The Origins of Fear

The first thing to consider is where the fear is coming from. Has there been a pattern of negative behavior over time from your horse, such as spooking, bucking, rearing, or refusing jumps that caused the fear to build slowly? Or was there a specific event, such as a fall, that can be marked as the clear start of the problem?

No matter the answer, it’s important that you identify the root cause of your fear beyond just saying “I’m nervous” or “I’m afraid.” The best way to overcome fear is through logic and understanding so that you’re able to take control of your emotions and redirect your thoughts.

Physical Effects of Fear

Another aspect of your fear to consider is how it manifests itself in your body. Some people can continue riding but with a very tense body—gripping thighs, lifted shoulders, or hands pulling on the reins—all without realizing it.

Others experience a brain fog where they are unable to focus, or in more intense cases, have a panic attack and find themselves with shortness of breath and unable to make their body move, frozen on top of their horse, when they perceive a threat to their safety.

Riders will often attempt to ignore their fear, hoping it will go away. I have never seen this work in the long term. Whether there is mental or physical tension, there is a notable effect on your horse. He is looking for guidance and leadership from you, his other herd member.

Due to his natural instincts, he will translate your tension and hypervigilance into thinking a predator or other threat is nearby. By not confronting your riding fear head on, you allow your horse to continue to be affected, which is sure to take a toll on your rides overall.

Calming Your Nervous System

Usually fear causes either a repetitive thought or a fractured thought process. Examples might be “he’s going to spin”; “she’s going to stop”; or just a general inability to take deep breaths and have a complete and focused thought structure.

The solution is to replace the hamster wheel of panicked thought with one or two positive, actionable mantras such as “close your leg”; “push your hands forward”; or “melt in.” This, paired with controlled deep breaths, allows you to begin to calm your nervous system and improve your riding in a way that directly targets the changes needing to be made.

Soothing your nervous system before you mount is extremely important as well. This may begin as early as during the car ride on the way to the barn. Listening to music or podcasts you enjoy is a good idea, separating you from the stress of whatever may be going on in your life outside the barn.

Try to allow ample time to tack your horse before a lesson so that you aren’t rushed. Leave time for stretching for both you and your horse, a light longe if your horse needs it, and five to 10 minutes of walking before the main part of your ride begins.

Grounding Exercise

If at any time you find your mind wandering and worrying about the upcoming ride (or something else entirely), begin to practice the 5-4-3-2-1 Grounding Technique to keep you in the present moment.

To complete this exercise, you notice and acknowledge five things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste, all from where you are currently located.

This works great both on and off the horse, and it may be useful to share it with your instructor if they aren’t familiar so they can guide you through it if fear or anxiety show up during a lesson.

Key Takeaway

As you begin your journey back to confidence and overcoming riding fear, be kind to yourself. At no point should you judge yourself or be embarrassed for being afraid while riding. Everyone, at all levels of equestrian sport, has had a similar experience. Remember, bravery isn’t about being fearless, it’s about being afraid and doing it anyway.

Further Reading:
◆ 8 Fear-Fighting Strategies for Riding
◆ Overcoming Fear After a Riding Accident
◆ Afraid to Ride?
◆ Help Your Horse Overcome Fear

This article about overcoming riding fear appeared in the June 2024 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

The post Overcoming Riding Fear appeared first on Horse Illustrated Magazine.

Anxiety After Injury

Lyndsey Wanits had ridden since childhood. At 19, she sustained an injury due to misguidance from a trainer and took five years off from riding. While she missed it, she was not 100 percent sure she wanted to get back in the saddle. She knew that if she mounted up again, she would need help.

“I eventually wanted to join a show team and also show in the alumni division of a college circuit,” she says. “I posted in a Facebook group asking for a professional experienced in working with riders with anxiety and timid tendencies. The coach I found got me up to speed and in those doors with the greatest support and mentorship.”

Wanits also found an equestrian fitness coach who was instrumental in helping her regain strength and confidence. At the end of the 2022 show season, she finished fourth in the region in the western alumni division and was named Champion Jr. Horse and Reserve Walk Trot Jog Champion in her local show circuit.

A Long Hiatus

Tammy Thomas rode as a child without formal lessons, but had to put her passion for riding on hold for 40 years. In retirement, she bought her first horse and knew she needed a riding coach to help her chase her dreams.

“Because I started when I was older, I knew I didn’t have as much time left in the saddle, so I needed someone who could teach me to ride my horse while working toward my goals,” says Thomas. “We spend a lot of time setting goals, and she tells me what might not be realistic at this point, or where she wants me to step up.”

