Performance and Riding Under Intense Pressure When Showing

Performance and training are two sides of the same coin. In order to perform well, you have to train. In order to train, you have to keep performance in mind.

Performance involves rules and evaluations. Your outcome is uncertain and it all involves some emotional and psychological risk. And the biggest consideration of all? You get one shot only. No do-overs allowed.

This unique situation naturally brings with it the experience of pressure. The good news is that having pangs of nervousness means that you care about what you are doing. If you didn’t care, you would feel no buzz at all. The bad news: these pangs can get a little out of control and interfere with you delivering your best.

Scroll to continue with content

Remember this: fear comes in sizes

With fear, you can blow it up and let it overwhelm you and your skills, or you can deflate it to a size that is manageable and workable. Performance fear is like any other; how you define it will determine how you deal with it.

So how does Olympic gold medalist and Rolex Grand Slam winner Scott Brash, one of the best in the world and a true champion of performance stress, define pressure? “I know it’s a real cliché, but real pressure is working hard and still having to wonder how to pay your bills and feed your kids,” he says. “I face a different kind of pressure, but I still love what I do every day and I’m lucky enough to be well rewarded for it. That’s something I don’t take for granted.”

Brash doesn’t think about ‘riding for his life’ even though he makes his living at it. Instead, he chooses to reflect on gratitude to provide balance. Sport may be an important part of your life, but it’s not all of your life – nor is it life or death. The stakes are not that high.

When preparing to ride in her first-ever George Morris clinic (and George is known to be a bit intimidating, to put it mildly), Alberta-based trainer Jennifer Arbuckle said her doubts began to set in about a week away. Fortunately, she accidently stumbled on some pressure relief. She decided to have a family day with her two young girls, who were a non-stop challenge. “I thought, George Morris has nothing on these two little girls!”

So ask yourself if you are missing an opportunity to shrink your version of pressure into a different size. Chances are it is one ride among many; one task exactly like so many you have done before.

Practice your guts

If one of the most famed (and feared) riders and teachers in the world can admit to, and embrace, nerves, then you can, too.

George Morris may look and act like the picture of fierce poise, but in his own words regarding nerves he states he has “never overcome them. I have learned to live with them, and to deal with them. Every time I give a clinic, every time I give a lecture, I am a nervous person, so I have learned to live with it by facing it.”

If you can accept fear as part of your competitive landscape, you can then get on with the process of learning and practicing to cope.

“All my teachers were army teachers and they taught with pressure,” Morris says. “Bearable and sometimes almost unbearable … you were always out of your comfort zone. That hardens someone psychologically; it conditions you so that you can exist under pressure.”

Some riders, the “perfectionists,” will seek to avoid pressure instead of practicing or even playing with it. The unfortunate result is a lack of confidence when the heat is on; too much attention is being occupied by stress and less to the task at hand.

Morris recalls a story of one his students, Leslie Burr Howard. Just days before the Olympic Games, he found her in the practice ring. “When I asked her what she was doing, she said she had to ‘practice her guts.’ So now I think if Leslie needs to practice her guts, so does everyone!”

Ask yourself then, how will you practice your guts? Will you develop a better tolerance to, or way of managing mistakes? Will you encourage yourself to push through those days that seem like a grind? Nerves will never fully dissipate, but you can practice moving on in spite of them. Train so you expect some adversity, and you will be prepared when it inevitably shows up.

P is for Preparation, not Pressure

Anxiety can make you forget your preparation and get lost in worry. The best riders don’t let this happen. Not only do they prepare deliberately and in an exhaustive manner, they have a way of keeping the knowledge of that preparation close to boost confidence.

Brash faced a mind-bending pressure-cooker of a situation at the Spruce Meadows Masters last year during his ride for one million euros in the final leg of the Rolex Grand Slam. Was it the most challenging moment to date of his career?

“It was,” he admitted. “That could be seen as pressure, but we were well-prepared and Sanctos was in superb condition. At that stage, it was all about what the team had done and all the hard work they had put in. The real pressure was not wanting to let them down.”

When you have faith and confidence in your preparation process, and that process is relentlessly tested, it becomes a grounding force. So rehearsed are the steps, they show up for you automatically so you’re more free to deal with the business of your ride.

As Brash says about his pressure-filled ride, “It was just about sticking to the same processes, and that’s why you put in the hours of training and working on technique, so that it holds up in those sorts of circumstances. Luckily for me and the team, it all paid off.”

Is your preparation well-developed enough to sustain the strain of competition? There is nothing quite so calming as arriving at a show knowing all your to-dos are checked off. You have done your homework and are free to show off your knowledge.

Take Control of the Performance

In a performance situation, there are things you have control over, and things you don’t. If you end up too focused on the “uncontrollables,” pressure intensifies and confidence drops. Examples of uncontrollables include judges, other riders, and the weather.

Focus instead on what you can control – the plan you intend to execute. Not only is anything else a waste of energy, it is actually giving an advantage to your competitors. Think about that for a moment.

One way to take control is to ensure you have a pre-ride routine in place. This is a short sequence that should cue your focus to where it is needed. For example:

• Have a clear goal for your warm-up. Make sure its something you can control that reflects your current needs as a team, such as ‘Establish a forward canter to fences.’

• Review key points of your plan.

• Visualize your plan in action.

• Finish off with a key word (such as ‘execute’) or a phrase (‘ride the plan’) that signals readiness for the ring.

“I like to come up with a few basic things, because the habits are already in there,” says Calgary-based trainer Dustin Cossaboom about preparing students for the ring. “For some people, I also like to add silly advice to keep things light. Things like ‘eyes down, heels up!’” Cossaboom has an effective tool in his use of humour, as such “advice” can help the over-thinker pull back to the truly important aspects of their ride.

Humour and lightness may be one of your most useful tools. That’s exactly what a good pre-ride routine should do for you: meet your needs and help you focus on the controllable elements of your ride. It’s not a one-size-fits-all, so be sure to play around with your sequence until it pushes just the right buttons for you.

It’s transferable

Besides becoming more self-assured in the show ring, there is another reason you may want to develop your skills for coping with pressure: they are transferable to many other areas of your life. They can allow you the freedom to take that step outside your comfort zone and grab that great opportunity.

Trainer Noel Clark of Alberta knows something about turning pressure into opportunity. While attending the Mane Event in 2013, he offered a leg-up to the notoriously intimidating George Morris. When Morris complimented his efforts, Clark jumped in. “Let me be your official leg-up guy,” he suggested. To his surprise, Morris invited Clark on his clinic tour. He travelled to multiple locations in and out of the country with Morris, giving him lifts into the saddle and also catch-riding horses during clinics when necessary. It was the experience of a lifetime, travelling and learning from a legend, that all came about from taking a deep breath and taking a chance.