Ditching the doom and gloom attitude during my lessons

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emfen1305

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I look forward to my lessons each week, if I could afford it I would my instructor permanently attached to my hip guiding my every move but alas, we have to restrict to one hour or 2 half hours. So I spend all week getting excited, doing all of my homework ready to impress my instructor with our new found straightness or amazing serpentines and then boom, one thing goes wrong, the black cloud sets in, I ride like a sack of potatoes and almost end up in tears because it's not going right. It is not going right because I am not riding properly. It is definitely not my instructor, in fact she is the only one that doesn't pander to this "woe is me" bratty attitude. I plough on as best as I can and then as soon as I get out of the saddle and have my debrief with positives and the reasons why it might not have been quite right, I feel OK and then really guilty that i behaved like such a mardy brat in my lesson (I am a grown adult so should know better!). The logical side of me is great at processing what is happening and how to avoid it next time but the emotional side just completely takes over during the lesson.

How can I nip these negative thoughts in the bud so it doesn't ruin the rest of my lesson? My instructor tries hard, we switch things up, she explains things very well, asks questions etc but once the cloud sets in there is very little either of can do to shift it and I don't feel like I am making the most of my time.
 
Bob notacob said:
Are you me by any chance?
Click to expand...

Not unless you're both me :eek3:

I mean, the only difference is mine is currently not dressage, but polocrosse - which just means there's twice as much to go wrong. If the horse is going good, my racquet skills resemble a semi-conscious sloth after a heavy night out on the tiles, and if my racquet skills are alright (as far as they ever are), the pony's going wrong and I'm having a mare about how badly I've trained her / ride her. I honestly wonder why coaches put up with me :o
 
But my coach seems to be on call 24 /7 She has just texted me (23.46 hrs) replying to my concerns regarding BTNAC and his abbismal performance yesterday. Bob and I do get our moneys worth!:eek:
 
There are several points that need addressing, firstly you sound as if a) you are trying to impress your instructor, perfectly understandable but in itself totally unnecessary as she is there to help and if everything was "perfect" she would not be required. b) you are allowing one "mistake" to take over the whole session and this effects how you ride, rather than use the mistake as a negative turn it into a positive and realise that you can deal with things going wrong and that the instructor, who sounds great, is there for the purpose of enabling you to learn how to deal with things if and when they do go wrong as much as to help make progress when all is going well.

Your aim through the week should be to build on your progress made during a lesson, which seems to be happening, the aim for the lesson should be to take a step or two forward in the training and to continue to establish the basics from previous lessons, as long a you are making progress generally you must not allow a blip to effect how you ride, you are obviously putting a lot in emotionally but spending too much time dwelling on the negatives and not focusing on the positives.

I would suggest having a week where you have a half hour every other day, so 3 in one week, and on the days in between you just hack and see if you can relax a bit, start to try a bit less hard to impress and more on what each session brings and see if you can enjoy the lessons a little more, rather than seeing them as an opportunity to impress see them as a chance to get a few more building blocks towards your aims, whatever they may be, breaking them down into bite sized pieces is also a good idea if you are trying too hard to get everything correct in one big step it can feel daunting, having lots of mini steps can make it more attainable.
If you don't have a target to aim for something very low key may help you realise you are making progress and that if something goes wrong it is not going to be the end of the world as it is only the first step up the ladder, one of my young pupils wants to do well at everything she does and like you she used to get overwhelmed when something went wrong but now knows it is all part of riding a living animal and is much more relaxed knowing if something isn't quite right she can repeat an exercise until it is better and if it still isn't as good as it could be it is not going to be the end of the world or upset me or her pony in any way, her confidence has grown gradually and her riding generally has improved because she is more relaxed.
 
It took me ages to learn to learn .
I agree with what BP has said above .
You really need to remove all emotion when learning and be calm .
I always spilt it in two what are we working with the horse and what am I trying to improve in my self .
I have short term medium term and long term goals for me and the horses .
I write them down and then I write down what needs to done to get there I amend them as I go along .
There’s a good book it will be quite old now but you will find it I am sure you will find it on eBay it’s That Winning Feeling it by Jane Savoie that the book that was my break through it just made me see that I was author of my lack of progress ( I knew that ) and more importantly what I could do about it .
Be kind to yourself being too keen to do well and then getting it wrong in the lesson is not all bad it’s a great place to train your self to train better from .
It’s hard to say from what you have said about what is actually goes on in the lesson but try when something is not going right stopping and saying to the trainer what’s going wrong what the thing I need most to corrrect in my position and aids to make this better and then go and try again .
I will often stop drop the reins and ask for clarity so that went wrong because I did X way.
Try to work for calmness in your self my favourite things is when you are in that bubble in a lesson ,you can fix this I know you can because I did .
 
Great replies from BP and GS above.

Although it doesn't make it very fun, I never mind if things go wrong in my lessons, that's exactly the time I need my trainer there and it usually happens because we are trying something new, or trying to make something better. It would be unusual to start a new exercise and for everything to slot into place just perfectly straight away, if it were that simple then no one would need training ;) If we nail everything we try first time then i go home with a fuzzy happy feeling having had a nice ride, but I've just coughed up loads of money to not get any useful input!

Definitely agree that it's not necessary to impress your instructor, it sounds like you have a good relationship anyway. She will be impressed anyway by your dedication. So trying to let yourself off the hook a bit might be what you need to start to approach lessons as an opportunity to soak up info, rather than to demonstrate proficiency. I also found the Jane Savoie book useful.
 
Can't add to the fab advice already above but did want to note that I seem to have the opposite issue. We go brilliantly in our lessons (inc working through bits that don't start off well) but I can't match it outside of them. I get all disappointed that I'm rubbish and can't do it on my own!
 
Sorry for the super late reply on this! Some really good points made that I hadn't considered and think the 2 things that are going wrong are trying to impress my instructor, this is definitely the primary issues and the reason why I get so down if i don't do it right, she is a fantastic rider and instructor, I have seen her ride other horses and get them going lovely so I think I don't want her to think I am totally incompetent! I think its because I know what is going wrong and why we are doing squares and not circles and its stuff that she has told me about before (like my wayward inside hand) so I get really frustrated at myself and give myself a bit of a hard time.

I have found most of the Jane Savoie book as an eBook so I have been reading that and visualising my schooling sessions before I do them which does seem to have helped. My instructor said I get too obsessed with the exercise and not with the point of the exercise which I see now. So we are working on inside leg to outside hand as he relies very much on "legs mean go and reins mean steer" and its taking some time to establish it so we are using different exercises to help like serpentines etc but then I get so fixated on the serpentine being perfect that I forget that it is actually about the aids so then I don't give them and then the serpentine doesn't happen and I get annoyed - What is wrong with me?!

Anyway, on the back of this, I decided to break my sessions down so I don't get fixated on doing one thing and try to perfect it so I do lots of different things and and focus on having one aim for me (legs, hands, not having a mental breakdown etc) and that seems to have worked for my last session alone. I've told my instructor and promised to snap out of my bad moods in the lesson so hopefully next week will be better! Or I might be back haha!
 
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