What Racehorses Can Teach Us About Discipline, Focus, and Peak Performance

There is something deceptively difficult about the two minutes that horses spend on the track at a major event. Not to say that anyone clutching a ticket in one hand and a beer in the other watches, saying, “I bet I could run faster than that horse.” They might think, “Well, at least it’s only two minutes.”

That’s why they can run that fast, sure, but it’s also part of what makes these competitions so difficult.

With such a short run time, even a single mistake can cost a team everything. If you are the sort of person who enjoys a good horse betting app, you’ve probably noticed this problem with a vested interest before.

To find success requires an incredible amount of discipline and focus.

Months of work go into those two minutes. Is there a lesson in that? Yes. If you want to pursue greatness, maybe it will help to start thinking like a horse.

Ignore Distractions

The horses racing at the Kentucky Derby are placed in an arena filled with 150,000 fans. Fans scream from the stands. It’s an incredibly loud environment and, as sensory overload goes, close to as extreme as a situation can get. How do horses manage to focus only on the race when we humans can’t go ten minutes without checking our phones?

In fairness to us, horses who make it to the Derby are “professionals,” at least in every sense that the word can apply to an equine. They’ve been exposed to situations like this before, both in training and in smaller events throughout the season. That said, there are steps that horse teams take to ensure their equine is in a focused frame of mind come race day. They’re exposed to excess stimulation in different settings.

The recipe for training a horse to handle noise better is simple, even when the road is long. Start slow. Build trust. Improve gradually so that on race day, the equine is completely dialed in on what needs to happen.

You can use a similar method to increase your focus. If you are struggling to tune out distractions during an eight-hour work day, consider techniques that allow you to make incremental progress. The Pomodoro method is a great example. Set a timer for ten minutes.

During that time, work as hard as you possibly can.

You’ll be surprised how much you can get done even during a short period of time when you tune out all other distractions. As you get good at the Pomodoro, you can increase the time slightly, committing to longer work sprints.

Self-Care

No, they don’t light a candle for the horse and draw a hot bath. They do focus on routines and activities that will reduce stress in the animal’s brain at the chemical level. A big part of keeping equines calm is routine. When possible, the teams behind a champion grade horse will keep things consistent. Train at the same time. Eat at the same time. Pasture at the same time.

Routine reduces cortisol–the stress chemical–in your brain by making activities more predictable, and therefore less scary. The way most children are considerably more nervous for their first day of school than they are in their twenties, a race horse that experiences the same set of circumstances day in and day out will draw comfort from routine, even if they are incapable of framing the feeling in those terms.

Humans can draw similar solace in predictability, particularly during the work week. Optimize your routine not only for predictability but sustainability. That means developing habits that prioritize long-term health over short-term comfort. Eating a big sugary dessert after lunch every day might feel good in the moment, but you’ll pay for it later, both through potential digestive distress and longer-term problems like weight gain and sluggishness.

A healthy routine gives your body what it needs to tackle the challenges of the day. Healthy eating. Regular bedtimes. Consistent exercise.

Horse handlers also carefully select activities to soothe horses during times of particularly high stress. A famous and somewhat amusing example?

Race horses often played classical music. These compositions are shown to activate the parasympathetic nervous system. This is sometimes called the body’s “rest and digest” response. Basically, it’s how a system recovers from the stress of a day.

Humans can be similarly deliberate when choosing how to unwind. Classical music can apply just as well to us as it does to horses. Other similarly impactful activities include reading, good conversation, gardening, and animal encounters.

Keep in mind that stress is an actual chemical in your brain. It doesn’t necessarily go away just because you’ve returned home from work. Help yourself out the horse way with activities that are designed to give your brain what it needs to feel well.