One Fence, Two Fence, Red Fence, Blue Fence...

What I CAN do, when I'm not saying "Oh Crap!"
Although I am thinking "Oh crap,
why is my butt in the saddle?"

Sometimes in order to progress it's necessary to take a step back. I f you've been following AWIP for a while you know I've been dealing with some fear issues, have been working with a mental performance coach (Sommer Christie) in order to move past them.

One of the things we thought might help me get past the "Oh Crap" refrain that goes off in my head when I jump courses would be to concentrate on jumping small single fences or elements (combinations) rather than entire courses. When I rode in a Jeff Cook clinic a month or so ago, he recommended the same thing.

The thinking behind this is that by having me concentrate on "bite-size" goals, such as maintaining my rhythm and pace over small fences, and achieving successful repetition over small "scary" fences like oxers and triple bars and triple combinations, I will build my confidence to the point where tackling a course won't be overwhelming - it'll just be a bunch of single jumps strung together.

I had a heart to heart with my trainer who, bless her heart, was okay with this plan. The last couple of lessons have been great. It started with one where during our flatwork she had me lengthen Sug's canter, making sure I kept her in the bridle. Something clicked and Sug gave me the most AMAZING canter. My trainer said, "Yes! That's the canter you want to go down to a jump with!"

Huh?? What? This is the canter? This particular one?  Where has it been? How the heck is it that am I only grasping this now??  It's sorta like the magic canter I got in the Eric Horgan clinic, but a bit more powerful and maybe a touch faster, without being fast.  Maybe the word is impulsion?  I wasn't allowed to stew, as my trainer told me to come around and head to a vertical off the right lead while maintaining the canter.

I maintained the canter, and Sug stayed round and cantered ebulliently down to the jump, which we took in stride.  We did the vertical a couple times in both directions, and got pretty darn nice distances every time.  Then we took on a 5 stride line.  I kept the canter, but got in a little bit deep.  She was able to jump pretty easily even still, and moved right up off my leg to get the 5 strides with no problem.  Wow!  Mistakes are a lot easier to fix when you've got a little power underneath you.  Who knew??

So we've had a couple more lessons since then, jumping onesies and twosies and working on my rhythm and the canter, and the ability to adjust her stride. Which, by the by, is a lot easier when she's in the magic canter. Again, who knew? 

A funny thing happened.  One of the fences my trainer asked me to jump was teeny tiny, and for the first time EVER I asked her to raise the height of a fence.  That's the beauty of this going backwards thing.  I'm not scared of the fences, I'm having fun, and for the first time I actually WANT to jump bigger.  I actually ASKED to jump a triple combination!!!  Whoop Whoop!  Go ME!  Now, I'm not saying I'm ready for a 3' course yet, but heck, I'm moving in the right direction.

I'll keep you posted on how we progress. 

Thanks so much for reading!

Therapy for the Therapy? What's THAT About?

Saw this on Facebook and liked it. 
Certainly resembles my path.

"I thought the horse WAS the therapy?" That was my bemused husband’s first comment to me after I told him that I was speaking with a Mental Performance Consultant for my jumping related fear issues.  “I don’t get it. If the horse WAS the therapy, NOW why do you need therapy?”

It’s not a fear of looking bad, or making a fool of myself. It’s a “Holy crap, one of us is gonna die!” kind of fear. Which, understandably, affects my riding. For example, I’ll be riding to a fence and I start feeling the fear, and I start choking up on my mare. Then, I realize we’re going too slow for her to clear the fence, and I make a last second desperate attempt to gun her at the fence. Kind of a “STOP! No, crap, that’s wrong. Um, GO! Yeah, GO!!!” thing. Which is, of course, not fair to the horse at all and very likely to cause exactly the kind of catastrophic accident I’m worried about.

I don't want to stop jumping. I’ve read a few book on sports psychology and fear, and watched a number of videos. They’ve helped a bit. However, we’ve reached a point where self-help and self-diagnosis aren’t enough. I’m tired of coming home from jump schools frustrated with myself, and so I decided that now is the time to bring in a professional.

