Overview of the Skills of a Jockey

The skills of a successful horse jockey include being physically strong, light, flexible, resilient and able to manipulate horses in a variety of situations. Work on developing a sense of pace for horse racing with advice from a former professional jockey in this free video on being a jockey.

Some of the skills or most important skills as far as being a jockey or even an exercise rider, of course, you have to be physically strong, you have to be light, you have to be flexible, you have to have strong reflexes. Those are some of the things that are pretty much the foundation, the essence of what you need to be to be a jockey or exercise rider. Some of the things that you have to be mentally good at, why I say it's very important is you need to be resilient and as far as being able to handle the stress, the pressure. You would be amazed the amount of pressure that jockeys everyday have to deal with as far as going out and riding races, being able to follow the instructions and trying to please their owners and trainers, all their clients as far as the job they do riding the races. So resilience is a very strong thing as far as mental strength. Some other things that mentally that jockeys, good qualities in jockeys, is having a strong connection with your horse, being able to use your mind and put that physically in to your hands to help you manipulate your horses better, to try to get your horses to do what you want them to do, to stay calm, to stay relaxed when they need to be calm and relaxed and to be aggressive when they need to be aggressive. So these are just some of the things that both physically and mentally are going to be some strong points. Oh, one other thing I wanted to mentioned, is jockeys also need to have a good sense of pace. And basically what that means is while they're riding their horse, to have a good feel of how fast their horse is going or how much strength their horse has left to be able to navigate them and throttle them when they need to speed up or slow down. Those are some other important things. So, as far as, that covers physically and mentally what makes a good jockey.