You can guarantee that every equestrian has, at some point during a competition, had that sinking feeling when something hasn’t gone to plan. Poles fall, unexpected run-outs can happen, or not nailing a still square halt can lose valuable marks. If this means missing out on a top placing, or a win, this can result in a long drive home thinking of the “what ifs” and a shattered competitive mindset.
Riders know more than most that things don’t always follow the script – and while one unfortunate result might be put down to an unlucky day and brushed off, when these start to become regular occurrences it can soon become disheartening.
Consultant clinical psychologist with Changing Minds Dr Duncan Law, who has worked with top sports athletes, explains that when people are driven in sport, losing can be emotionally difficult.
“That’s not what you go into the sport to do,” he says. “But it depends on what you define as losing. For some it might not be about whether you’re on the podium or not. It might be your view that you’re competing against yourself rather than against other people. If that’s your drive, then that’s easier to manage.
“However, if you perceive loss as failure, then there will usually be a negative emotional response. At its extremes, the negative emotional response can become intolerable and you become highly avoidant.
“But if you don’t reflect on the loss, then you can’t learn from what you didn’t get right in the competition and maybe the one before that, leading to thinking you’ve had a losing streak, and you can’t improve.”
And Duncan says the other extreme is where people think too much about the loss.
“They do the learning bit, but carry on worrying about it, rather than using the learning to help them perform better,” he says. “We might call those people overthinkers – they can’t leave it behind and it’s there with them when they start the next competition.
“The ones who do well are those who are between these two extremes – they can manage the emotional pain of loss to reflect and learn in order to focus on what they need to do to perform better in the next event.”
Competitive mindset fluctuations “are normal”
Winning in horse sport is rare – take any top rider’s record and you’ll likely see far more losses than victories, and dressage rider Gareth Hughes says runs of bad luck are common at all levels.
“We put our heart and soul into horses, so when it goes wrong, you can sometimes get into a dark hole,” he says. “We all have days where we have a great ride and think ‘That’s it, I’m off to the next Olympics.’
“And the next day you think, ‘I can’t even canter, it’s too difficult and I don’t know why I’m doing this.’ It’s normal to go through these periods.”
Training horses is a game of highs and lows. Credit: Andrew Sydenham
“Confidence comes through getting things right; when you have more bad rides than good, it’s very hard to get your confidence back. And with horses, it’s a sport that you as a rider can get everything right and it still goes wrong – that’s where horses are extremely grounding.
“If you find you’re not doing well all the time, there is a point where you just sort of think, why bother?”
When this happens, Gareth believes taking a step back can be necessary to move forward.
“Step back until you find a place where the confidence comes back, then move forward again. Training horses is like a graph that’s going up and down, but you’re hoping through time, you just get that gentle improvement,” he says, adding that it’s helpful to focus on that improvement, rather than the placing.
“In dressage, if your personal best is 65% and you come out and score 66% and place 15th, that’s still your gold medal. If you’ve been averaging 70% but you win the class on 65%, that’s not an improvement,” he says.
Gareth Hughes smiles at the end of a great test at the 2023 European Championships on Classic Briolinca. Credit: Alamy
Success, controllables and processes
Dr Chris Beaumont, a senior sports psychologist with Changing Minds who has worked with Olympic and Paralympic athletes, asks people what they define as success.
“Sometimes people can go into competitions without being really clear about what they are trying to achieve,” he says. “Having clarity on your goals and expectations is really important to help the performance.
“Sport is about outcomes, but the thing about outcomes is that they’re not controllable. Often, people allow these uncontrollable things to have a huge impact on their emotions, which can be positive and negative.
“If you win, you get a great high, but when you lose you can have great lows, but those emotions are both connected to an uncontrollable factor.”
To combat this, Chris recommends thinking about the factors you are in control of and to focus on the “three Ps”: preparation, planning and processes.
“I will ask people, ‘Are you really clear on your preparation and what do you need to be as successful as possible? That might be in your training. Then, ‘What’s your plan – are you clear in what you are trying to achieve?’
“Then think about processes; the things that you can do that you’re in control of to give the best chance to be successful. That could be focusing on how you start in a competition, to the various phases.
“If you nail your preparation, be clear on your plans and understand your processes, you set yourself up in the best position for success.”
Preparation leads to a confident competitive mindset
Event rider Pippa Funnell, who describes herself as an overthinker and has been open about confidence issues during her career, places a huge emphasis on preparation.
“What gives me the most confidence is trusting my system, and that system is leaving no stone unturned,” she says. “For example, I know my horses all at some stage have experience of running in the wet ground, because I don’t want to go into a big three-day where the going is tough and I think this horse has never experienced this.
“During a competition you don’t want to be going, ‘I wish I’d done that in the preparation.’ If you know that’s covered, then you can go in with so much more confidence.
“But there are also situations where you have to turn things into a positive. I had a fall and had a plaster on my leg for two-and-a-half weeks before the first Badminton that Supreme Rock won. I had completely the wrong preparation, but you have to turn things into a positive rather than dwell, my positive was that I was going into Badminton well rested.”
But Pippa says it’s human nature to lose confidence at some stage.
“You can lose your confidence in many ways. It might not be from a bad result or a fall, it might be that you’ve had an injury and you’re riding in pain, or you’ve had a run of horses with soundness issues, and you lose confidence in the way you ride them,” she explains.
“When I’ve lost confidence, which I have many times, I’ve fallen into the trap of losing belief in my judgement. It can be easy to ask lots of people for advice and you go away from trying to work it out for yourself.
“But I’ve found huge strength in analysing why something’s gone wrong, or it’s consistently going wrong, and very often that links back to somewhere in your training or the basics.”
