This topic was at the request of a few dear friends and clients, and it’s a topic I’ve thought about at great length though haven’t come to any conclusive solution to. There is quite a bit of information available to just about every other sport with regards to loss of confidence, but most of the sports psychology references leave quite a bit to be desired if you had just suffered a riding accident. In my humble opinion riders can suffer from just as much or more loss of confidence at their sport as any other, nothing can make you feel smaller than being catapulted through the air off of a 1,200 pound animal, and it is not specific to your stage of riding, everyone from a child to an experienced adult rider can encounter a block. Since we pilot large flight wired herbivores through complex patterns or to fly through the air, chances are we could get hurt. I read a certain study of 66 hospitals that compiled information for a study from 2001 to 2003 where 102,904 non fatal horse injuries were logged. That speaks of riding being an accident waiting to happen! With that said, let’s talk a bit about the components of suffering a loss of confidence in the saddle.

An accident in the saddle could be a scare, accident or trauma of some sort, either from your horse spooking, missing a distance to a fence and creating a crash, or a rear or buck that caught us off guard. The event itself is relative, it’s the person experiencing it and the impact it has on them that is important. Sadly it has been my experience that riders it seems are not treated the same as someone in say – baseball or soccer that has an accident and loses their confidence. Usually when a young rider suffers a loss of confidence it results in more work in the saddle with trainer intervention, if you jump your horse generally the height you jump may be lowered. If you are an adult rider you might be able to get by without as much pushing from your instructor or trainer, but the anxiety could even be worse, for some reason gravity tends to hurt more and more each year of our life. From columns written in the past I’ve stated that the horse is a barometer for emotion, and training problems can arise from the rider losing confidence that in turn lead to your equine partner losing their confidence in what they do and their faith in you could be shaken as well.

In most cases unless a bone is broken the “get back in the saddle don’t let them beat you” phrase is hollered across the arena and we do exactly what we are told, we get back on. Which is exactly what I have my clients do and what I do myself. The “cowboy up” part of riding will likely be alive and well forever. So maybe if we understand how we process a trauma or accident we can help our minds work through the situation and cause as little of a wrinkle in our training time as possible and not upset our horses in the process.

The trauma can be an actual physical injury like a fall off a horse, a missed fence, or even just a horse that was beyond the rider’s capabilities and frightened them. The trauma can also be more psychological and emotional rather than physical. For example, some riders suffer from a lack of failure or pressure and that could be just as profound as an actual physical injury. These physical and emotional traumatic experiences seem to lodge themselves in the rider’s mind and body (neurology and physiology),

For instance about 16 years ago I suffered the a bad crash, a horse I didn’t know took off with me and after staying on for long to lose both my stirrups, and my reins I decided it was best to come off gracefully rather than be tossed off and I bailed to the side, I still managed to fracture my hip. When I got back on (a few weeks too early of course) somewhere inside something wasn’t right. While I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, there was something uncomfortable nagging at me that made my riding not as smooth for a few months. There was a lot of doubt in my judgments, the things that used to be natural responses no longer seemed to happen, it was like as if my inner voice had been quieted, there was no communication between the horse and I and I felt very alone and shut out when I rode. Many of my clients verbalize this same feeling to me in their riding lessons and demonstrate this sort of anxiety.

There quite a few well documented cases of sports related post traumatic stress in sports psychology where the trauma or emotions surrounding the event get embedded into the riders mind and body, and no amount of external or internal threats, pressure or assurances of safety can change this situation for the rider. Without a chance to adequately work the traumatic experience through it could end up significantly interfering with subsequent performances long into the future. Frequently the rider isn’t even aware that these past injuries or trauma are fueling her current problems. I have worked with a few horses that demonstrate a loss in confidence in one way or another but usually this behavioral issue is tracked back to a rider incident where a trauma occurred, or in some cases repetition due to a trauma or accident. Then we have two issues to absolve, a rider with no confidence and a horse with no faith in its rider.

How does an accident or trauma hold us back us on our quest as riders? On one hand, the mental effects of a past emotional or physical trauma or injury on a horse and rider’s present performances are relatively straightforward. Fear of being hurt physically. Because the rider’s concentration is off, it slowly begins to undermine your self-confidence and send the anxiety level soaring through the roof, at about this time unless you ride a schoolmaster you have an equine problem on your hand as well. As you get more and more nervous, your muscles will automatically tighten, your breathing will change making it nearly impossible for you to execute aids smoothly and effectively. Tight muscles always lead to stiff, mechanical motions and shorter movements, slowed down reflexes and reaction time, and ultimately miscommunication with your horse. Depending on the degree of sensitivity of your horse, a slight tension can be a big deal or your horse may completely ignore you. Some horses after years of dealing with a tense rider just learn that you cry wolf all the time and begin to tune you out. More subtle physical after-effects of the trauma are also operating within his body, just outside of the athlete’s awareness. Let me explain.

