How to Optimize Your Horse Schooling Sessions

with his response?
EFFICIENT Make the Most of Your Practice Time
Have a plan. Every teacher begins with a lesson plan. Ill map out plans in my head while driving. At the top of the training staircase I visualize the ultimate skills horse and rider need to reach their goals. Each step is a logical piece toward building those skills. Landings are breaks that offer a few minutes to work on quieter movements or review familiar ones before resuming the climb
Be flexible. No lesson plan is etched in stone. Horses and riders get stuck so dont be discouraged if you remain on the same step for a few days before you continue climbing. For example a flying change is assembled from building blocks of repetitions leg yields lateral movement of shoulders and haunches countercanter. It could take a couple of months to build the lead change. 
Winging it is a waste of time. Why? Because slow and steady inevitably wins the race. Skipping steps will trip you up which means having to descend the staircase and rebuild your horses understanding and confidence.
Fit the maximum skills into a minimum time budget. I have learned to be efficient as a horse trainer. Wasting 15 minutes with the first rides tip the dominoes inevitably bumping the last one to the following day knocking back the evening lesson schedule and letting clients down. The upside was discovering that efficient schooling actually works better and science confirms it. 
The quality of your practice session is determined by the quality frequency and rhythm of the questions you ask your horse not by the time on the arena clock. If youre short on time resist opening up a can of worms by teaching something new today. Setbacks take time to sort out. Limit todays lesson plan to several elements youll need for your next horse show or trail ride. Trotting around the wellworn track beside the arena rail wont yield the same dividends as asking your horse those questions thatll arise in competition. Use the staircase landings to practice things like standing still beside the mounting block opening a gate reining back turnontheforehand or introducing neckreining at the walk.
CREATIVE Ideas to Ban Boredom
Balanced variety. Horses thrive on routine predictability and consistency. For a prey animal predictability is preferable to the spice of life. Though repetition benefits your horse drilling does not. Divide your practice session into subjects or categories
 to break up monotony. Categories might complement your horse show classes rotating through essential manoeuvres youll need for horsemanship patterns trail obstacles and ranch riding classes. Or your practice plan might feature a cycling through some work over fences then tuning up transitions for equitation on the flat returning to more fence work and finishing by imagining being judged in a hunterundersaddle class.