Positive Show Nerves

Show Nerves.

Just that phrase inspires memories in all of us. It makes me think of the startbox on the biggest advanced course I ever ran, or starting into the dressage ring at an FEI test, or jumping around in front of the huge crowd at Stuart Horse Trials. There is nothing like it. It’s those butterflies you get when they start the countdown. It’s that flip-flop flapjack feeling you get when you walk a big course for the first time and it’s the queasy sensation you get when you’re about to do your jog on Sunday morning. I just wanted to talk about this because my students of late seem to have the same problems that I used to (yea right they are still there, but WAY less intense). There is nothing worse than coming out of that show ring and beating yourself up. It drags on your psyche and makes you believe in yourself less. What’s more is it starts to take its toll on your riding ability.

Someone once told me that I needed to be more positive. I needed to let the past go. I am the first one to tell you that unfortunately that isn’t possible. When something goes haywire (you lost your stock-tie, you forgot a movement in your test, you missed a jump/had a rail/had a stop, had a fight with your best friend, forgot to eat breakfast) those show nerves from the past rear their ugly head.

Now people can tell you to “think positive” and “let the past go” but it’s always easier said than done. When your staring down that big brightly colored oxer with the fish leaping off its wings your thinking, “my god I’m gonna die when Quit Bucking sees this he’s gonna show the spectators why he has this name” instead of “how cool is that fence, I hope they get my picture on Amelia Earhart over it!” The trick is you, that’s right YOU have to believe the second phrase. It took me a LOOOONNNNG time to understand that, but now I do, and I am happier for it.

How, you ask have I been able to change from the rider in college who bit people’s heads off (sorry Liz, Sarah, Jenn, etc.) when they tried to help my train wreck dressage to the rider who can go in the ring now and smile/giggle when my horse says,” hell no I won’t perform that canter transition today.” ???

It’s not fair is it? I’m not going to say it was easy or that I  just woke up one day and I was all Zen or something. It has everything to do with the people in my life and TIME. It took my trainers being positive but not mean and degrading. It took the great Amy Tryon telling me that a sports psychologist told her she needed to learn to take all of that nervous energy and learn to channel it into positive energy (which must have worked because she took Poggio to the WEG at Aachen and finished 3^rd) It took doing 87983982 shows and realizing that nine times out of ten there is not a single person really paying attention when you flub up.  Unless you are on a remarkable horse (I used to say grey, but these days there are so many of them I don’t) who decided to perform the good ol’ spin-n-dump (see earlier posts) in dressage then no one is going to remember you tomorrow. You are rider number??? on a bay horse in one of the seven dressage rings that went Friday or was it Saturday?<-- an aside here, if your name is Phillip Dutton or Karen O’Connor I am sorry but this doesn’t count….

What I am trying to say in this post is just this... Positivity gets you farther than you think (even from a skeptic like me).  You have to remember that hardly anyone is watching (usually just the people you truly care about) and that there is ALWAYS a next time. You go in the ring and do what you can with what you have.  HAVE FUN. That is why we ride horses isn’t it? I think that got lost somewhere along the way as well. And above all find SOMETHING positive about EVERY ride. It doesn’t mean you always have to end on a positive note. It just means, if that snotty pony jumped ONE fence today when he usually doesn’t even do that then you have  accomplished something. Did you stay in the ring for your dressage test event though your horse was doing pirouettes in a walk/trot test? Yes? OK, then we have a positive. Did you get around that 1* course even though you had two runouts at that damn corner because you are sure corners eat people so your horse thinks so too? Well, you got around, so next time you can do it again and on  time number 13498348 when your amazing advanced horse says, “its ok mom, we’ve jumped these before,  its ok just hold on”  you will walk away from the toughest course of your life knowing you have been blessed to have learned that one day things will get easier. It just takes time and positive thinking. A little of that and learning to channel those show nerves into good energy J

Signing off

~Mandy