With her coach’s guidance, she finished her first-ever show season as the Green Novice Rider Reserve Champion of her show circuit. Her next show season, she won the Intermediate Reserve Champion, and by her third show season, she was winning the Limited Non Pro Championship title.

Trainer vs. Coach

It’s important to tease out the differences between a coach and a trainer. A trainer is a skilled horse person who teaches technical skills and maneuverers to you and/or your horse. A coach may also be a trainer, but goes beyond the technical aspects and focuses on your goals and mental skills to achieve your desired outcomes.

“The coach’s job is to blend everything together and to help riders understand what they want to accomplish and why,” says Shannon Pigott. She is a western performance horse trainer and an executive coach based in Fredericksburg, Texas, who formerly worked in corporate America. “My No. 1 goal is to help clients understand what they want to accomplish and why, not just the ‘how to do it.’”

Leslie Holleman rode hunter/jumpers through young adulthood. After a 25-year break, she jumped back into riding in a new discipline—American Quarter Horse Association (AQHA) ranch riding and ranch trail. But ranch versatility caught her eye. She knew she needed lessons to learn how to perform the maneuvers properly. But she also wanted more: a coach who focused as much on the mental skills as the technical skills.

“A coach may also be a skilled rider and trainer, but they are highly skilled at helping you communicate your goals, translating that into a forward trajectory to level up, and working on the mental management of stress and confidence that comes with showing,” says Holleman.

Finding a Coach

Every coach brings a unique perspective and approach to their program. That diversity in skillsets means there is a person perfectly suited to your goals, values, and learning styles, and these three tips can help you find the right coach for your needs.

1. Focus on fit: The instant Holleman read her coach’s bio on the Downunder Horsemanship brand ambassador forum, she knew she had found the right person.

“Her bio said, ‘I’m a people coach, and I focus on novice riders and versatility ranch horse,’” says Holleman. “I was like that’s great—that’s me!”

Working with a riding coach is a commitment, with many coaches requiring a minimum of six months to a year in their program. So, knowing a bit about the individual before making the investment is critical.

“Choose someone whose values align with yours and who will allow you to explore what is important to you and help you develop a plan to achieve your goals,” Pigott said. “I recommend interviewing people and taking a few lessons with different people until you find the right fit.”

2. Know your learning style: People learn and feel motivation differently. Thomas, a retired educator, knew her coach frequently uses a classroom style setting, and she appreciates that approach.

“If you learn best by having someone show you what to do and then having you go out and do it, you need a coach who teaches that way,” she says. “If you’re an auditory and lecture-type learner, choose that type of coach.”

The Wrong Fit

Working with a riding coach is a lot like being in a relationship, and not all work out as hoped. It’s important to recognize when it’s time to break up.

“If you find yourself in a spot where the activities aren’t fun anymore, riding is a chore, you aren’t achieving the results you are looking for, or you feel like you have no support, start looking for someone different,” says Wanits. “Everyone deserves to have fun. Don’t lose your spark because you and your coach don’t jive.”

This article about hiring a riding coach appeared in the June 2023 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

The post Should You Hire a Riding Coach? appeared first on Horse Illustrated Magazine.

One of the biggest challenges you can face as a rider is trying to effectively incorporate your practice sessions while in the ring at a horse show. All disciplines are affected by the heightened energy at a show, where the nerves of horses, riders, and spectators combine with an unfamiliar atmosphere to make a very high-pressure situation.

Every show (and often different classes at the same show) can have different rules regarding whether riders may practice ahead of time in the arena where they will compete. Even if riders are allowed in the ring ahead of time, there are many variables that may affect that practice session, including other riders, a fresh horse, arena maintenance, et cetera.

However, the one thing that you have complete control over is your mental preparation.

Visualization of Success

One of the most tried-and-true methods in mentally preparing for competition is visualization. Visualization is crucial when riding because it allows you to experience the competition ahead of time in a way that is otherwise impossible.

Something that will greatly enhance your ability to visualize is to spend time around the outside of the arena and soak in the view from all angles. Time spent walking inside the arena is also valuable, but not always possible. This helps your brain build a 3-D picture by taking note of the colors of banners, jumps or other obstacles in the ring, objects just outside the arena fence like seating, landscaping, or judge’s booths, and also getting an idea of the distances and angles between the different obstacles or jumps.