Physically the human body is programmed to be healthy, we know that when we become sick or injured a complex system is awaken inside our bodies that we are not even aware of that begins a healing process. For example, if you’re cut, there is an immediate increase in blood flow to the wound site, accompanied by an influx of white blood cells to help battle infection. In addition, the clotting process begins and the body sets in motion its’ own self-healing process. The human body has all the resources within it to promote healing.

This same type of natural healing process operates for psychological and emotional experiences that we have in our life. We are always trying to assimilate various experiences; assimilating the good parts to distill out the learning, and then eliminating the bad parts. This natural assimilation process allows us to then look back on an experience that we had in the past and be left with only a memory, and without much distressing affect or emotion. However, this natural assimilation process gets interrupted when an individual experiences a trauma of some sort. So whether or not the trauma is physical and pain based or mental and caused emotional pain, trauma is trauma as far as your brain is concerned. The body does not care about usefulness; it cares about alleviated pain, or fixing a problem, which is why in extreme cases of pain or anguish the brain simply makes the event disappear. Most often these traumas are combinations of the two. Whether physical or emotional/psychological, the trauma can be considered either major or minor. A major trauma is a life threatening experience, severe injury, or severe abuse. A minor trauma could be an insignificant injury, not performing to your own expectations, or something as small as committing an error and feeling embarrassed in front of your peers.

When a trauma or negative experiences takes place, the brain secretes a chemical called norepinephrine, a stimulant neurotransmitter associated with trauma. Norephinephrine puts the individual in a state of alertness, and intense anxiety, this neurotransmitter contributes to a loop affect by replaying the distressing event over and over in the mind. So every time the exercise is practiced, the same chemical is released into the brain in a lesser amount and anxiety becomes inevitable until we face the event head on in our own brains. Some time ago I wrote about the bare bones of meditation and how we can use this as a tool to become better riders. Becoming aware of what happens to our bodies when we think about an event or exercise that causes us distress with our horses is a simple awareness exercise that can help us assimilate the traumatic experience. The mental state of a rider is so rarely taken into consideration as part of a horses training program, so often we are told to “cowgirl up” and ride through something, in most cases this is exactly what is needed, riders are known for their mental toughness. But if a anxiety keeps surfacing in your riding, if your coming off more than normal, if you consistently miss your distances or block out your pattern or course it might be time to take a step back, slow down and allow your brain to assimilate some of your experiences.

Find some exercise on your horse that you’re comfortable with, for instance a twenty meter circle at a walk or a trot. Once you have found a happy medium on your circle and you feel as though your horse is going well, become aware of your seat, legs, hands, shoulders, head and neck, which places carry more tension than others, which arenas you feel stiff or mechanical. Usually the places in your body that carry tension even while at rest will be your problem areas when you’re confronted with anxiety. Once you feel as though your problem areas are mapped out, begin to think about the event or trauma that caused you anxiety while in the saddle, and carrying on with your exercise. As soon as the event is vivid in your mind did you notice a change in your body, how about your horse? Has your horses movements shortened, become less supple, has his head raised above frame or has he lost connection? What are your problem areas experiencing? As you ride through the tension in your body, breathe through these feelings and thoughts that you are having. The continuation of breath and being aware of yourself can be intensely therapeutic, the more you breathe through this tension, the more your horse should begin to relax.

Repetition is the mother of evolution as far as riding is concerned, so however many times you need to “ride through” this experience in your mind before you begin to feel sound in the saddle is different for everyone. As you regain confidence with thought in the saddle, and work through your trauma you might notice a new awareness in yourself, the recognition of how your tension has affected your riding. This is not meant to be a one time fix all formula; however it is a place to start. For many of us the accident happened years ago, but our bodies still remember. One breath at a time and one ride at a time it is possible to “ride through” a trauma that you experienced in the saddle, and I sincerely hope that by helping you understand your body’s chemistry a little more, that might give you some tools to ride through any fear you may have. Until next time, stay warm and ride Arete!