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[00:00:00] Hey, everyone. Welcome to fostering excellence. Inability the podcast. I'm your host competitor, coach and mentor Megan Foster. I help agility enthusiasts focus on the small details of training and behavior while still having a clear understanding of their big picture goals. Join me as I take you through key elements of dog agility, training, competing, and teaching, and how you can take action today to start improving your skills within the sport.
Let's get started. Hey everyone. Welcome to episode seven, where I am going to give you a quick breakdown about how I plan my training ahead of time. So that my time on the agility field is efficient and the progress just keeps on happening. So there are no shortage of things that we need to be training.
And I do think that the planning side of. [00:01:00] the training is where a lot of clients get stuck. They don't know what to train when they don't know when to progress or how to progress in the moment or how to react in the moment. And so I want to take some time today and talk about the planning process and a little bit of what I do and why that, that is important to me.
First things first. I do have to drive, even if it's a very short drive to the agility field to be able to practice. So that means to me that it requires an effort to load up the car, go to the field, set the things that I want to train, train them. put everything away, go home. And so when I am training, I want my time to be as efficient as possible because I have other things to do during my day.
And so do you, so before [00:02:00] I go, I always glance at my notebook and my has every kind of open project in it. Even if I'm not going to train all of those things that. So it has all of my open projects in it. And then each week I can pick a handful of things, three or four things that I'm going to focus on.
And the kind of objectives, the overview of the things that I'm going to be working on. And then I can just flip to that page that tells me what I'm working on that week or that month I can remind myself, okay, this is what I'm gonna do. I can look at the notes that I left myself if I have, and I go, all right.
And then this is the next objective that I'm gonna work on. And so I can just remind myself via my notes and my shorthand and what I've written down. Even if I'm not ripping out that piece of [00:03:00] paper and taking like a script with me to the field, however, I have done just that, especially when I am working in another instructor's class, I absolutely write myself down a script so that I can be sure that I'm following their training plan and their instructions for me and what they wanted to see in my.
and so I will write down exactly what they wanted me to do every single step, every rep, every little detail. And I will take that to the field with me, so that in between reps, I can reread what I was supposed to do. And I think that that is easier for me then trying to remember what that instructor said.
because I will also have my own kind of thoughts and ideas creeping in, and I do want to address those, but I don't wanna address that in the moment because I'm committed to following this instructor's process. And so I wanna play that out as honestly as I can. Okay. So if that [00:04:00] helps you, if you are in an online course where they're kind of putting the training plans together for you.
Write down a script and just revisit that piece of paper, every rep or two, to make sure that you're still on track. But when you are making your own training plans, you have to set a goal. You have to determine where it is we're headed. What, what is the point of all this training? Whether it's a specific event or a specific title, or even just a specific obstacle skill, everything needs to be broken down into actionable steps.
Okay. And we want to create dynamic training sessions that are constantly changing and we change the sessions based on the splits that we have found in the behavior. And I talked about splitting in a previous episode, so make sure you go back and listen, if you haven't already. And I will link that in the show notes as.[00:05:00]
but you always wanna be thinking about changing something, each repetition and definitely changing something each session. So when I'm thinking about changing something in each repetition, it's probably because the dog's behavior is going to be the same every single time. So right now I'm working on some precision stuff with sprints running dog walk target.
So it's just a flat target on the ground. her behavior needs to be basically the same every single time, which means the. Everything else about this session. I try to keep changing in every single rep. So I might change my position relative to her. I might change my motion relative to her. So I might be not moving or walking or jogging or running.
I might change where the reinforc re Inforce. Ooh, sorry. Where the reinforcer is pre [00:06:00] replaced. I might. Change her starting point just a little bit so that she's having to work to manipulate her stride and hit the target. So even though the behavior is staying the exact same, I'm not expecting that to change.
I'm changing something in the session, every single repetition, and then from one session to the next, I might change the objective a little bit. Okay. So if my objective with the target. is to practice with her starting from a, from a wing wrap. Well, the next session, I'm not going to start with a wing wrap.
