Folllowing on from the first part of his article on confidence, Human Performance Coach Jon Pitts looks at what lies beneath confidence and how it can be more resilient in an equestrian environment
There aren’t too many coaching environments where the pupil is trying to control a live animal, predict what it might do all whilst also trying to absorb information from the coach.
As a coach, the key skill is not to deliver your knowledge, but to adjust your delivery to suit the individual so that an interpretation and storage process takes place. So often I talk to riders whose horse went really well in the lesson, and now they can’t repeat it. That, for me, is ineffective coaching.
There aren’t too many coaching environments where the pupil is trying to control a live animal, predict what it might do all whilst also trying to absorb information from the coach. I believe HOW we coach riding is one of the biggest issues with confidence in riders. Recently I’ve looked in to how well our cognitive learning processes (interpretation and memory type) work on a horse, and simple pilot tests suggest that in some cases the ability to retain and repeat information can be reduced by up to 25% when on a horse.
It’s quite simple really. How can we be confident if we a) don’t know what we are trying to do (clearly), and b) are not certain that when we do it we’re going to get the reaction we expect/want? Our brains are going to go into anxiety over drive if unpredictable things happen and we lose control of a situation. So often this leads to a reaction in the horse that escalates the issue, and the biggest mistake we make is not diagnosing why it has happened. Much of this happens in our subconscious because our attention is drawn to the horse, and as a result we’re not clear on what we’re doing. Instead of working out how we can instigate greater control next time, we hope it will be ok and persevere, or perhaps try to force the horse instead.
Part of communication is to put things into simple terms, something that again is a traditional issue with teaching riding. Forgive me if this is a little “unequestrian”. Elite riders spend their training time drilling the horses over and over again, responding to the same control/instructions. Let’s call these buttons, because whilst horses aren’t machines and are always going to be unpredictable, much of my training is all about striving to get as close to 100% control as possible in the knowledge that during competition that probably won’t be the case.
Confidence comes from knowing that your horse will respond as you want
Taking an example of jumping a fence, if we are riding towards a fence and know exactly what button we are going to press, and know that the horse is going to respond as we want, we can plan and be confident. If we’re riding towards a fence and we’re not sure what button to press, it is unlikely we’re going to feel confident. Worse still, if we’re riding towards a fence madly pressing a button but nothing is happening, we’re never going to be confident!!!
At many of my clinics I spend much of the time unpicking rider technique and challenging what they are trying to do and how they are doing it. This is not because they don’t know how to perform a task, but because their delivery mechanism of the task is sitting more in their subconscious, rather than conscious part of the brain and if it is not well founded there is little chance of it working well under pressure. Furthermore, this part of our brain is well connected to our emotional systems, and together these are very capable of over-riding our more logical conscious brain. In most cases the rider simply doesn’t have a clear, deliverable process in place to control and instruct the horse, so we have to rebuild and strengthen these skills to increase and reinforce confidence.
From an elite perspective our aim is always consistency in excellence, and this only comes from detailed examination and analysis of learning and delivery processes. Under pressure we are striving for unconscious competence where the brain almost works on auto-pilot (otherwise described as “in the zone”), and this is only achieved through accurate repetition to make sure horse and rider are in sync and effectively working as one. However, because riding beyond the novice level is taught with most reference to what the horse is doing, we miss the stage of conscious competence where we commit to what is known as deliberate practice.
Eite riders strive for unconscious competence where the brain almost works on auto-pilot
I would urge everyone, no matter what level you ride at to take a moment to think through how clearly you know what you are doing from a skill perspective. I am very passionate about improving safety in equestrianism, and one key area that will improve this is by having a greater understanding of how to have control or regain control in difficult situations. We know that these situations will happen, so we should work harder to manage them rather than hoping it won’t happen!
We all know that we ride better when we’re more confident, and I hope this has given you a greater understanding of what lies beneath confidence and how it can be more resilient. The Fit to Ride system is designed to help riders of all ages and abilities to gain these stronger foundations through better coaching techniques. For more information please go to www.fittoride.org .
Jon Pitts is a leading Human Performance Coach. For more information on how you can benefit from the Fit to Ride system through clinics, courses and seminars, please contact him at [email protected]
