Competing has a funny way of exposing absolutely everything.The position problem you can mostly get away with at home? Suddenly very obvious.The horse who gets a little strong when you are nervous? Hello, warm-up ring.The tiny voice in your head that says, Please don't mess this up approximately three strides before the important part? Incredible timing, as always.Getting better at competition is not only about jumping more courses, riding more tests or adding another lesson to your week. Performance is the combination of dozens of pieces: your position, decision-making, mental game, physical fitness, preparation and horse care.That is where NF+ can become a pretty serious tool for competitors.Instead of only using the library to learn riding exercises, use it to create a better system around your sport.Here is where we would start.1. Start with the thing affecting every single stride: youBefore adding another exercise to your training plan, spend some time in Master Your Position.Your position is not only about looking pretty in the saddle. It affects balance, communication, timing and how easily your horse can do their job underneath you.Karl Cooks Fundamentals of Functional Position is a great place to begin because he approaches position from exactly that perspective. The goal is not to create a rider who photographs beautifully at one frozen moment. It is to create a position that works, giving you stability and allowing you to communicate with your horse without getting in their way.This is also a good place to get curious about the habits you have stopped noticing. Are you tipping ahead? Depending on your hands? Losing your lower leg when the pressure goes up? Working much harder than the person underneath you needs to?Competition has a habit of magnifying whatever is already there.So work on it before you pay an entry fee to discover it.2. Stop just riding the course. Learn how to compete.There is riding, and then there is competing.The Ride to Win collection is where you start studying the second part.Karl Cooks How to Ride Strategically is essentially an invitation to stop riding on autopilot. His work focuses on planning, making decisions and adapting as the ride unfolds. That is a very useful skill when the course you walked and the horse you have underneath you suddenly appear to have made separate plans.For hunter riders, Archie Cox gets incredibly specific about what separates a decent trip from a competitive one. How to Win and The Art of Perfecting the Hunter Ride get into the canter, flatwork, ring strategy, preparation and presentation that judges notice. You are not just practicing eight jumps. You are learning how to produce an entire round.If distances are where things start unraveling, go to Missy Clarks Recognizing & Riding the Distance. If confidence is the issue, Boyd Martins bravery series looks at competence, preparation and developing a horse who can still think when the questions get harder.Use this collection when you want to start thinking less like someone trying to survive the round and more like someone who knows how to ride one.3. Study the skills that make competition easier before you ever enter the ringThe glamorous part of competing is approximately twelve minutes long.The preparation takes months.NF+ gives you the chance to work backwards from what you want to happen in competition and strengthen the pieces that make it possible.For a jumper rider, that might mean spending time on Martin Fucsh work on adjustability so you can compress and lengthen the stride without the conversation turning into an argument. HisRiding the Turn Masterclass uses his winning techniques for mastering turns that are not only tighter and faster but also more balanced and horse-friendly.It might mean going into Will Colemans The Truth Behind Riding Leg to Hand and getting much more precise about a phrase most of us have heard approximately four thousand times without anyone fully explaining what it is supposed to feel like.Or maybe you need Ian and Amy Millar, Anne Kursinski, Peter Wylde, Steffen Peters or another trainer whose approach gives you a new way to look at the problem you are having.That is one of the big advantages of NF+ for competitors. You can have your regular trainer and program, then use the library to widen your education around it.Because your trainer does not need you showing up next Tuesday with a completely new personality and seven contradictory training systems.They will probably appreciate you becoming a more educated rider, though.4. Learn how to take care of the athlete underneath youIf you compete, your horse is an athlete.Which means performance does not begin when you get on and end when you get off.Spend time inside Caring for Your Horse, Inside & Out learning the management side of sport too.Max Corcorans Horse Care for All Seasons draws on decades of caring for elite event horses and gets into the practical details that change as workload, weather and environment change. Her Leg Protection 101 course breaks down boots, polos, standing wraps and when different types of protection make sense.Then keep going.Margo Thomas teaches post-ride leg care. Dr. Jill Copenhagen looks at how riding and management relate to long-term soundness. Dr. Bess Darrow gets into the horses mouth and bitting. Mette Larsen takes another look at bit mechanics. There is even Emma Ford teaching mane braiding because, yes, at some point somebody has to make those braids look respectable.Performance horse care is full of things that are easy to hand off to someone else until suddenly you are the one standing in a stall at 9 p.m. wondering if that leg looks different.Knowing more is useful.And even if you have an incredible groom, barn manager, veterinarian and farrier around you, understanding the horse you are asking to perform is part of being a better competitor.5. Train the athlete sitting on top tooWe ask horses to be strong, balanced, supple, coordinated and fit.Then sometimes we climb aboard after sitting at a desk for eight hours and expect them to work around our left hip.A little unfair.Inside Ride Well, Live Well, you can work specifically on the physical side of being a rider.Yoga for Equestrians with Chantal Russell focuses on mobility, strength and recovery for riders, while Cross Training for Equestrians with Ifa Simmonds targets the muscles that directly affect your effectiveness in the saddle.Use these sessions around