Brought to you by The Plaidcast
In a barn, there is almost always a faster way to do something.
You can get on without thinking much about how your weight lands on the horse’s back. You can rush through grooming. You can decide that “good enough” is good enough for today. But Archie Cox sees the long-term cost in that approach.
A National Horse Show Hall of Fame horseman who has spent more than 25 years running Brookway Stables and has coached dozens of riders to national championships, Cox believes doing things correctly from the beginning may take more time, but it creates skills riders can rely on for the rest of their lives.
“It takes longer to teach someone to do something correctly,” Cox said during a live Plaidcast conversation at the Savannah College of Art and Design. “But once you have it correct, you move on to the next task.”
Forty Minutes to Learn How to Get On
One of Cox’s clearest examples comes from a lesson many years ago. He watched a student get on a medium pony and simply flop down onto its back. She was ready to start the lesson. Cox was not.
“We spent 40 minutes getting off, getting on, getting off, getting on,” he recalled.
He broke the mounting process down into pieces: knees, toes, allowing the horse to gradually take the rider’s weight, finding the stirrup, and lowering into the saddle correctly.
It would have been much faster to overlook it and start jumping. Instead, Cox used nearly the entire lesson to fix one basic skill. “She now wins Grand Prixs,” he said, “and she knows how to get on.”
The lesson was not about getting through that particular 40 minutes. It was about teaching something correctly enough that the rider would not need to relearn it later.
The Basics Are There for a Reason
Cox is quick to point out that many of the systems riders learn in the barn are not arbitrary. There is a reason grooming traditionally follows a sequence. There is a reason trainers teach certain responses to the leg and aids. There is a reason horsemen have developed particular ways of doing things over generations.
“I say this all the time, I don’t have any original thoughts,” he said. “I just happen to listen so carefully and watch.”
He learned from horsemen before him, and he sees his responsibility as passing that information forward.
As a younger rider, Cox admits that he did not always appreciate it. He remembered lessons filled with leg yields, shoulder-in, and small corrections to his use of the reins.
“I would roll my eyes,” he said. It took him until his 40s to fully appreciate what those teachers had given him. Today, those same basics are embedded in the way he rides and teaches.
Correctness Creates Something to Fall Back On
The value of fundamentals becomes especially clear when a ride does not go according to plan. Horse showing guarantees imperfect moments, and Cox does not believe riders can eliminate those moments. What they can do is build a foundation strong enough to respond to them.
Once a rider understands transitions, position, aids, balance, pace, and how to organize a horse, those skills remain available when something starts to unravel. The goal is to give the rider enough tools that they can answer whatever question appears.
“You wanna have been asked and answered all the questions,” Cox said.
That preparation begins with fundamentals that may feel repetitive at home. Transitions. Riding in two-point. Working over poles. Repeating basic exercises until a rider understands how the horse responds. As riders advance, their reaction time must become faster. But that speed comes from having practiced the underlying response enough times that it becomes familiar.
The more advanced the competition, the more invisible those basics may become.
A polished round can look seamless from the outside. What the audience does not see are all the repetitions that taught the rider how to organize before the turn, move up when necessary, come back without losing balance, or stay with a horse whose natural way of going is different from the last one they rode. That work is not glamorous, but it allows the glamorous part to happen.
Don’t Rush Past the Skill
Riders naturally want to move on. Once you can get around a course, you want to jump higher. When something feels familiar, repetition can start to feel unnecessary.
Cox urges riders to resist that urge until the skill is truly there. Doing something correctly once is not the same as owning it. The goal is for the correct response to become part of the rider’s foundation. That is why he is willing to spend 40 minutes on mounting or repeat a seemingly basic transition. The lesson is not wasting time. It is investing it.
But Cox does not advocate endless perfectionism. He is not asking riders to stay stuck on one skill forever. His point is almost the opposite: put enough time into the basics that you do not have to keep going back and rebuilding them.
Once something is correct, move on. Then build the next layer on top of it. Over time, those layers create the rider who can handle more complicated questions safely and confidently.
The shortcut may save 40 minutes today, but the correct lesson may serve you for the next 40 years.
To hear the full conversation with Archie Cox, listen to The Plaidcast recorded live at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Subscribe and follow The Plaidcast on your favorite podcast platform for more conversations from throughout our industry.
