Social Facilitation and Better Performance

What is it that makes a rider the best of the best? While talent and hard work can make a great rider, it’s also about how they train. Professionals train in a manner that sets them and their horses up for success in the show ring. When they step into the show ring, they leave their anxiety and fear at the gate.

How do they do this? Rehearsal: Instead of letting the negative feelings of anxiety take over, they channel the nervousness to a dominant response. That response is the execution of precision, the ability to ride into a 1:50m triple combination with hundreds of people watching and knowing they are getting to the other side. This psychological phenomenon is called social facilitation.

What is Social Facilitation?

In essence, social facilitation is when individuals perform better on well-rehearsed tasks while in a group and being watched, rather than alone. Have you ever been in the ring alone, hacking your horse on a long rein, then your trainer walks in? You immediately pick up your reins and return to work. Why did your behaviour change once your trainer walked in? It’s because someone was watching you.

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Social facilitation takes this one step further by saying that we do better at well-rehearsed tasks when we are being watched – but we have to already be good at these tasks and confident we can execute them well. For example, you struggle with jumping, especially when the fences start getting big. Then your trainer gets on your horse and makes it look like child’s play. They can do this because they are confident and have done this exercise hundreds of times; their dominant response to the exercise is well-rehearsed. Social facilitation dictates that they perform better under pressure because they are being watched. Their response is different from yours because of the level of rehearsal.

Creating Comfortability

A large part of social facilitation is creating comfortability within an exercise. What that means is, for example, if you were asked to jump a five-stride line, you would be comfortable doing that; what makes it complicated is that as the jumps get bigger, the technical aspect also increases. With this in mind, if we create a baseline of comfortability, things start to come naturally.

I discussed this with top Canadian show jumping competitor (and my coach at the time) Brian Morton, resident rider at Spruce Meadows, about an instance when he employed this idea. “In the 2016 off-season, I decided to implement a triple bar into my Saturday lessons because triple bars were being used in the one-metre classics at Thunder Bird Show Park. Over the next three months I watched as my students become more and more comfortable with this jump that used to create anxiety for them.” As the level of comfortability increased, the dominant response changed from uncertainty to confidence. This was due to the exercise rehearsal, which is the first step in getting the rider to perform under pressure.

The theory behind social facilitation is that we get riders comfortable with the show ring experience without even being at the show. We can do this by exposing them to new things and breaking down things they already know. Morton said “The secret to setting students up for success in the show ring is breaking down exercises at home and building their confidence up. Once I’ve done that, I can begin putting more complicated exercises together.” This is training the dominant response so that when the pressure is on, the rider can have an automatic, positive response.

We can take this one step further by creating a show ring atmosphere and having ‘friendly’ competitions during lessons. “I try to take students off-property over the winter so that they don’t lose the skills that they have learned over the past year, as well to help build confidence over the off-season.” This allows riders to become more comfortable with different problems that may come their way, gradually creating a dominant response.

Changing the stress response

Our first goal needs to be changing our stress response to a stimulus. Let’s say, for example, we have a student who gets stressed about their horse having a lot more ‘blood’ in the show ring. In this case, the stress response is due to the stimulus of more blood than they are used to. We can change that stress response to confidence. We can take rider and horse off-property more often to school, and create mock show ring experiences for both; if we do this successfully, we can create positive experiences and increase the rider’s confidence.

Morton said that he would simulate a show ring experience at home by “getting the students to go for a true gallop before starting an exercise to get the horse up to the right blood level; this is a good way to simulate the blood level in the ring.”

The goal is to create an atmosphere that most resembles the show ring, as that is where most riders get nervous. Once we can change that stress response to confidence, the riders will have more confidence in themselves to perform, and thus, any anxiety can be limited or turned into positive energy. Recent research has shown that some stress increases problem-solving of well-rehearsed tasks in pressure situations. The goal in training is merely to get the rider’s muscle memory well rehearsed so that their stress response changes from submissive to dominant.

The final step for success is having witnesses. As a trainer, you will know if you have changed your students’ stress response when they perform better in groups, and with an audience. Test it out: ask the parents to come out and watch the lessons for a few hours on a weekend, and get your own friends, family, other boarders, etc., to come and watch your students ride. Once they begin relaxing and performing better, the show ring will come more naturally.

Six bar? No worries

Morton has had a very successful career in the show jumping world, competing on a Canadian team in Europe, riding in World Cup qualifiers, and racking up ribbons at Thunderbird Show Park and Spruce Meadows. He recalls an experience at Spruce Meadows in 2021 when he won the ATCO Electric Six Bar, jumping an impressive 1.95 metres (!). You may think that social facilitation has nothing to do with jumping that high; nobody can simulate the training for that.

Think again. The way that the six bar is set up is the perfect example: six verticals to start, with two strides between each. In the final two rounds they take out the first two verticals so there are just four verticals remaining. This exercise is well-rehearsed for professionals; they have done the same thing hundreds of times in double- and triple combinations. All that has changed is the height and the number of fences, but with the exercise being well-rehearsed, it’s a mental game from there. Their dominant response is well mastered, and with hundreds of fans, big prize money, and their reputation on the line, they have come to compete. With the adrenaline up and pressure on, these athletes can push themselves to the next level.

When I asked Morton if he was nervous during the triple bar, he said, “Of course I was nervous, but I also knew that I had the skills to win it, and with everyone watching, I was not going to disappoint.” This is the exact response we want to train ourselves as riders.