Hi everyone, welcome to my first blog series, “Getting Ready for the Competition Season!! This series will have 8 to 9 posts! It will cover everything from getting in shape, staying healthy, your mental game, sponsorship, budgeting and so much more! I know that is a wide variety of topics but this year one of my goals is to be more prepared so I thought I would take you along with me! The more I started to think about what I needed to be prepared the more topics came up! So, this has a little of everything!!

Side note

I guess I should tell you what event I compete in! I am a barrel racer which some of you may already know (click here to know more about me)! This year I am going to compete at a local rodeo association called KCRA! I have tried to make the content relevant to everyone in the equine industry no matter what event! My horse’s name is Woodrow, he is a 17-year-old quarter horse. I can’t believe he is 17,( now where does the time go?). Woodrow hasn’t had a normal path to his barrel racing career! Actually, the only reason he started at all is that I was in college and my horse at the time was starting to get older. He wasn’t handling all the rodeos as well he had before! So, my Dad offered me one of his head horses to try (I was in college and had no extra money laying around lol). He was 11 at the time, I wasn’t expecting too much but look where we are now! Well that’s a little about Woodrow and I!!

Why did I do this blog series?

As I started researching for myself, I thought you guys might like it as well!! There are so many things I didn’t thing about that can have an effect on you and your performance. For example, if you’re about to go into the arena and all you can thing about is how you couldn’t afford to come so you have to win at all costs, this will impact your performance.  Your mind isn’t focused on the task at hand. That can really mess with your mental game and your performance. No one is perfect at everything (at least I know I am not). I have a lot of work to do this year but this actually kind of excites me to know that I have goals and dreams I want to achieve. I hope this can help you in one area or another if not I hope at the very least it’s entertaining or puts a smile on your face!

Why such a push for this competition season for me?

So before last year I hadn’t rodeoed in a few years and I thought I would just pick up where I left off (boy was I wrong, let’s just say it didn’t go as planned). Before I took the break from rodeo, I was starting to place consistently at college rodeos and even towards the top . . . but last year competition season I had problem after problem and I just didn’t understand why! It started to wear on me mentally. Thoughts kept creeping in “am I not good enough anymore” (which never helps). It took a lot but by the end of my season I was starting to get my groove back a bit. So, this year I was going to be as prepared as I could, which brought me to writing this blog series.

I hope you will all enjoy it and look forward for every week’s post. If you want to know what’s coming up sign up for my newsletter so you don’t miss a beat!  As always if you want to talk to me more you can catch me on Facebook or Instagram @ Whit’s Therapy. See you next week to get in shape!

P.S

There are going to be amazing interviews with great people!