your dream, and wear your passion. Life is short.” -Unknown
I think about this every day. I have an idea of the kind of person that I want to become, and I am striving to become that. I have my goals, so now all I need to do is focus on making it happen. That’s where the work comes in.
I found this clip last night and I really liked it. It especially rang true to me because as a coach, you hear excuses all the time! But it was also a wake up call for me, because I don’t get drilled by coaches very often, but I need a good reminder.
Ideally it would be great to spend every weekend travelling the world and getting paid to perform with my team in front of thousands of people, but for now this is what I got.
Check it:
And if you are reading this blog, I know you’d also be interested in another blog of mine… gymnasticsonhorses.wordpress.com
I just started this blog. KyLynn and I will write in it and it will be about GOHA. GOHA is Oak Hills Vaulters’ performance team. I figure it wouldn’t hurt to blog about our endeavors and travels with our little GOHA family
And if you like that, be sure to like our new GOHA facebook page!
Thank you all for the support
I’m currently writing from Mexico. I’ve been here for approximately 9 days, 5 hours, and 59 minutes. I haven’t touched a horse for approximately 12 days. Any horse person would know that that is a recipe for insanity. My coping mechanism is to think and ponder and do whatever productive thing I can.
So here I am. Thoughts firing all over my brain. I just jotted everything down on three pages while sunbathing just barely, so now I’m sweaty and ready to share.
Read AVA President, Sheri Benjamin’s Vaultopia blog post before reading mine. Or if you aren’t one for reading, I’ll summarize. Sheri wants the AVA to focus on igniting vaulting programs in already successful barns across the country this year.
I’m so down. Soooo down with that. And I think if we are gonna do this, we should go all out and hit it hard!!
I don’t know what game plan Sheri has in mind, but after texting KyLynn all morning I have an idea of what I would like to see.
First off, the AVA website NEEDS to be redone! I’ve used that site for years, and I still get lost while trying to find something. It also needs to be targeted toward non-vaulters. There’s going to be a lot of traffic once this thing gets started.
KyLynn said that we should have a starter pack to mail to the barns around the country [for free]. But before we do this, I think we need to ignite interest in barn-owners to start a program so we need to…
Create a promotional vaulting program video. Similar to this (but not as long as 8 minutes)…
The video should include commentary from respectable horse-people such as, but not limited to, Jeff Moore, Ingrid Hamar (Horse Trainer of the Year), Yossi and Noel Martonovich, Mary Ann Ford (Owner of Oak Hills Stables), and Rick and Virginia Hawthorne, as well as bring some international blood and include maybe a German barn owner (since I hear vaulting is a million times bigger there than here anyway).
We need to make it seem like vaulting is what cutting-edge, up-to-date barns are doing, i.e. “If you want your barn to be diverse and current, then you NEED vaulting.”
Make a website for interested people. In other words, make a site for the barn owners who are interested in pursuing to start a vaulting program at their facility. I think it should be a Facebook fan page and link it to the AVA website, and here’s why:
A Facebook page is a user-friendly site where anyone with a Facebook can post questions, videos, tutorials, as well as answer and connect with others. We can either make a separate page for this, or use the AVA Facebook page. The only problem with the AVA page right now is I noticed that only people that have a Facebook account can see the content on the page. The Facebook fan page needs to be totally public so everyone can see it.
If you don’t understand what I mean, sign out of your Facebook account (like completely sign out, don’t just close the window), then look at the home page of my blog. The right of the screen has two links to two different Facebook fan pages. If you are signed out, the Oak Hills Vaulters fan page will still show you the news feed (because that page is public), but if you look below the Oak Hills Vaulters box, you’ll see the American Vaulting Association hyperlink to their fan page, but you won’t be able to see anything on that page because you aren’t signed in to your account.
Anyway, I imagine this page will be where everyone that wants to know how to teach vaulting, train horses, start a club, promote their club, etc. will go to watch tutorials, ask questions, and learn tips on how to keep their club going.
KyLynn and I are making tutorials on the basics of vaulting anyway so this would be a perfect match.
Questions left unanswered..
How will we contact these barns and who will do it?
I think it’s more persuasive if we met owners in person and demonstrated vaulting at their facility [Ideal]. How:
Bring a small child vaulter and a high level vaulter and maybe even a vaulter with disabilities to show the diversity of the sport. You sure as heck better bring a good-looking horse because the horse will be judged more than anyone. Don’t worry about making it a performance in this circumstance. Don’t go there wearing full body spandex, prancing around in-step, or whatever it is that vaulters did in the 80′s. Look professional, but don’t make it a recital. Think of it like if you were to practice vaulting at another club’s barn. Keep it low-key. The purpose would be to impress the barn owner and help them imagine how great and amazing their barn would be if they had vaulters.