Visualization is extremely effective because when done correctly, it activates and strengthens the same neural pathways as actual physical practice. Visualizing should take about the same amount of time as the actual ride; for example, a dressage test visualization should take about four minutes if that is the projected time for riding the test.

How many times you choose to visualize the ride is up to you. You may choose to visualize a certain number of times, visualize periodically up until your ride, or continue until it flows very smoothly in your mind.

In the event that you visualize something incorrectly, whether it be an incorrect sequence or an actual mistake, you may choose to “rewind” the visualization and start again just before the mistake, or you can restart completely.

It’s important to recognize, however, that thinking ahead about the small corrections your horse may need, such as extra right leg to prevent a right drift, is a crucial part of the plan rather than a mistake in your visualization.

Feel the Ride

Probably the most misunderstood thing about visualization is that people think of watching themselves ride their class, course, test, or pattern as if they were a spectator outside the arena. This does not serve the same purpose nor provide the same benefits as closing your eyes and truly feeling yourself ride the class, course, test, or pattern as you intend to ride it.

Visualization should be an immersive experience during which you imagine activating the muscles you’ll need to execute your plan. This means dialing into your focus ahead of time and building sensory memory.

It’s important to be as detailed as possible during each run-through so that your mind begins to relate to the class, course, test, or pattern as a familiar experience. Tune in to the feeling of your legs on your horse’s sides, stretching up tall through your upper body, looking ahead to where you are going next, or whatever else you know will need your mental attention during your ride.

Be sure to include all aspects of the arena while you are visualizing so that then the crowd, the flapping banner, or the two jumps that are confusingly placed next to each other are all familiar by the time you actually enter the ring on horseback.

Environment and Routine

It’s important that you maintain a focus-friendly environment while you are visualizing. It’s not a good time for friends and family to be bombarding you with questions or playing loud music or videos right next to you.

You may be able to establish a boundary ahead of time by giving a brief explanation of what you will be doing, or it may take a few shows for your supporters to begin to understand this new part of your routine.

Visualization may not come naturally to you at first, but I encourage you to take control of your mind in order to create a competition environment that has fewer variables and more opportunities for practice and preparation than are available solely in the physical body.

This article about visualization skills for riding appeared in the March 2023 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

The post Visualization Skills for Riders appeared first on Horse Illustrated Magazine.

An excerpt from Neuroathletics for Riders by Marc Nölke about what causes riding anxiety.

Safe or Unsafe?

The human brain takes a giant dataset and compares it with information saved from previous experiences. Then it decides whether you are SAFE or UNSAFE. If your brain assesses the coming situation to be SAFE, it will relax your muscles, reduce your respiratory rate, keep your heart rate steady, and allow your joints to move through their full range of motion.

However, if it assesses the coming situation to be UNSAFE, it will increase muscular tension, respiratory rate, and pulse rate, and you might also experience pain or shortness of breath. Many people experience back pain. What’s more, your mental state is instantly influenced by your brain, so you feel anxious. And if your brain keeps detecting UNSAFE situations, you might even become depressed, which serves to avoid threats and keep you safe.

Perception of Safety

All this means we need to find stimuli that increase our perception of our safety. I’d like to use an example to explain what that means in practical terms: Imagine you tear a ligament in your ankle and rest your ankle for a long time. Your brain hardly receives any signals from the motion sensors in your ankle while you’re resting it. The neurons that transfer information from your ankle to your brain are “asleep” and may be asleep for weeks. When neurons stop firing, their connections to each other become weaker. Prior to your injury, the “map” of your ankle in your brain was precise (see clear map image) but now, after weeks without any activity, it isn’t precise anymore (see blurry map image).

That means your brain no longer knows exactly what position your foot is in; as a result, it can’t accurately predict how the foot can bear weight. Is this a good starting point for your brain to ensure your “survival”? Nope! Your brain thinks: “I have no idea what the foot’s doing, so I can’t guarantee anything.” In this context, riding your horse at canter over a log is immediately categorized as UNSAFE, and full power to your body and riding position will not be made available. But that obviously applies to all movements, not just jumping a log.

And if you nevertheless decide to jump the log, despite your brain’s hesitation, your stubborn frontal lobe will go on an ego trip. It can work, but only because people are incredibly good at compensating. You can expect your brain to reach for its ultimate emergency brake: pain. But you shouldn’t resent it, because it’s just trying to protect you. Your brain produces pain because it believes there are too many threatening signals and too few safe signals (G. Lorimer Moseley 2017).