Session One
I contacted Sommer Christie, who is a certified Mental Performance Consultant, member of the Canadian Sport Psychology Association, and guest blogger on Horse Junkies United, a site I contribute to.  Session One basically covered the ground work — what did I think my issues were, when do I think they appeared, were there any times when I didn’t feel fear, how were those times different than when I did feel fear?  My skill sets and ability don't change on any given day, so what separated my Peak Performances from my Weak Performances?

During our chat we kept circling back to the idea of “preparedness.” I am a bit of a control freak, and when things go cattywumpus, I feel an intense need to go back to the basics.  Which Sommer said was a good thing as when we are in optimal performance mode, our body reacts through muscle memory. By making sure my basic skills were honed, I was actually setting myself up for success. A firm foundation in the basic skill sets allows the body to perform by rote (again, paraphrasing here) which creates kind of a comfort zone, or safety net if your mind is intent on assuming the fetal position. So, when I feel better “prepared,” maybe because of more basic skills work, I ride with more confidence. End of Session One. 

Homework was to think about my best performance ever, and what was significant about it? How did I prepare? What was I thinking before starting the round, and what was I thinking about during the round? Did I lose focus at any point? If so, how did I get it back?  Then I needed to identify the gaps.

This is so true. 
More than one way to get to Rome, after all.

Session Two
We pretty much began where we left of the week before, with the concept of "Preparedness."  I need to feel secure in order jump with confidence, and we talked about what I could do to prepare myself for the show season.  One of the things I identified was practicing over poles in order to become more comfortable with distances.  Another was more work without stirrups to have a stronger, more secure seat. 

Sommer let me know that it was not enough to simply have these goals, but that I needed to set them out as specific practice plans and then hold myself accountable with measurable results.  For example, I needed to go into each practice with a plan. For example, each day I could set up an exercise of poles and commit to cantering them 50 times.  As I rode, I needed to keep track of how many successful distances I hit and how many misses I had.  I also needed to be mindful of what happened when things went right and when things went wrong.

Afterwards, I need to do what's called a Debrief.  That means I need to write down (this is the important part -- you have to write it down in a journal) what parts of my training went really well and why. Then I need to ascertain what parts of my training need to be improved and figure out how. It's important to recognize what I did well as well as any mistakes that were made.  The object is to recognize and reward successes, and then recognize mistakes in order to learn from them. It's also important to keep mistakes in context.  Mistake = learning opportunity, and not time to pull on a hair shirt.  For example, I could write that I missed too many distances because I was off balance, however, I made more distances today than yesterday.

After all the debriefing analysis comes the action plan.  Given what happened in my training session, what are the necessary steps that I need to take in order to improve my performance? Is that more poles? More no-stirrup work? Longe line lessons?  Remember, each step must have measurable results (ie. 50 poles gives me X number of good distances and Y number of misses that I can compare to previous sessions.)

So yesterday I had a lesson and we went over poles, poles, and more poles.  Some of the poles were set in a circle, like the face of a clock.  The poles were set at 12, 3, 6, and 9 and walked 6 strides between each.  I went round and round those damn poles and I got 7 strides, 8 strides, 6 strides -- you name it, I got it.  Then we bounced over 2 poles set in the corner of the arena.  Same kind of result there.  Some good rides, but more less than stellar attempts.

Oye veh, I could tell my Debrief was gonna be a long one.

WAAAAAAAAHHHHHH! Or, Get Over It Already, For Heaven's Sake...

Hi. My name is Amy and I am a Chicken.

Today I had my first lesson since I attemtped to emulate a lawn dart at my last show.  My travel schedule for work as been crazy, so it's really only the fourth time I've ridden since I damn near found oil two weeks ago.  Certainly the first time I've jumped.

Well, as you probably picked up from the title, things did not go well.  Number one, due to the severe neck sprain I gave myself (the Doctor's terminolgy, not mine) anything more than light exercise has been VERBOTEN for the past two weeks..  Think "gentle stroll on treadmill." So, my fitness level, never great to start with, is close to non-existant.  (Can somebody PLEASE tell me why it takes a 40 year old woman MONTHS to gain any kind of muscle and a nanosecond to lose it???  PLEASE?  That my friends, is one of life's nasty little ironies.  The others involve childbirth, but that's another discussion and you'd need to buy me a drink before I get started on that one.)