We can initiate communication by email. The promotional video would be attached in the email. Then from there they can set up a date and time to demonstrate or just meet to talk about starting a program. One problem that we might run into is that owners are too concerned with safety. How do we counteract that? How do we get our foot in the door enough to demonstrate that the sport is safe? Does anyone have any ideas?
Maybe consider not using as much money to grant to clubs for clinics rather to use that money for other things that would increase overall awareness. Besides, if online tutorials were created then they could learn from that until they can cover clinician costs on their own. (I honestly don’t know how much grant money is used for clinics in the first place, but the concept is the same.)
Another problem that would inhibit the growth of new clubs in barns would be their lack of a surcingle and barrel. That’s at least a $2,000 investment that they would have to make with no guarantee of the club actually taking. But maybe that’s something we’d just have to let happen?
Back to the starter kit, What should be in it?
I think it should include a DVD with compulsory, freestyle, and horse lunging basics. Maybe have a judge and elite vaulter talk and demonstrate?
It should also include an orientation magazine. I got this idea from my job at Texas Roadhouse. They have a magazine called Texas Today. This magazine is given to every new employee and inside it includes everything you need to know about Texas Roadhouse, from the history of the company, the uniform, and duties of your job. We can easily create a manual like that for new vaulting coaches.
As for gaining vaulters, KyLynn recommended billboards and commercials. Even though these are expensive, I think it could be effective. The point is the AVA NEEDS to increase awareness of the sport so kids will find the vaulting clubs rather than the vaulting clubs finding the kids. It will also help that the clubs will be supported within successful equestrian centers, but if the clubs brought in new blood, then that would benefit the equestrian center as well.
Alright, that’s all for now. Please please comment and let us know what you think 2012 … if the Mayans are correct then we only have one more year to get this going! (I don’t believe it, but it makes for a good deadline)
“Nothing in the world is more common than unsuccessful people with talent, leave the house before you find something worth staying in for.” — Banksy
Photo Cred: Emily Howden Photography
Dreams of winning a competition may include fierce competitors, tons of preparation, and of course, a well earned ribbon or medal awarded during a ceremony. If you’re an elite athlete, you may even have a fan base; people cheering you on from all over the world.
Frankly, this doesn’t exist in the vaulting world. At least the American vaulting world. Vaulting competitions happen practically in secret! Only the vaulting world knows about these competitions, and this needs to change!
There are hardly any competitors. At nationals, there’s around 20-30 vaulters in each level, if that. You look in the stands and all you find is a sea of empty seats. The most advertising I’ve seen for any competition (besides WEG) is one or two news stories.
I think that nationals and even regionals should be a big deal. I know it is a big deal in the vaulting community, but in the outside world, nobody knows that it even exists. Why is this? Because nobody advertises. I say this all the time, vaulting needs publicity! Publicity is our downfall. Publicity is the key to growing the sport. And publicity won’t happen by itself.
This has been on my mind since KyLynn and I thought about throwing together our own competition. We have considered doing that for a year or so, and contrary to popular belief, Oak Hills will not be holding a competition next summer fyi.
But, that doesn’t mean we don’t ever want to do one. Some day, we will. And when that day comes, it will be great.
But here’s some ideas we have:
Vaulting competitions should be ran like any other competition… for example, people pay for tickets to watch college gymnastics competitions, volleyball games, etc. Why can’t we have tickets to watch gold and silver level freestyle routines? Vaulting is easily classified as a spectator sport, so let’s play that up and use it to our advantage.
People that are likely to buy tickets to watch vaulting are most likely going to be horse people. So hold the competition in horse country.
Nobody is going to buy tickets if they don’t know about it, so make sure the whole friggin world knows what’s going down on what day and at what time! Which means, don’t say “Come watch the vaulting competition Friday through Sunday,” because that’s not specific enough. Instead say, “Come watch outstanding athletes perform death-defying gymnastics and dance on horseback on Sunday from 4-6pm!” (Spare them the torture it can be to watch compulsories or walk vaulters when they could have just come to see the canter freestyles).
See what I did there? I just sold you tickets. I guess I learned this from being a hostess at a restaurant… use your succulent descriptor words to entice 
Plus nobody knows what vaulting is, so avoid confusing them by not even using the word. You can explain to them that “gymnastics and dance on horses” is called vaulting, instead of the other way around. Trust me, it’s easier to explain the sport that way anyway.
If you don’t know how to publicize, here’s a website I found that gives pretty good steps on how to let the world know what you’re doing:
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/management/15-useful-event-promotion-tips.html
I know it will take a while to fill the stands for vaulting competitions, but if we don’t try to get people out, then it will never happen. And this sport will continue to stay small, and our vaulter posterity will continue to be cursed with the chore of having to explain to every person in existence what the heck ‘horse vaulting’ is.