When the Nervous System Takes It Too Far

Anxiety about riding is something riders don’t like to talk about. Everything becomes less fun, becomes a test of courage, and we start avoiding things that trigger our anxiety. We communicate our anxiety to the horse, too. Anxiety makes us overreact and sometimes do strange things—and often those things cause the horse to suffer. But our anxiety is usually based on false assumptions and expectations about future events. We can be anxious about people, animals, things, situations, movements, and pain. Denying or not acknowledging anxiety unfortunately doesn’t make the problem any smaller. Quite the opposite.

It’s much more helpful to recognize and understand anxiety. The leading scientist in the field of anxiety research, Joseph LeDoux, once said: “Anxiety is the price we pay for our brain’s ability to imagine the future.” I think that sums it up quite well.

Lorimer Moseley from Australia is one of the world’s leading scientists looking into the question of what pain is, how pain arises, and, of course, how we can reduce pain. He concisely sums up the results of his research: “Pain is a construct of the brain” (L. Moseley 2011).

Top researchers from both fields agree that pain and anxiety are “output”—that is, they are our brain’s opinions about the state of the current and future dangerous situation in and around our body.

In the case of fear of heights and vertigo, there are experimental indications that this unpleasant feeling could result from an “intersensory maladjustment if visual information does not correspond to vestibular and proprioceptive information” (Brandt et al. 1980).

It goes without saying that our experiences play a major role in this subconscious formation of opinions, as does the social and cultural milieu that we live in. Context influences perception of anxiety and pain (G. L. Moseley and Arntz 2007). For example, one and the same movement can occur and cause distress in the context of “barn/horses,” but cause no distress in the context of “family” or “office”—or vice versa.

Pain (and equally anxiety) warns us about impending danger and the threat of pain, and immediately mobilizes our stress and emergency systems to arm us against that potential threat. However, anxiety and pain aren’t necessarily proportional to the degree of actual injury, actual physical harm, or actual threat or danger we’re experiencing: We can feel incredible anxiety, capable of paralyzing us, even without being attacked by a real tiger. Knowing there’s no realistic chance of falling doesn’t stop us from feeling fear of heights. And in the same way, we can feel intense pain even when nothing is wrong. On the one hand, pain and anxiety are important, self-protective feelings—on the other hand, they can be disruptive and unhelpful when they occur frequently and inappropriately. Excitingly, numerous pieces of research show that understanding how these feelings arise can greatly reduce pain and anxiety. Knowledge can therefore be a very effective painkiller and anxiolytic (G. L. Moseley 2004)—and now you know a little more.

Allies for Survival

It’s helpful to imagine anxiety and pain as friends and allies, because, after all, they only want us to survive. However, sometimes these feelings objectively aren’t appropriate to the situation.

A mouse in the tack room is just as unlikely to kill us as a papercut, but both can trigger strong emotions. Pain can become problematic when an injury has long since healed, or when there is objectively no threat. Our “protective system” is working overtime, and protects us unnecessarily, like a “helicopter parent” at the playground, always hovering over their child, ready to needlessly intervene in a game and deny their child opportunities to learn. Many different areas of the brain are involved in these reactions. In pain research, we talk about the “pain neuromatrix” (Melzack, n.d.; G. Lorimer Moseley 2017; Chapman 1996; Legrain et al. 2011).

Neuromatrix

Let’s take an example: Imagine your grandma for a minute, and think of everything you associate with her. Here, “grandma” is a trigger for other thoughts, feelings, and maybe even physical sensations, just like an old song from our childhood can trigger a cascade of memories and associated feelings. In both cases, very different areas of the brain are activated to a lesser or greater extent. This would be a “grandma neuromatrix,” but your grandma matrix is guaranteed to be different from my grandma matrix. That’s also the case for the pain neuromatrix. Pain and anxiety are individual, and always real for the person experiencing them. Saying things like, “Don’t make a fuss,” or, “It’s not that bad,” don’t help anyone.

In my experience, it’s highly likely that much of your pain and anxiety will be alleviated if you develop your training with neuroathletic exercises and practice daily—because your brain gets better input from various systems in your body. Your “maps” become precise—and your brain can navigate more confidently and make better predictions about the future with better maps.

This excerpt about riding anxiety from Neuroathletics for Riders by Marc Nölke is reprinted with permission from Trafalgar Square Books (www.HorseandRiderBooks.com). This is a web exclusive for Horse Illustrated magazine.

The post What Causes Riding Anxiety? appeared first on Horse Illustrated Magazine.