What You Get in Your Competitive Edge Report

A Boutique Behavioral & Psychological Performance Evaluation

by Kerry M. Thomas

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Your horse's performance tells us what happened.

​The Competitor's Edge helps us understand the horse who made it happen.

Every profile is individually developed from observation and analysis of the horse, not generated from a standardized checklist.

​The result is something much more useful than a behavioral description.

It is an owner's manual for the athlete: a window into how your horse experiences competition, processes its environment, manages emotional and sensory pressure, uses its physical talent, and what may help that individual horse perform more effectively and sustainably.

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WHO IS THE HORSE?

The Operating System Profile

Every evaluation begins with the individual horse.

Before asking what the horse can do, we first seek to understand who is doing it.

Through Herd Dynamic Profiling™ and Sensory Soundness™, Kerry evaluates the behavioral and psychological operating system underneath physical expression.

Depending upon what the horse reveals, this may include:

• emotional capacity and expression

• Group Herd Dynamic (GHD) and Individual Herd Dynamic (IHD)

• Sensory Soundness™ and sensory processing

• environmental awareness

• Interpretive Ratio and available Cushion

• stress tolerance and recovery

• emotional expenditure and conservation

• mind-to-body fluency

• Athletic Intelligence

• competitive nature and purpose

These are not isolated scores.

Together, they help us understand how the individual horse perceives, processes, decides, adapts and responds.

This is the horse behind the athlete.

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THE COMPETITOR'S EDGE

Horse vs. Self

Once we understand the operating system, we examine its relationship with physical talent.

The central question becomes:

How effectively does this horse's mind allow it to access, optimize, sustain and express the physical athlete it has been given?

For some horses, the mind amplifies physical ability.

For others, tremendous physical talent can compensate for psychological or sensory inefficiencies.

And sometimes a horse performs extremely well while paying an emotional cost that may not immediately appear on a race chart.

​The Competitor's Edge looks beneath the result.

Depending upon the individual horse, the evaluation may explore Competitive Duration, Environmental Demands, sensory efficiency under stress, Emotional Economy, changes in psychological resolve, rider or jockey interaction, performance patterns and the conditions in which the horse is most likely to flourish.

Because two horses with similar physical ability may experience the same demands very differently.

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FROM ANALYSIS TO APPLICATION

Understanding should give us somewhere to go.

A Competitor's Edge Profile is not intended simply to tell you interesting things about your horse.

Where the observations support it, the report translates what we learn into practical considerations for development and performance.

​These may include recommendations concerning:

• training rhythm and workload

• environmental management

• pre-race and race-day routines

• equipment considerations

• jockey or rider communication

• transitions and warm-up

• stress accumulation and recovery

• development of sensory confidence

• Competitive Duration

• preservation of emotional resources

• longer-term performance sustainability

The objective is not to create a formula for the horse.

It is to better align the human program with the horse actually living inside it.

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FROM POTENTIAL TO PERFORMANCE

What is helping the athlete—and what may be getting in the way?

The Competitor's Edge is not limited to analyzing what a horse has already done.

Understanding the operating system can also help us evaluate what may yet be possible.

A horse may possess physical talent that is not being fully expressed because of sensory interference, environmental incompatibility, emotional expenditure, developmental pressure, communication, equipment, training circumstances or other demands upon the operating system.

​Conversely, a horse may be achieving impressive physical results while relying upon talent to compensate for psychological inefficiencies that could become increasingly important as competitive demands rise.

This makes the evaluation useful at different stages of the Thoroughbred's development, from young horses and prospective purchases to horses in training, established competitors and horses whose performance has become inconsistent.

​We are not attempting to predict the future.

We are looking for the conditions under which the individual horse has the greatest opportunity to optimize its own potential.

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WHEN THE HORSE MEETS THE COMPETITION

Once we understand the individual, we can go another step when circumstances require it.

Competition creates its own environment.

​Pace. Position. Traffic. Herd Motion. Pressure from other horses. Environmental complexity. Changing race shape.

Each places different demands upon the horse's operating system.

This allows us to ask one of the central questions within The Competitor's Edge:

What does this horse need the competitive environment to become in order to optimize its physical talent?

For one horse, that may mean time and space to establish rhythm.

Another may require a target.

Another may thrive within herd pressure.

Another may expend valuable emotional resources fighting circumstances that work against its natural operating system.

Understanding these differences can help explain not only performance itself, but the circumstances in which performance is most likely to become sustainable and repeatable.

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YOUR HORSE. YOUR PROFILE.

No two Competitor's Edge Profiles are identical because no two horses experience the world in precisely the same way.

The observations lead the evaluation.

Your report may identify significant strengths, vulnerabilities, environmental requirements, performance opportunities or developmental considerations that deserve particular attention.

Throughout the report, complex behavioral and sensory concepts are explained in practical language so owners, trainers and riders can use the information, not simply read it.

The goal is clarity.

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To help answer: Who is this horse?

How does this horse experience the demands placed upon it?

How effectively does the operating system support the physical athlete?

Where might emotional or sensory interference begin?

Is there unrealized potential being obscured by the circumstances surrounding the horse?

And what can we do differently because we now understand the horse more completely?

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MORE THAN A PERFORMANCE REPORT

The value of understanding the horse does not end with the next race.

What we learn can help inform training, development, management, environmental decisions, rider or jockey compatibility, future competitive decisions, purchase considerations and, where appropriate, eventual breeding considerations.

As the horse develops, the profile becomes a reference point.

An owner's manual.

A performance guide.

And most importantly, a better view of the individual underneath the athlete.

Performance should never be measured by achievement alone. It must also be measured by the emotional cost required to achieve it.

​WHO IS THE HORSE?

Because understanding the athlete begins by understanding the horse.