When you want to be the best you need to train with the best. This year, I have been fortunate enough to train with 9 different top trainers. One of which was Lisa Frick.
Seriously, three four* time WORLD CHAMPION, Lisa Frick. And you know what? She’s Frick-ing amazing.
She’s probably no taller than me (5’4″), and yet she moves around those technical European courses at a rate that allows her to be ahead of her Border Collie nearly the entire time. She’s very consistent, a great trainer, and even with all her success, a super humble (and fun) person.
Before training with Lisa Frick, I always told people how I wanted to run like her. Fast. Confident. Consistent.
Now I want to emulate not only her success in training/trialing, but also her awesome attitude.
I am a nobody on the world-scale of agility. Locally, regionally, and even nationally, there are those that know me or my dogs, but certainly not internationally. But Lisa gave me attention during her seminar that made me feel like she saw the potential in me. Did she? Who knows. She gave everyone that same super-attentive instruction. And it was GREAT.
I owe many thanks to Marla in California for bringing Lisa Frick to the United States. She not only gave me a chance to feel like I had international potential, but also gave me the opportunity to be re-invigorated in my training and attitude.
My take away from this seminar:
– Run Fast
– Train A LOT of Foundation…no handling technique will make up for a poor foundation
– Smile. Even if you just lost….in front of the whole world.
– Treat every student like they are important to you. It doesn’t matter if they take one lesson with you, or spend their entire agility career training with you. The time you spend training another person can literally alter how they view themselves. (Seriously, how do you feel when an instructor says “Good job! Next.”, but doesn’t give you ANY critiques versus the instructor who pushes you to “Do it again!” until you’re exhausted, but finally have that moment of understanding.)
– Exercise. This is only the second seminar this year that had me winded, but two times means it’s time to step up my activity.
Check out my video from Lisa’s seminar here:
*At the time this post was written, Lisa and Hoss had achieved three world championships. As of 2014, they are now FOUR time world champions!
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