Watching the USTRC Finals recently, I figured out that it’s always in one of three areas that people have trouble at a roping. It’s either their horsemanship or mechanics or mental game. And that last one is a big deal. I just don’t think enough people know how to practice it.
Concentration is so important. I always catch myself, especially with people close to me, coaching on a more long-term basis. I’ll tell my boys, “It’s not okay to miss. You’ve got to practice holding your concentration to where if you want to go and not miss 20 in a row, you can do that.”
Most coaches will first teach you how to do a lay-up; to take the very high percentage shot. And in a basketball game when you just need two points for the win and you can get loose and do a lay-up, for goodness sake you should shoot the lay-up. But when the defense is tough and you need to shoot a little jumper or move away from the basket, can you do that successfully? More importantly, will you know when you should do it? It’s almost like that mental discipline gets lost somewhere when we think about roping fast.
Most of us know that jackpots are about taking 100 percent shots, or making lay-ups. You simply accept nothing but two horns and two feet every time. I put that pressure on myself, and so do guys like Walt Woodard and Clay O’Brien Cooper and Rich Skelton. You’ve seen the results. And remember Matt Tyler and Charles Pogue and Tee Woolman? They just don’t miss. I mean, of course all of us miss from time to time. But we roped with such great consistency when we just needed to catch.
Then there was Daniel Green. He could just catch – but he could also go fast. What made him great is he knew which one to choose. If he and I just needed to catch the short-round steer at Reno to win $8,000, I could count on him. But at that same rodeo, he had ridden hard at the barrier and reached a coil-and-a-half on the first one and turned me a steer to win the first round. Then we’d only had to catch the second and third steers. Did we win the rodeo? Yes, but we drew on two completely different mindsets to do it.
You learn to tell the difference in the practice pen, by putting the correct amount of pressure on yourself. It’s called disciplined practice. Where have you been suffering? If it’s in just catching, concentrate harder on what you know it takes to make that sure shot. If you’ve been catching every steer but going too far down the arena, focus on getting your rope up earlier and riding harder to the steer to rope a little quicker. Disciplined practice.
When you start working on “fast,” your catch percentage will go down. But practice it often enough and you’ll go back to catching just as many. Visit smartroping.com for more.