As riders, we often spend many hours training independently without regular access to high quality coaches, sport psychologists, biomechanic specialists or exercise physiologists. This can be the difference between performing well and performing to the best of your ability consistently and reliably over the long term. Be Your Own Equine Sports Coach covers topics including making sports psychology work for you; understanding human peak performance; the physiological and biomechanical demands of horse sport; developing sport specific training programmes; analysing your performance, and finally, strategic development and authentic leadership.
Analysing Your Performance
Observation is the most common method that we, as riders, use to analyse our competition performance. However, studies have shown that observations are both unreliable and inaccurate. Human memory is limited, and it is almost impossible to remember all the events that took place before, during and after each class. Add in any emotions and how you felt about your performance and you may find that what you thought happened and what actually happened are quite different. In a study of over 650 event riders asked to recall their dressage score in their most recent competition, 20 per cent were unable to recall their score accurately one to five days post competition. This figure increased to 70 per cent if riders were asked to recall their score after more than twenty days, and interestingly riders who had a poor score were less likely to recall it accurately! (Murray et al., 2004).
Even asking your coach or trainer to provide feedback may not be objective enough. Research suggests that experienced coaches are more likely to detect differences between two performances than novice coaches – exactly what you would expect – except that these experienced coaches saw differences even when none existed. They also tended to be very confident in their decisions, even when they were wrong (Hughes and Franks, 1997). I’m not saying don’t listen to feedback from your coach or trainer – just that there is also a place for a more objective and scientific approach to analysing your performance. In essence, human memory and observation are not reliable enough to provide sufficiently accurate information to enable you to improve your performance.