Why I Carry a Pocket Notebook to Every Lesson and Clinic

There's a small spiral-bound notebook tucked into the pocket of every pair of jodhpurs I own, and a second one stuffed into the back of my truck. It started as a habit I borrowed from a coach at a Pony Club rally in the Adelaide Hills years ago, and it has quietly become one of the most useful tools in my eventing kit. If you have ever walked out of a lesson convinced you will remember every word your coach said, only to forget the lot by the time you've untacked your horse, you already know why I keep writing things down.

Notebooks are not glamorous, and they are definitely not the kind of thing that gets featured in glossy tack-shop catalogues. But for a sport where feedback is dense, technical, and often delivered at a trot or canter, having somewhere to capture the specifics is the difference between a good lesson and a great one. I have tried memory, voice memos, and typing into my phone, and I keep coming back to pen and paper for a reason I will get to shortly.

The case for writing things down

The first reason I keep a notebook is brutally simple: I do not remember things as well as I think I do. In the middle of a jumping lesson, when I am trying to keep my leg on, my shoulders back, and my eye up between two fences, the part of my brain that retains detailed instruction is busy doing something else. A coach at a clinic I attended in Boneo Park put it plainly when she said, "If you are riding, you are not listening, and if you are not listening, you are guessing." Writing things down lets me stop guessing.

The second reason is that lesson feedback is rarely one neat piece of advice. It comes in layers. There is the long-term goal your coach is working towards, the drill you are doing today, the specific correction that needs to happen in the next five minutes, and the homework you are meant to practise before next time. None of that fits in a single sentence I can hold in my head while cantering. Putting it on paper forces me to slow down and separate the layers, which is half the work of learning.

There is also a strange confidence that comes from seeing your notes after the fact. On a bad day, I can flip back and see that the same correction has been given for three weeks running, which tells me the issue is not a one-off and I need to be patient with myself. On a good day, I can see how much has shifted in a month, which is cheering when the weather is forty degrees outside, the flies are eating my horse alive, and my motivation is at a low ebb.

What I actually jot down

I do not try to capture every word my coach says. That would be impossible, and it would also be the wrong goal. Instead, I write down three things, usually in a tidy little list at the top of the page. The first is the focus of the session, written as a single line. The second is the main correction, again as a single line, usually phrased as a cue I can use mid-ride. The third is a homework line, written as a specific, measurable thing I can tick off during the week.

For example, after a dressage clinic with a visiting instructor in Camperdown, my page might read: "Focus: keep the bend in the left canter. Correction: outside rein at the start of the corner. Homework: twenty-metre circles on the left lead three times this week." That is it. Three lines. I do not need to write an essay on equitation theory, because my coach has already done that in her head and given me the distilled version. My job is to capture the distillation, not the source material.

Over time, these three-line entries have become a record of my training that is far more useful than any video. Videos show me what happened, but the notes tell me what my coach thought about it. Those are not always the same thing, especially when the coach is watching my position, my horse's way of going, and the overall picture rather than the single moment I happened to capture on my phone. I have also started adding a one-word mood note at the bottom of the page, because the lesson where I was frustrated about my canter leads is a different lesson to the one where everything felt easy, and that context helps me when I look back.

How I organise the page

I am not a tidy person by nature, but I have learned that a notebook only works if you can find things again. So I keep a simple system. Every page gets a header with the date, the venue, and the coach's name. If I am at a multi-day clinic, I add a small Roman numeral in the corner so I know which day it was. That is the only structure I bother with, and it is enough to make the whole book searchable later.

I also use the same symbol every time, a small tick, when I have done the homework. After a few months, I can flick through and see which pieces of advice have actually been practised and which have been ignored. That little tick is a quiet form of accountability. I do not show the book to anyone, and no one checks up on me, but the empty spaces where the ticks should be are surprisingly motivating. They tell me I am wasting the lesson, and wasting a lesson in this sport is a costly thing, because the entry fees, the float fuel, and the time off work all add up fast.

