When Jamie Price takes jumps, she takes the big ones. Therefore, when it came to the concept of overcoming the natural fears that go hand-in-hand with riding sports, RateMyRiding.com’s Jamie Price was the natural choice from whom to seek advice.
Visualizing success
Overcoming fears that go hand-in-hand with riding sports can be accomplished through visualization and a thorough understanding of your horse.
© 2012 by Debra Krall
Price recently joined Rate My Riding as their eventing coach. She has competed up to the two-star level and has brought home numerous horse and rider awards including being a 2011 Top Ten Ranked Intermediate Rider in Area IV and being the 2010 Area IV Adult Rider of the Year for the preliminary and intermediate levels.
Here are Price’s tips on how you can set your reservations aside:
Visualizations
The sport comes with all kinds of potentially dangerous activities that riders must find the courage to face coolly and to overcome. “Visualization is a key factor to easing fears for all kinds of situations,” Jamie shares.
“When I was younger, I thought the act of visualizing a clean show jumping round was silly. How could my mind influence fate and the universe to keep the rails up? As I became a better rider and the fences in competitions grew bigger, I realized I needed a tool to keep my mind focused and my butterflies to a minimum.”
Picturing the rides of the great show jumpers whom Jamie idolized turned out to be her best visualization trick. “I started to visualize myself riding exactly like them,” she explains, “and before I knew it, I was able to set aside my fears and focus on my course and my ride.”
As she visualized herself being more successful, it carried over to her rides and, by extension, to her career—she saw herself being more successful, and she became more successful.
Her favorite visualization tool now is to imagine four white walls that surround the competition arena. The walls are about thirty feet high, so no one standing ring side can see her, and she cannot see them. There is no visual distraction for her: the ride is just her, her horse, and the jumps ahead.
“This tool has helped me block out disturbances outside the arena that cause me to lose focus. Things like a loose horse, an unfriendly face, or an Olympian watching my every move--all of that is outside my realm of consciousness.”
Jamie has passed this visualization technique on to her students, and they benefit from it as well. “Visualization takes a lot of practice, so don’t get down on yourself if you aren’t able to do it well at first,” she adds.
Visualization can be useful to get yourself past many obstacles, scary jumps or otherwise. Whatever makes you nervous, even if it's something basic like cantering in an English saddle, take a moment before you attempt it to close your eyes and picture yourself doing it, your horse responding perfectly, and nothing bad happening.
Picture your equitation pattern, dressage test, jump course, rail class or any other event going perfectly smoothly, and you'll soon find it easier to match reality to the vision.
Stumbling Blocks
Riders come with all types of personalities, some of whom perceive fear as a weakness. In essence, they deny that they are afraid, which is not the same thing as courage. “The biggest stumbling block that I have seen, I think, is learning to accept fear, face it, understand it, learn from it, and then nip it in the bootie,” Jamie remarks.
“All horseback riding disciplines at all levels require a real understanding of a horse’s nature. Horses are big. They can be scary, unpredictable, and sometimes they are just plain stupid. Most of the time these creatures are our best buddies - just looking for a little confidence in themselves and in their riders.
Once a rider can get over the ‘what if’ factor and respond with an answer their horse understands, a partnership will start to develop. The partnership, in turn, inevitably leads to confidence in both the horse and the rider.”
Healthy Fear
"Healthy fear” or respect of a large animal, especially when guiding it through activities that it might not choose to do on its own, is a life-preserving necessity in the horse sport. Jamie points out, “Even the top pros in each discipline of equestrian sports get scared.
It’s not that we are wimps; rather, that we have a ‘healthy fear’ of our sport. Having a healthy fear is very important for each rider to have, in my opinion. I, however, prefer to call it ‘respect.’ For example, when walking a cross country course at a competition, I usually have few jumps that cause me to really stop and think about the correct ride I will need to give my horse to be successful.
These are often the jumps that give me that uneasy feeling in my belly. These fences make me ride to the best of my ability, so I am sure I can keep my horse and myself safe.”
There also the straightforward fences that do not cause her any anxiety. “I don’t take these easier jumps for granted, however, because I do have that ‘healthy fear,’ or respect for them. Even though they are easier than some other fences on a course, they are still cross country fences.
There is always a danger jumping anything solid in a field and at speed. I think this kind of respect is extremely healthy and very wise to have.”
She also admits, “When that little voice in my head is saying that it is time to hang up my boots for the day and try again tomorrow, I listen!
Horses are extremely sensitive, and often know what we, the riders, are thinking and what we are scared of. They are herd animals, and they seek leadership. If you are scared about something, you are relaying that fear back to your mount.
If you cannot be confident about a task you want to accomplish, whether it is trying a flying change or crossing a creek on a trail ride, then how can you expect your horse to be confident? Confidence is key when working with horses, and confidence leads to safety.”
Avoiding Fear
If we learned one thing from Frank Herbert, it was this: “I must not fear: Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings with it total obliteration.” Respect of your horse and of the tasks that you are taking it through is a necessity, but when fear gets out of hand, it robs you of your ability to communicate with your animal. It puts your success, and ultimately your life, in peril.
Jamie tells us, “The best remedy to prevent fear is to have a good education about horses, their instincts, and your own abilities on a horse. If you understand how horses think, how they respond to fear, and what to do in case a difficult situation arises, you can feel more secure in the saddle.
Not only because you have an idea of how your horse might act, but also you will have a sense of how to prevent it or work through it.”
Fear is both our protector and our nemesis. It is appropriate when dealing with animals as majestic as horses, but it can also paralyze us in its face.
Courage is not simply evading or denying fear; it is facing it, coming to terms with it, and managing it to your advantage. Once this is done, you will be well on your way to success as a rider.
For more information about RateMyRiding or contact Dani Moritz at dani@ratemyriding.com or (847) 849 6604.
Article from AHP written by Jennifer Walker