psychology for success
If you compete, you’ll want do well and be able feel proud of your both your horse’s and your own achievements. You put in the training, the fitness work, plan everything down to all the little details, but how much time do you spend thinking about ‘The Psychology of Success’? We asked Danielle Olding of ‘From the Neck Up’, to explain.....
1. Lack of Self Awareness This can be a lack of rider awareness in the extent to which they optimise their performance. Riders who have no obvious issues may believe they are already riding to the best of their ability and thus fail to be consistent under pressure. This could also be an issue with riders who do have known issues but lack the awareness of ‘how’ they create the issue in their heads.
Advice: Take the time to notice what is going on in your head at the point in time that you notice you are riding well or riding badly (do this at lower level competitions or at home rather than leaving it to a major championship!!). Recall what was going on in your head the moment before you noticed yourself riding well / badly. Notice particular triggers, patterns or trends in your thought processes that are leading to your behaviours.
Why?: If you are not aware of the processes that occur in your head you are not able to enhance or replicate the effective ones to maximum effect, or manage and re-route the ineffective ones.
2. Lack of brain training Many riders devote hours improving their horse’s way of going or their own technical ‘on-horse’ skills but fail to devote any time at all to training their brain to generate the kind of responses, behaviours or emotional states that they take for granted will happen under pressure. Some riders think that riding well from a physical or technical viewpoint is enough and that the rest will follow (!). Sadly, that is rarely the case. If you don’t take the time to train your brain regularly it doesn’t know what to generate for you when under pressure.
Advice: Decide what physical and emotional reactions you would like your brain to generate for you under pressure…
..and rehearse, rehearse, rehearse these responses in a typical context until your brain creates a blueprint for them!
Why: Like your body and like the horse’s body, your brain will only reproduce what you have programmed it to do.
If you do
not train it to do the things you want it to do….it will do its own thing!!
3. Lack of Planning Many riders are not specific enough on the purpose or desired outcome of a particular test, round or lesson. Often they can be heard to say ‘I just want to get round without falling off’ or ‘I’ll just be glad if I don’t forget the test!’. Two things are happening here. Firstly, the rider is focusing their brain on everything they don’t want to happen rather than providing their brains with a template for what they actually want
instead. Secondly, they often turn up at events and ride the horse in exactly the same way they always do with the same hope as they always have, that everything goes ‘ok’ and turns out for the best. If today’s outcome has not been defined or is the same every time out, be prepared for slow progress. These are practices rarely used by riders in the habit of accomplishing their aims!
Common problems with riders’ heads
Equine Page 20
www.theequinesite.co.uk
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