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Training
Relaxation & Concentration - The heart and Soul of Mental Toughness
Everyone talks about the importance of “being mentally tough” but few can tell you exactly what “mental toughness” really means or how you should go about developing it. By far the two most critical mental skills are RELAXATION: the ability to stay calm and composed under pressure, and CONCENTRATION: the ability to focus in on what’s important and let go of everything else. So let’s take a technique-like look at both of these key components to mental toughness. What can you do to strengthen your ability to stay calm under pressure and focus on the correct things?
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Training
Buying the Dressage Prospect
At the low level of dressage, training or first level, a horse may move much in the same frame as an A show hunter, but if the horse is a prospect for upper level in dressage, he must be conformationally built to handle the demands of greater collection.
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Training
Riding the Better Side of Bucking
Bucking is a mythunderstood horse activity. Most people look at bucking as an ornery habit, something the horse does when he’s trying to get out of work. Or when he just doesn’t feel like cooperating at that moment for some reason or another. However, if you think about bucking as an activity drive that you can channel into behaviors you want instead of behaviors you don’t want, then it’s not necessarily a bad thing.
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Training
Trauma & Your Body – How it Affects Performance & Fuels Repetitive Problems
The mental effects of a past emotional or physical trauma or injury on an athlete’s present performances are relatively straightforward. For example, if I’m worried about re-injury, failure or getting yelled at and embarrassed by my coach again, then my pre- and during performance self-talk and concentration will focus on all these wrong things.
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Training
Overcoming Riding Fears
Anyone who has ridden for any length of time would be dishonest if they told you they have never felt fear. If you have any common sense at all, you should have a certain level of “healthy fear” whenever you get on a new horse. Call it “respect” if you prefer, but there is always an awareness that the 1000-pounds or so of bone and muscle you are sitting on is, physically, more powerful than you are.
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Training
Patterns and Habits
Horses are creatures of habit. And the habits they learn can be good ones or bad ones depending on who’s handling them. And whatever habits or patterns they have when they come to you can be changed if you go about it in a methodical, horse-logical way.
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Training
Learning the Art of Lungeing
For many people, lungeing is nothing more than an exercise useful for horses that cannot be ridden. However, the benefits of lungeing for the both the horse and rider can be ample, however novice or experienced both horse and rider happen to be.
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Training
Establishing Rhythm, Don’t Interrupt Me
Executed and linked together in a flowing rhythm, the individual movements in a dressage test or reining pattern become an expressive dance between horse and rider. Without rhythm, that same sequence of movements becomes a mechanical sequence of gymnastic exercises. It can be as uncomfortable to watch.
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Training
Developing Balance: Using Your Horse’s Feedback
In order to work together harmoniously, both horse and rider need good balance.Without good balance of their own, they interfere with the horse’s balance and, as a result, with its motion. Their ability to turn in a good, much less top, performance is severely compromised.
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Training
Developing Balance: Exercises
Relaxation and balance are the first two skills riders must develop as they work their way up the riding tree. In some ways, they are like that proverbial chicken and eggwhich comes first? Without relaxation, it is hard for a rider to stay balanced over the horse.
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