Feeling nervous is not always a bad thing, in fact nerves can help our riding — they speed up your reactions and make you ride with more purpose. But, for some people nerves can have the opposite effect, making competing stressful and spoiling your enjoyment of the sport.
The trick is to learn to work with your emotional responses, channelling them the right direction rather than trying to eradicate them altogether.
Here are some tips:
1. Know that you are not alone - many people feel nervous in similar situations, and you may even find fellow riders are also feeling the same nerves. Being nervous means that you care, and that’s a good thing!
2. Identify any possible causes behind your nervousness, such as a previous bad experience, and get some professional help with your recollection of events. Talk about your feelings to a friends or family members, discussing what might trigger negative thoughts. Understanding what you are worried about is the first step to overcoming your fears.
3. Take the word “nervous” out of your vocabulary, both in your outward conversations and in your inward thought dialogue. Replace it with the word “excitement”. You’ll be amazed how your brain will adapt and generate a totally different state.
4. Learn to keep your body physically relaxed. If you can keep your body soft and relaxed, your brain finds it very hard to generate a negative emotional state. The best way to keep your body soft is to concentrate on your breathing. With practise, you can even synchronise breathing to the horse’s strides in any pace, this will help you maintain your breathing and a good rhythm.
5. Start riding in peripheral vision. Peripheral vision is another thing that your body naturally does when it is relaxed. Put yourself into it directly, and your brain assumes that you must be relaxed and everything is okay with. It is that soft, blurry gaze where your eyes remain firmly fixed on one spot out in front of you whilst taking in everything around you by way of vague shapes, colours and movement. Learning to ride like this makes it difficult for your brain to generate a negative state and it will also improve your balance and sense of feel.
6. Actively create images and movies of you riding confidently. Using visualisation is a great tool but you have to teach your brain to do this. Imagine yourself having a successful round and how this might look and feel went it goes really well, this will put you in a more positive mindset. You will need to practice this visualisation for it to become clearer and more powerful but is well worth the effort.
7. Don’t try and control the uncontrollable. There is absolutely no point in worrying about the things that you can do nothing about on the day of the show. This includes: the weather, the judges or course builders or your fellow competitors and how nice their horses are. Instead focus on the things you can control, such as arriving on time, having all your kit ready, knowing your test, and having a competition routine.
8. Focus on your strengths. Remind yourself of your strengths and accomplishments, this will help you to feel more confident and prepared for competitions.
9. Routines rock. Sticking to a planned routine gives you a sense of security, even if all else fails. Routines can involve anything from how you tack up your horse, to how you structure your warm-up. Just before entering the ring, many riders benefit from going through the course one more time in their heads, seeing themselves perform at the very best of their ability.
10. Remember, confidence is like a muscle, the more we use it, the stronger it gets.
Indoor Jumping can bring its own challenges!
Jumping indoors — whether you’re training or competing — can be a whole different ballgame, so it’s important that both you and your horse are prepared.
Tips for indoor jumping
Shorten your distances in training:
When competing indoors over fences you’ll be faced with shorter related distances — three- or four-stride combinations rather than seven or eight. Build these distances at home to help your horse deal with them.
Practise in tight spaces:
Space will be tighter when competing indoors and you’ll be jumping ‘into’ the wall. You can practise this at home — just position the jumps near the edge of the arena or fence line and closer together than usual. This will help you both hone your skills at jumping on and off tight turns, as well as short lines to the approach of a fence.
Make the most of every corner:
Use all the corners when you’re competing indoors, because there will be less room to take a turn and so you must utilise the space that’s available well. Cutting corners wastes precious space that could mean the difference between a good stride and a poor one, and a clear round or jumping penalties.
Beware of shadows:
Shadows occur outside on sunny days too, of course, but when you’re jumping indoors the way the lights shine on some fillers may be spooky and dark corners could cause a spook too. Indoor arenas can be noisy too, with the sound of voices, footsteps, etc.
Embrace the winter! Summer will come sooner than you think!
