As a riding instructor, it’s your job to make sure that your students receive enough value in their lessons to justify the cost of those lessons. Although time is not the only determining factor, it certainly makes a difference. When you go out into the arena with a group of students, how long must they be mounted and under your instruction? How long a riding lesson lasts is a point of great controversy among riding instructors.
Unfortunately, this is a question that is not easily answered when I don’t have a specific situation to consider. How many cyclists participate in each lesson? How many lessons do you plan to give in a day? What equestrian discipline are you teaching? And at what level are your students riding? Since every riding instructor teaches differently, it’s impossible to give a definitive answer as to how long a riding lesson should be. However, this information should give you an idea of your own situation, thus helping you to make the decision that is right for you.
The concept of value
Many riding instructors seem to forget that they are running a business. In exchange for their services (riding instruction), their clients (students) pay them money. It’s no different than buying a hamburger at McDonald’s or paying a home improvement company to install your new hardwood floors. Since horseback riding instruction is a service, and since you are selling your services to the public, it is important that you understand the concept of value. Otherwise, you’re just hosting pony rides for a bunch of restless, horse-crazy girls who will never understand what riding really means.
Often, however, riding instructors interchange the concept of value with words like longevity. The length of a riding lesson is not necessarily indicative of the value the student received for that lesson. He can spend an hour-long lesson going over deep concepts with his students and teaching them the fundamentals of his chosen sport, or he can spend it sitting on the fence watching his students go round and round. Each lesson includes the same amount of riding time, but which group receives the most value?
This is something that all service providers who charge by the hour encounter with their professions. For example, a friend of mine once hired a contractor to paint her walls a beautiful shade of robin’s egg blue. They were paid by the hour and consequently did as little as possible each day they worked, trying to stretch the number of hours they would accrue for the same amount of work. However, when she told them that she would pay a set fee for the rest of the work, they really got down to business.
The strict approach
Now that you understand that you need to provide value during your riding lessons, let’s move on to the timing issue. How long should a riding lesson last and when should it be stopped? There are two basic ways to structure riding lessons, the first of which is the strict approach. This simply means that each riding lesson you teach lasts a specific amount of time and never varies from that time. If you decide that all of your students will ride for one hour, they will mount at three o’clock and get off promptly at four. No variation; No problem
This is arguably the simplest approach to teaching riding lessons, and often raises the fewest concerns. Schedules and conformity naturally comfort humans, and they respond well to limits. If your students know they will mount and dismount at specific times, the riding instructor won’t get any complaints when it’s time to drop out. However, the problem with the strict approach is that the driving instruction is not easily controlled. Since we are dealing with humans and animals, it is impossible to predict the things that can derail the program at any time. For example, what if one of your students gets hurt in the middle of a lesson and has to go to the emergency room for treatment? Obviously, the lesson will be detoured, as will all subsequent lessons scheduled for that day.
Also, the strict approach lends itself to less value than the other (which I’ll discuss in a moment). Sometimes it can leave the riding instructor constantly looking at his watch, counting down the minutes until he can bring his riders and call it a day. Also, if you find that you need more time to achieve a goal, you have no choice but to put off the lesson until next week. However, the strict approach to riding lessons is often more convenient, especially when there are students who only show up for their lessons at the scheduled times and then leave immediately when they are done.
The Flexible Approach
The second approach to scheduling riding lessons is the one I use most often, but only when working with advanced riders who own their own horses. The flexible approach simply means that the lessons last as long as necessary. A goal is set for the day, and I end the lesson as soon as we reach that goal. In other words, if we achieve our goals in twenty minutes, the lesson ends after twenty minutes; If it takes an hour and a half, we dedicate that time to arriving.
The problems with this approach to riding lessons are obvious, even if they promote more value during class. When you have students who are picked up and dropped off by their parents on their school days, it is important that you respect their schedules and stick to the one you have established for your classes. For example, Susie can go horseback riding at 4:00 pm, but she has to rush out to piano lessons at 5:30. Letting the 3:00 lesson go on for fifteen minutes ruins Susie’s entire day.
However, when your riding lessons last as long as you need them, you’ll find that you get more done and achieve goals much faster.
Let’s say, for example, that you are teaching an advanced jumping lesson every Tuesday at 3:00. You decide one day that you are going to work on course lead changes, so you set up a tricky, twisty course and ask each of your riders to jump it. He originally thought they might have trouble with the concept, but is surprised to find they master it after skipping the course twice each. Only thirty minutes have passed since the lesson, but you have achieved your goal.
Now, let’s say you operate on a strict riding lesson, so you have to find something to fill the next thirty minutes. You send them down the course once more, and this time they all fall apart because they’ve grown too arrogant about their previous success. Now your horses have learned that they can get away with doing the wrong thing, and you have to squeeze in more instruction in the next fifteen minutes or so.
Counterproductive? I think so.
However, if you are going to use the flexible riding lesson approach, it is important to ensure that your students are fully aware of the arrangement. Eventually it all works out time-wise, because you’ll overrun your time just as often as you finish early, but this can be hard for clients to understand.