09/16/2024
🙂🐴
A reader writes: “How do I stay calm while doing obstacles with my horse? We practice perfectly at home and then, I just seem to lose it all under pressure…”
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One of the biggest challenges in riding judged obstacles is ignoring the feeling of needing to be in a hurry.
Slowing down and being clear and concise with the horse is key. For example, there is an ‘over-steering’ that can come with holding a horse straight over a narrow bridge, or the ‘over-cueing’ that can come when we’re asking the horse to quietly side-pass over a rail…
We can want it so badly that we become hyper-focused, ourselves, literally over-riding the horse. When we hit this state, it's very common to find that we're holding our breath. This, alone, adds to our need to hurry.
So, we ‘talk’ the obstacles through with our partner, quietly using the same cues that we use every day. We don’t usually speak to our horses in the show ring, due to judging deductions, but we can hum quietly, which gets us breathing and can calm both of us.
We must let him look! At the beginning and end of each obstacle, we can try taking a slight pause that will reset the horse’s mind. We soon begin to feel when our horse has newly focused in on the next step and is ready to perform his best.
We ask and wait. We ask and wait. My own goal is to give my horse aids that are undetectable visually from an outsider.
I will be using my breath. I will be using a squeeze on the rein, more than a pull. I will quietly hold him steady as guidance, between my legs and reins, rather than neck-reining a horse in a straight line. I will be using my calf muscles, rather than a heel or a spur. I will be concentrating on dialing everything down, finessing my body language, despite the judge and the clock.
I'll want to keep my eyes soft and up, so that I can ride my lines, as planned. Keeping a view of 'the big picture' helps us in riding obstacles, as well as in life.
These thoughts are usually subtle enough to calm myself, my alertly performing horse and yet, still get the point across.
Lastly, to stay calm while showing horses, most of us have to haul to an awful lot of shows with our horses. It’s a process… and it can be humbling, nerve-wracking and sometimes, demoralizing, along the way! But you’ve got this.
Just for fun, here's a blast from the past, a picture from the early 1970s with my Welsh pony, Peter.
I still remember the excitement of this print, by Ransom & Nodwell Photography, arriving in our rural mail box. The 'thumbnail' proofs would be mailed out, weeks after the show. You would pick one, or maybe two (for your mother would say they were very expensive!) and then, you would return those, again by mail. It was a long process...