Plus, I'm still sore, so some things, such as turning my head to look for the fence, were uncomfortable. Thus,  I didn't execute them well and we had missed distances, awkward jumps, and some "Oh Sweet Baby Jesus!" moments.  So why was I attempting to lesson under these circumstances?  Well, if you haven't realized I'm not exactly the brightest bulb in the string by now, you haven't been paying close attention to this blog.  I suggest you go back and read a few more posts.  You'll get what I mean soon enough.

Basically, I rode to each fence in a state of high alert, fearing the worst and rendering myself darn near incompetent.  My trainer said I was exaggerating ( this would not be unusual, I am known to amplify things a bit) and not riding badly at all, but you know how you it is when you feel like you're only moments away from a trainwreck.  At this point I was about one sniffle away from starting to bawl.  Not just tears, but a full-on, snot pouring from the nose, howling like a crazy person meltdown.  Luckily my mare turned to me and gave me one of her LOOKS.

What is going on?? Are you leaking up there?

No, Sug. (sniff)  I'm fine. (sniff)

You don't look or sound fine, and you're clenching. Stop that, please.  Do that breathing thing, would you?

Sorry, Sug. (Sounds of deep breathing ensue.)

So how do you take one ad incident and stop from making it into the 800 pound gorilla in the arena??  For some reason the Friends episode where Phoebe, Rachel and Monica do a cleansing ritual to rid themselves of bad boyfriend karma.  I thought briefly about a cleansing ritual, but I saved up a gazillion Dover's gift certificates to get that hunt coat, darnit, and knowing my luck I'd set the house on fire anyway. 

I asked my trainer to lower the fences and to let me work on easier groups of combinations of fences, rather than entire courses, which she did, and things still weren't going great.  I couldn't keep a consistent rythym, partly because my mare was feeling herself  and dragging me to the fences, and partly because I was picking at her till we went from a gallop to darn near going backwards.  You can imagine what kind of jumps these resulted in.  Let's just say I was inadvertently dropping some words that would have gotten my mouth washed out and my behind blessed with a wooden spoon about 30 years ago.  Thankfully my kids weren't in the arena.  Her Highness Princess Sugar Britches was not impressed either.

Hellooooo! Koninklijk Warmbloed Paardenstamboek Nederland!

Gesundheit, Sug.

Sigh.  Translation: Royal Warmblood Studbook of the Netherlands. Such language is inappropriate in front of an equine of my eminence.

You know, you may not want to take that tone with me today, Miss Thing.  Ain't no Royal Netherlanders standing in line to pay your massage bills.  Just saying...

So I told my trainer I thought it would be a good idea to go back to basics.  More longe lessons.  More gymnastics, more work on my form and the security of my position and leg, until I feel secure again.  I have the chance to show again this week, and quite frankly, I'm hesitant about doing it.

I like feeling fully prepped.  Knowing I CAN do something (usually by the skin of my teeth and feeling I've just received a miracle) and feeling like I can do something succesfully is a big difference.  I feel that when I ride with confidence, I can ride well.  When I don't ride with confidence, things get dicey and I'm worried one day I really will hurt myself and my horse.  To be fair, my trainer does prep me well, working on exercises that she knows will prepare us for the courses we'll face.

George Morris famously said that he "faught chicken" all the time. Sometimes that makes me think, "Wow, even George has moments. How liberating!" Other days I think, "What a load of crapola. If he were chicken why was he jumping 5 foot fences so well for so long? If George really wants to see chicken, he should come see me approaching a 3' oxer. You can see the "Oh sh#$! Oh sh#$!" cartoon thought bubbles over my head!"


So what's the deal?  Am I just a big whiny ninny who needs to pull on her Big Girl Pants, pull down her skirt, and suck it up?  Or, do I pat myself on the back for getting back on and giving it a go, and then realizing I'm still hurting and the more prudent decision is to retrench and go back to basics until confidence is restored?
 
Or, do I hire a Native American Shaman to burn sage and do a healing dance for me?