Australian five-star event rider turned coach, Paul Tapner, enjoyed plenty of highs during his competition career, but he experienced his share of challenges. He believes a common factor among successful riders is having resilience.
A day when it all went right. The Badminton 2010 winner Paul Tapner says resilience in the face of inevitable disappointment is key. Credit: Alamy
“Anybody who is successful has this in bucketloads,” he says. “You might only remember a famous rider for all their successes, but statistically they’ll have been more unsuccessful.
“One example is jockey AP McCoy. He might have been the most winning rider for how ever many years, but if you look at it from the other perspective, he was also the rider of the most losers in as many years. It doesn’t matter how successful you are, you have to have that resilience to be able to look at it positively.”
Paul says being adaptable to different situations is key to overcoming hurdles.
“I would start on plan A, but normally end up at plan Z by the end of every season,” he says. “I have many stories where things haven’t gone to plan, but it can make you stronger, if you’re willing to learn from it.
“There’s a famous saying: ‘The definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over but expecting different results.’ You have to be willing to constantly assess and tweak what you’re doing to get a little bit better every time.
“It doesn’t need to be massive changes, but don’t be so stubborn that you get stuck in your way of doing something and think that that should get results.”
“No failure, only feedback”
Sports psychology coach Debbie Hill of Ahead For Life, who works with equestrians across disciplines including Olympic dressage rider Abi Lyle, practises a “no failure, only feedback” approach. And when helping riders, one technique she uses is the “mental strength triangle”.
“This triangle is made up of motivation, focus and emotional balance,” Debbie explains. “Motivation is around your values and beliefs; if you believe you’re going to be rubbish or fall off, that’s what’s going to happen. So believe that you are able to do this, because you’ve done the training for it. And the value is that it makes you happy.
“Then if we consider the focus part, that’s knowing what you want to achieve and the process to do it. For example, knowing how you’re going to ride the course, or test, and visioning linking the fences or movements together.
“The emotional balance is about what went on in the past and what’s going to happen in the future. We need to stay in the present and believe that we can do that today, by focusing on that process.”
When feeling nervous, Debbie recommends focusing on your peripheral vision.
“We tend to focus on what’s in front of us and this kick-starts that fight, flight or freeze mechanism. Try allowing your eyes to slide out to the side and think about everything you can see. This helps the body believe that everything is OK,” she says.
Showjumper Jodie Hall McAteer has been working with mindset coach Poppy Blandford for the past four years.
“It’s made a massive difference to my outlook. When I started competing on the Global Champions Tour, I got exposed to the top level very quickly, and it was a new kind of intensity and pressure,” she says. “Getting mindset help gave me the tools I needed to manage that and not to get fixated on the results.
“You can get a bit despondent when things aren’t going your way and if you’re struggling at any point, it’s so important to get help.”
Mindset coaching has been a huge help to Jodie Hall-Mcateer as she’s stepped up to the highest echelons of the sport. Credit: Alamy
How to deal with the unique mindset demands of showing
Showing exerts different pressures to the Olympic disciplines. In showjumping, for example, an unlucky pole down might be comprehensible in a rider’s head, but not being placed in showing can feel more personal. Consultant clinical psychologist Dr Krissie Ivings of Aspire Rider Confidence & Hypnotherapy – and author of Tame the Chimp, Shoot the Parrot & Silence the Mouse – says that subjective sports can be more challenging.
“It’s one person’s opinion on the day – and it is hard, especially if you think that’s unfair or biased. But there’s no reason to assume it’s deliberate bias just because your type of horse isn’t the one the judges are looking for,” says Dr Krissie.
“If you are going to do showing it’s really important that you don’t link your worth to your results. You need to be able to focus on process and let go of outcomes.
“The process is turning your horse out to the best of your ability, showing off his attributes, making sure they are well schooled for the ride judge – focus on all the different elements that make up what makes a good show horse.
“If you put all the pieces together as well as you possibly can, and you ride as well as you can on the day, then whatever happens happens – if people are better than you on the day, they’re better than you. You can still do really well and not place.
“Letting go of outcomes is even more important in disciplines where it’s subjective as the outcome is someone’s opinion. But it’s also useful to be open to feedback, because judges will have a reason for the decision they make.”
Top showing producer and judge Vikki Smith encourages riders not to focus on the placing or qualification.
“My motto is that I’m really happy with my horses in the yard, I know where they are at in their training and experience and I go to a show with the target that as long as my horse goes well on the day, then the result is an added extra,” she says.
“I had a recent result where one of my horses was second, but I think ‘I still only want to take him home’. As long as you’re happy with your horse that’s all you can do. People can become obsessed with chasing a ticket, and sometimes you’ve got to think, ‘Why did I start riding?’ and remember why they enjoy it.”
A successful day in the ring for Vikki Smith, but she has learned not to be obsessed with the results. Credit: Peter Nixon
Horses will be horses, and when those unfortunate moments do happen in the ring, Vikki says it’s important to remember that it’s likely to have happened at some stage to those watching too.
“We all think that because we’re being judged inside the ring, that we’re being judged outside it too. You’ve got to have quite a thick skin to be involved in showing,” she says, adding a rider’s back-up team is just as important in showing as other disciplines.
“I have a dressage trainer, and I have my mum who is good on the ground and a good critic for me. I think everyone needs some help and backup.”
3 tips for dealing with competition nerves
Box breathing: a relaxation technique. Inhale through your nose for a count of four, hold your breath for four, exhale through your mouth for four, hold your breath for four. Then repeat.
Cognitive distraction: using your mind to think about neutral things to keep out negative thoughts at bay. As an example, pick a colour and count how many items of this colour you can see around you.
Progressive muscle relaxation: to help reduce stress and anxiety. Tune into different parts of your body and practise tensing and relaxing your muscles one by one.
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