This will be my last post that will have motive, meaning my class is ending, so this blog is no longer required.
I know a piece of your soul probably died a little, but maybe if you’re lucky I’ll continue to enlighten you with my thoughts about things. We’ll see. I believe I may have commitment issues, so don’t judge.
I wanted to tie my last two posts in with my class and expand on the safety issue of vaulting.
First off, this mass communications class helped me to target my blog posts about specifically the image of equestrian vaulting, especially when it comes to promoting the sport. It is evident to me that the sport needs to receive more coverage and promotion, and I discussed how throughout my blog.
The past few years I have made an effort to pin point the reasons why people want to start vaulting and why they don’t want to start. I also ask people what they like about our performances and what they don’t like in order to understand the outside opinion.
The biggest excuses I hear why people don’t like vaulting or don’t want to try it is because they think it’s abusive to horses and they think it’s stupid or unsafe. One of the biggest issues that vaulting has when it comes to growth within the United States is not being able to be insured.
This is a frustrating problem for clubs all over because the sport doesn’t have a chance to prove to the insurance companies that it is in fact the safest of all equestrian sports! Vaulting is very popular in Europe and the reason is because they realize that equestrians that have a foundation in vaulting grow to be better and safer horse riders. I heard that many beginning riders are required to do vaulting before they can even start riding, and that’s the way it should be.
Vaulting forces riders to have a good seat. A good seat is the foundation to all riding. All vaulters also learn how to dismount from every possible angle in a controlled setting, which I have realized has helped my students and me immensely whenever we find ourselves falling off unintentionally. If you’ve ever seen an experienced vaulter fall off a horse by accident, you’d see that we fall off like cats. :]
One observation I have is that my vaulting students don’t fall off the horse until they are experienced vaulters. Generally they don’t fall off the horse until a year or two into their career or more; when they start to push themselves. This is no coincidence. Just like any gymnastics, ice skating, diving, or any other vaulting coach, I believe that a student shouldn’t be pushed to do anything that they aren’t capable of that would create a potentially unsafe situation. Therefore, when my vaulting students do things where they might fall off the horse, I make sure that they are trained enough to control their fall. That way when my students do fall (which is an inherent part of vaulting), they fall safely.
When it comes down to it, what I’m trying to convey is that generally it takes about one to two years for someone to master the basics of vaulting enough to really start to push themselves. Vaulters start on a stationary apparatus, then move to the horse at a walk, then trot, then canter. Everything is done in baby steps and each step takes time. When I’m coaching, I always make sure that my new vaulters never do a move straight off the bat. I’m constantly assessing their skill level by watching their compulsories and monitoring their strengths and weaknesses. It is my job to make sure they don’t fall off until they are mentally and physically prepared. This means that contrary to popular belief that vaulters are stupid for doing crazy things on horses, what you see is the product of years and years of practice and skill development.
Of course you could check out the American Vaulting Association’s records of vaulting safety here. If you’re really interested in their 3 points of vaulting safety, click the link
Basically the AVA argues that vaulting is statistically safer than playing on a playground or even riding a bicycle. I agree that through my experience the kids I know and myself personally have sustained more injuries, and worse injuries doing these types of activities than vaulting. Through my 12 year vaulting career, my greatest injuries have been a sprained ankle and sprained wrists (not bad enough to even go to a doctor).
Although, I know there are people out there that think that these stats aren’t accurate because there aren’t enough vaulters out there to constitute a good basis. I see their point, and although I don’t know much about statistics in general, I am gonna throw out one vaulter’s idea. Allison commented on my post about horse abuse a few days ago and she mentioned how hard it was to get insurance for her club. She recommended that if the American Vaulting Association did hire interns (which they should!!), then these interns could do more extensive research about the safety and benefits for vaulting and horses. Thank you Allison! I think that’s a great idea!!
Now to tie it all in… Vaulting needs to grow in the United States. There are a few factors that are holding the sport back, and I believe with the right use of mass communication and promotion, then the sport can really expand. If vaulting was recognized by insurance companies as a great introduction to horsemanship and horse riding safety and confidence building, then more barns would be eager to implement it into their programs. There would be more horse riders out there that could benefit and therefore become better and safer riders if they built a basic vaulting foundation.
I will admit, I enjoy having this blog, and I think it is a great way for the vaulting world to share their thoughts on promoting the sport. As of right now, I’m planning on keeping the blog going and hopefully I can find a way to incorporate it into my Principles of Marketing class I’m taking next semester.
Thank you all for your support! Thank you for reading!!