A few other small habits help. I always write in the same pen, a blue biro that does not smudge when it gets damp from sweaty hands or a sudden shower at a cross-country schooling day. I always date the page before the lesson starts, because if I forget, the whole entry is useless later. And I always leave the back page blank for a running list of questions I want to ask at the next session, which I would otherwise forget the moment I drove out the gate.

The unexpected benefits for my riding

The most surprising thing about keeping a notebook is how it has changed the way I ride in the moment. When I know I am going to write down the focus, I listen for it actively during the warm-up. I am not just waiting for my coach to say something interesting. I am listening for the thread that runs through the whole session, because I know I will need to capture it in one short line at the end.

That active listening has a knock-on effect in the saddle. I arrive at the lesson knowing that the only way I will leave with good notes is if I am present for the whole hour. So I put my phone away, I stop chatting to friends at the gate, and I focus on the horse underneath me. Coaches notice this, and I have had several tell me that my riding has improved since I started being more attentive, which is a chicken-and-egg situation I am happy to live with.

The other unexpected benefit is the way the notebook has become a training diary, not just a lesson log. I have started jotting down things I notice at home, too. If my horse is sticky in the right canter lead on a Tuesday, I write it down. If I have a breakthrough with my half-halt on a Thursday, I write that down as well. By the time I get to a lesson, I have a clear picture of what has been going well and what has not, and my coach can skip the first ten minutes of detective work and get straight to the useful part. If you want a feel for how I plan my season around this kind of detail, you can take a look at my competition schedule page.

When paper beats a phone

I have tried using my phone for lesson notes, and I have given up. The screen is hard to read in bright Australian sun, typing with cold fingers in winter is awful, and the temptation to check messages, scroll Instagram, or look at the scores from a comp on the other side of the country is just too strong. A notebook does none of those things. It sits in my pocket, it does what it is told, and it never pings at me mid-lesson.

There is also a tactile thing that I did not appreciate until I started doing it. Writing by hand forces me to slow down and choose my words. When I type, I capture everything. When I write, I capture only what matters, because the act of forming each letter by hand takes longer, and my brain quietly edits as it goes. The result is a more useful record, even if it is a shorter one.

Battery life is another quiet win. I have lost count of the number of times someone at a clinic has asked to borrow a pen, or needed to write down a contact, or wanted to scribble a quick diagram, and I have been the one with something to hand. It sounds like a small thing, but in a sport where so much is digital, being the person with a working analogue tool still matters. And if you are interested in the warm-up side of things, there is a useful piece on warming up your hips that pairs well with the kind of physical prep I do before a busy clinic weekend.

Building a habit that sticks

Like any habit, the notebook only works if I actually use it. I have a few small tricks that keep me honest. The notebook lives in the same pocket of the same jodhpurs, so I never have to remember to pack it. I also keep a spare in the truck, because the day I forget the pocket one is always the day my coach has a list of corrections longer than my arm. And I have a rule that the page gets written up within ten minutes of the lesson ending, while the details are still fresh, even if I am sitting on a tailgate in a dusty car park trying not to spill my flat white.

I have also stopped worrying about keeping the book pretty. There are coffee rings, smudges, and the occasional dog-eared page from a wet day at a training day in Werribee. It is a working tool, not a journal, and treating it that way means I actually use it instead of leaving it at home to stay clean. The best notebook is the one with the worst cover, in my experience, because it means the pages inside are full of useful things.

If you are thinking about starting your own, my advice is to keep it small. A pocket-sized book is more likely to come with you than an A4 pad, and a cheap biro is more likely to get used than a lovely fountain pen you are scared of ruining. Start with three lines after your next lesson, and see what happens. After a few months, you will have a record of your training that is worth its weight in gold, and you will wonder how you ever managed without it. You can read more about how I approach all of this over on the blog, and if you have a system that works for you, I would genuinely love to hear about it.