your riding schedule rather than treating rider fitness as another giant project you have to take on.Ten or twenty minutes spent working on your mobility, core, stability or strength can support everything you are already trying to improve on the horse.Your horse has a fitness program.You can have one too.6. Train for the version of you who shows up at competitionsThen there is the brain.Possibly the most dramatic member of the team.You can ride beautifully at home all month and still walk into a competition feeling like you have temporarily forgotten how horses work.That is why sports psychology belongs in a performance plan just as much as flatwork does.Dr. Jenny Sussers work is a particularly good place to spend time. In Performing Under Pressure, she helps riders identify their own relationship with pressure and develop tools for competition nerves, riding in front of other people and those moments when the stakes suddenly feel much bigger. Her How to Control Fear and Anxiety course goes further into the science behind fear, breathing, mindfulness and what to do when your brain decides now would be an excellent time to imagine every possible disaster.There is also Karl Cooks Dealing with Disappointing Rides, because unfortunately competitive riding includes those too.Watch that one before you need it.Tonya Johnstons work on becoming a more consistent rider and NF+s rider mindset content can help you create routines around focus and performance instead of hoping you wake up on show morning mysteriously feeling like an Olympic champion.Mental skills are skills.Train them.7. Build your pre-show NF+ routineThis is where we would make NF+ work very practically for you.A few weeks before a show, identify what needs attention.Maybe your position has started falling apart when the jumps go up. Head into Master Your Position.Maybe the horse feels great but you are second-guessing every decision. Spend time with Dr. Jenny or Annette Paterakis' mindset work.Maybe distances have been inconsistent. Revisit Missy Clark.Maybe your horse needs to feel more adjustable before you start thinking about shaving seconds off a jump-off. Go back to Karl.Maybe your horse has a demanding competition schedule ahead. Spend an evening inside the horse-care collection reviewing recovery, legs, soundness and management.NF+ does not have to become another thing on your training to-do list.Use it to support the thing you are already trying to improve.8. After the show, resist the urge to declare the entire weekend a success or disasterCompetitive riders are extremely normal about results.Obviously.After a show, use NF+ to help you debrief more usefully.If the round went well, figure out why.If it did not, resist turning one bad ride into a referendum on your entire riding career.Was the issue technical? Tactical? Mental? Fitness-related? Horse care? Preparation? Did you lose your position? Did you stop riding strategically? Did your horse need another kind of preparation?Then choose the part of the library that can help you work on it.That gives you something much more useful than replaying the video seventeen times and zooming in on fence six.Although you are still allowed to do that.9. Go Behind the Barn DoorsNot every lesson needs to look like a lesson.The Behind the Barn Doors collection gives you something competitors rarely get: access to what high-level sport looks like when nobody is riding into the ring.Watch A Day in the Life with Piggy March. Tour Maydwell Lodge Farm and see the systems surrounding a world-class eventing operation, from arenas and gallops to turnout and rehabilitation. Follow Mavis Spencer through a day at the Winter Equestrian Festival. Peek inside Peder Fredricsons tack room.Then there are NF+s exclusive and extended behind-the-scenes cuts from Faultless, giving members another look inside elite sport beyond the polished rounds we normally see.Watch these when you need inspiration, but also watch them with your competitor brain switched on.What does the barn look like?How are the horses managed?How are riders spending the hours when they are not competing?What systems are surrounding the performance you eventually see in the ring?Sometimes the most useful thing you can learn from a top rider is not how they rode the combination.It is everything that happened before they got there.10. Learn across disciplinesThis is one of the easiest NF+ advantages for competitors to underestimate.Do not only watch riders from your own discipline.Hunter rider? Go listen to Karl Cook.Jumper? See how Steffen Peters thinks about responsiveness and the aids.Dressage rider? Watch an eventer prepare a horse for pressure.Eventer? There is plenty to steal from the precision of hunter and equitation trainers.You are not trying to become a dressage-jumper-hunter-eventer hybrid creature who owns fourteen saddles.You are looking for principles.Balance. Timing. Preparation. Feel. Decision-making. Fitness. Horse management. Mental performance.High-level sport may look very different from ring to ring, but excellent riders spend a lot of time thinking about the same things.NF+ lets you eavesdrop on all of them.Use NF+ as part of your competitive seasonThe real opportunity is not watching one Masterclass and expecting your next show to magically produce a blue ribbon.Use NF+ over time.Spend your off-season working on your position and rider fitness. Go deeper into training courses while you are developing your horse at home. As competition gets closer, revisit strategy and sports psychology. During the season, lean on horse care, mindset and specific technical lessons. After shows, come back with the questions your rounds gave you.Then repeat.Because improving as a competitor is not one course, one trainer or one breakthrough.It is years of collecting better information, noticing more and getting a little smarter about how you prepare.That is also why Member for Life makes so much sense for competitive riders.You do not need every part of NF+ today.You might need rider position right now, sports psychology before your next show, horse-care content halfway through the season and a completely different Masterclass when your goals move up a level.Member for Life gives you one payment, no renewals and access to the NF+ library available when you join, so you can keep coming back as your competitive career changes.Because your show schedule may have an end date.Your education really shouldnt.