In part 1 of our rider confidence series, we looked at goal setting to ensure that you build a history of successful events. In this article we will look at a number of strategies you can use when you on a ride, to create a more confident you.
First, let’s look at the link between your physical (physiological) and mental (emotional) states. When you are anxious or fearful or stressed there are certain physiological things that tend to happen. For instance; your muscles may tense up, your breathing may shallow and\or increase in rate, your heart rate may increase as a result of this, your stomach may churn, you tend to hunch your shoulders and lean slightly forward (as a result of the muscles tensing) and you certainly don’t smile.
Many people believe that they must ‘calm down’ in order to change these things, and spend all their energy on trying to get their mind to overcome their physiological responses to anxiety. This in itself can be quite stressful, since we want our ‘logical’ mind to overcome an emotional state that is controlled by a much older and more basic part of our brain.
However, while most of us understand that your mental state can and does change your physical state, it is much less well known that the reverse is also true. Change your physical state and you can influence and alter your emotional\psychological state. It is this ability to change how you feel by changing your body position or actions that we are going to use to make us more confident riders and more competent riders, since these two things are also intertwined.
1. Faking It. Do you have a picture in your mind of what a confident rider looks like? If not, get one. Look at photos in books or on video or around you as you compete or ride. Look at the people you want to emulate and carefully note down the characteristics that make them look like they haven’t a care in the world when on a horse’s back. Now – do the same thing. For me, there were certain characteristics of huntsmen and cowboys – the casual seat, a hand on one hip, the loose reins in one hand, that denoted the ultimate in confidence. For you, it might be something else but whatever it is – do it. It doesn’t matter if you don’t ‘feel’ confident – do it anyway. Your body will quickly tell your mind that you ARE confident and calm because you ARE physically in the same position as the picture in your mind.
You mind does not know the difference between fake and reality when it comes to physical posture, so use this as much as you can. Remember, that our ‘little successes’ rule still applies. If you are doing the ‘cowboy pose’ for confidence, do it in small doses frequently and tell yourself when you are doing it. Mentally noting these times when you are in your ‘confident pose’ will keep adding to your success history.
2. Smiling, whistling and Singing. We’re aiming for a physical effect that will alter your mental state. Smiling is one of those basic things. When you smile it almost immediately alters your mental state a little. Even when it is a totally fake smile, your brain registers it and starts to crank back on the anxiety brain chemicals. Better yet, when you smile with your mouth, there is a physical effect that runs down your spine and loosens up other muscles that are involved in riding. So Smile!
Whistling and Singing are even better than smiling! Why? Because they affect your breathing and your mental state. When you are anxious you tend to use only the top of your lungs. In order to ‘calm down’ you need to change your breathing to use the bottom of your lungs – under stress this is hard to do unless you have practiced this technique. Singing does this for you automatically.
The trick here is to maximise the effect. Don’t just whistle or sing any old tune, create a mantra. A mantra is a short, repeated phrase. Using a mantra has a physiological calming effect. We won’t go into all the physiology and psychology of mantra’s right now, just trust me on this one. Now, just to really get the best value out of our calming mantra we’re going to be really specific about it’s content – it must be ridiculous. Yes, that’s right – silly. I’ve always liked ‘Flick the little fire engine’, but choose any silly song that has short repetitive phrase. So the aim is not to remember and sing ALL of ‘Flick the little fire engine’, instead we create our mantra ‘I’m a little fire engine, flick is my name. I too small to put out fires, isn't that a shame?' (repeat, repeat, repeat rather than singing all the verses). You may even change your mantra depending on what pops into your head - try not to use tunes from the radio - ear viruses - they aren't silly enough for the effect we want.
Okay, so now we are riding, singing our chosen mantra and two major effects are occurring – our breathing is correct and so the physiological calming effect (our muscles relax – our horse relaxes under us) is taking place PLUS our higher mental faculties have taken note of the fact that we are singing a child’s song in public. The brain begins to shut down the anxiety chemicals – how can there be danger if we’re singing Flick the fire engine in public? If you are doing this right, you should get a true smile and perhaps even some giggling. All these are GOOD things – muscles relax, breathing relaxes, horse relaxes … good spiral of confidence occurs rather than escalating spiral of anxiety.
3. Lessons in being a passenger or getting rid of your inner control freak. My last tip is perhaps one of the hardest to do. If you keep to our initial goal setting rules – a little that you CAN do, often – then you will succeed at this too and it will be a revelation to you and help your confidence to soar.
One of the big reasons that we lack confidence when riding is because we feel out of control, we fear the unknown. Yet, control on a horse is not created by hanging on to the horse’s mouth or gripping with knees or any of the things we tend to do when we feel out of control. So what we have to do is gain real control. Control by being as one with the horse, having true balance and therefore being able to halt the horse through a balanced seat and calm it through our own relaxed attitude.
So now we are going to practice, in little steps, NOT being in control. We are going to become passengers on our horse and in doing so we will gain true confidence, a better seat and the trust of our horse. This trust is what gives us true control of the horse, he will say – I trust this rider and am happy to let him\her be the leader.
What are the practical steps? At its most basic – you are not allowed to touch the reins. You will ride on the buckle, the horse will choose the direction and the speed and you will concentrate on being in balance and going with the horse at all times.
Now, remember all the advice given in these articles so far? I can already hear some of you thinking that this is a recipe for disaster. Not so. Did I say that you will do this for an hour or a day or even 10 minutes? No, your brain added that because you have reverted to old ways of thinking. At first, you are going to set a little goal. You will have practiced your smiling, whistling and singing. You and your horse will already be feeling relaxed and happy. You will have set yourself up for success by carefully choosing where and when you are going to have your first little passenger ride and then you are going to do it and store that in your memory banks. It may be as little as 3 or 6 strides. You can then take back your reins, review your feelings, take stock of your position and perhaps readjust yourself. Then you will repeat again.
To give you a better example. If you are riding in the forest or over a farm. Look for areas where your horse will be happy to walk on a loose rein and simply go along for the ride. If you get to an area where your natural reaction is to shorten the rein – don’t. Resist for at least 2 or 3 strides longer than you normally would. Okay –well done! Just like everything else, we are going to build up slowly, but we have to start somewhere.
Look for little hillocks that you can trot up. Instead of shortening your reins – leave them on the buckle and prepare to trot up the hill. Just before reaching the top the horse will naturally slow a little, plan to use this to take your reins back and ask him back to walk. Well done!
Don’t forget to place each of these successes in the memory bank and to take your time to review what went well and what you would change for next time. The point is to work on going with the horse instead of constantly thinking about stopping the horse (being in disharmony with him). Yet, you are still doing it on your own terms. If you can include each of these exercises in your planned riding sessions then you will be well on the way to becoming a truely confident rider.
In part 3 of this series we will look at how to deal with the consequences of bad experiences and complete this set of articles on rider confidence