I might change the context to the wing is after the target rather than before. So that each session, her understanding of the behavior is growing because the context and the conditions of the behavior is changing. and those things are listed in my notebook. Like these are the [00:07:00] objectives that I need to hit and I choose a couple of them to do every week or every month.
And I just make sure that I'm staying on track via my record, keeping. Another huge piece about planning your training for me is understanding the possible responses that might come up in your dog's behavior. So we're gonna stick to that same running dog walk example for now that the possible responses from sprint there, there's a pretty wide variety in running dog walk training, unfortunately.
Right. She could miss the target completely. She could. Almost hit the target. So that in sprint language means that she's doing the right striding, but she's a little bit off to the side of the target. So she's just a little bit too distracted by where the reinforcer is or whatever I'm doing, but her striding is nice, but she didn't quite hit the target.
Maybe she hit the edge of the [00:08:00] side or something. And then there's obviously a range in the way she can hit. Is she hitting with her front feet? Is she hitting with her rear feet? So I need to have all of those in my head. And I have a clear picture of what all of those look like, including the mistakes.
And I have a clear picture of how I'm going to respond to each of those situations. And by thinking about that ahead of time, that's gonna eliminate the amount of surprises I have within my training session. so it means that if she does miss the target completely, my brain was already prepared for that in thinking that it was a possibility.
And so I can, I cannot click, right. So I have fewer missed clicks, whereas when she is striding correctly, but is on the edge of the target. Those are harder for me. Actually will Missick those because [00:09:00] of trying to predict her behavior, it looked pretty good. Leaping over the target looks wildly different than having nice striding through the target.
But if I do accidentally click, I also have a response for that is that she still goes and gets her reward. And I tell her she's a good dog for getting her reward. And I ask her to do some other behavior and then I give her her reward again. And so I just kind of reset both of our brains when that happens.
And then when I see the optimal. Behavior that I'm looking for. Those feet are smack in the middle of that target. She gets the solid click. We have a good game of tug. Everyone's very happy about the good hit. So having that. In your head ahead of time, just kinda streamlines things and helps you be ready for what's possible.
It also means that you're a bit more aware of when those things are happening. So if you [00:10:00] are aware that the dog might miss the target, you will start to notice, oh, they're missing this a lot. And hopefully that can be kind of a wake up call in the session. that something needs to change something isn't right.
Something is missing here. And we can either pivot that session in the moment, or we can just put that away and come back to it in a different time. After reviewing the video and thinking about it some more,
the most important thing. To me and planning a training session is efficiency and not continuing on the training for too long. And so I have been known to set timers. This was really important when I'm working with my terrier. Shrek is to set a timer. He will eat food and train for a long time, but the [00:11:00] longer it goes.
The quality starts to fade. So even though he's happily eating the food, maybe he's getting a little bit too happy about the food. He is getting a little bit more desperate about wanting the food that usually means he's getting tired. So setting a timer for him and keeping his sessions. two, about three minutes.
Maximum is a game changer for him. And that way I can work on three or four things in a 15 minute time span. And I still have a dog that's interested and engaged. Another way that I go about this is when I make my. Training plan, I will say, well, I need to work both sides and I need to hit these objectives.
Walk, jog, run. Okay. So I'm gonna walk on each side, jog on each side, run on each side. That's six reps, and that's gonna be my session. I'm going to do those six repetitions, and [00:12:00] then I'm gonna look at the video and I'm gonna see, you know, what went right? What went really good? What needs improving? I think a huge.
Misconception is that missed opportunities for reinforcement don't count as a rep. I am here to tell you that they do. So even if, so, let's say that second rep it's walking with dog on. Right. And they miss it. if I then repeat that again. Now I'm at a seven rep session and then what if they make another mistake?
Now we're at an eight rep session. And so the longer the session goes on, the more likely that your errors are going to start piling up because now we have fatigue or maybe there's confusion, uh, or anything. So when you make a plan and it's centered around a number of repetitions, even repetitions that don't end in reinforcement count towards that [00:13:00] total rep count.
And so that's a huge thing that we wanna keep in mind, and I am much more interested in a low number of reps with a high success rate than I am a long session. with a lower success rate, because if my sessions are dynamic enough, they should be changing constantly, which means those low rep sessions, I can have closer to a hundred percent success rate.
Watch the video change. One thing next training session, six more reps change one thing. So my progress towards that ultimate goal ends up being faster. When I have a low number of reps that are very specific in objective, and we just keep moving along towards that goal. And I always want to be filming everything so that I can go back review that make any [00:14:00] adjustments that I need to.
And then I plan again, obviously as a trainer planning, your training should help increase your productivity so that when you. Go somewhere to train, you can get three or four or five kind of objectives done in a training session, say in a half hour rental or an hour rental with your friends or a couple of hours meeting up with your friends in a public park.
If you have those objectives. Is really well laid out ahead of time. You're going to get more done when you have those responses thought through ahead of time. You're you as the person in charge of delivering reinforcement, you are going to make fewer errors in response. to their behaviors and you're going to be more aware of what's actually happening.
You'll start [00:15:00] to see if there are too many errors piling up. You can pivot in the moment. You'll start to notice them more because we can affect what we are aware of. And so by thinking those things through kind of ahead of time, we can get in front of those potential problems as a competi. I find that planning your training out and especially having some very, even very simple records of your training can help you be honest.
When you go into the competition ring and you see a situation and you can kinda ask yourself, do I know how to solve this problem? Does my dog understand? This type of sequence. Have we done this before? Have they done that? We pole entry before, have I done a blind cross AF after an A-frame before? So kind of being aware of what you've planned for and what you've practiced and what you've rehearsed and trained can help you.[00:16:00]
Be realistic in your walkthroughs and what you're expecting of your dog in competition. And also the flip side of that is if you see something and you know, you haven't done it, it gets written down and you plan for it so that you aren't stuck at the next competition without a way to solve that piece of the puzzle.
And definitely if you are teaching agility, your coaching agility, this is your. planning training sessions for lots of people every single week. This is your job. And there's a fine balance of having kind of a set curriculum that you go through. And that this week you do this and this week you do this and this week you do this.
I think that's great. As a guide. But we also have to be able to take the individual teams that are in front of us into account, which means, okay, we did most of the week, one objectives, but [00:17:00] they were all really kind of struggling with jump offering or something com it can be anything, but jump offering is an example.
So instead of moving on from that in week two, I'm gonna add that back in. I'm gonna see that again. I'm gonna make a training plan. continuing that education rather than moving on from it. Right? So we're making sure that you're able to progress the teams that are ready to progress and help the teams that still need a little bit more help at that first skill before progressing them to the second skill.
So that is what group classes are, is making training plans for a lot of different people and juggling those training plans in the moment. as a group. And so the better you are at it with yourself and your own dogs, the easier it becomes when you have six people in front of you saying, okay, now what do I do?
And so same sorts of things. When I'm watching [00:18:00] people run my courses, I already know the possible things that could go wrong because that's gonna streamline my answer to. If it's a surprise when I'm either watching someone's video or watching them, uh, work through a sequence in a seminar, if the kind of error, the mistake that happened in front of me is a surprise.
It takes me a lot longer to come up with their feedback and that does happen sometimes. Sure. But when you set up a sequence or you set up an exercise for your students to do, if you have an idea, Of the problems that could occur. One, you can coach them through that before they ever try it. Right. You can show them what the mistakes could be and how to do them correctly.
Remember to always leave them with what to do, but then also if you are expecting it, it means you can predict it. You can, uh, start to see it happen and you can [00:19:00] explain really effectively why and how something happened. so practicing this for yourself really, really helps when you are coaching others as well.
That's all for today. If you would like to learn more about how I go about planning my training sessions and how you can start planning your own training sessions and doing some record keeping and keeping. Flow going in your own training, head on over to www dot synergy, dog sports.com/training plans and sign up for my free video course.
On exactly this topic. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk more next week.
Thanks for listening, please subscribe and leave me a review. If you'd like to support this podcast, head over to synergy doc sports.com/community [00:20:00] to access bonus content and to get your questions answered via podcast episodes and other social media content. If you'd like to know more about what I'm up to and what's coming up, make sure to bookmark my website, www dot synergy, dog sports.com.
