How not to get disheartened after an awful ride.

rosiesowner

rosiesowner

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Hi everyone!

This weekend just gone, I had a great time with Chills. I was off work on Saturday and only worked the Sunday morning so had plenty of time to spend with her, pampering her and getting some quality schooling in. She was nothing short of amazing, it felt like we took 10 steps forward-especially with the canter to the left. I hacked her yesterday and she was good.

However today we had an awful schooling session. It was only 10% good, and 90% bad. How do you get over your bad sessions? I'm now stuck in that negative spiral of believing I'm an idiot who can't ride and that we aren't ready for our first ever Elem in a week and a half. After this weekend, I was so excited and motivated and now I'm just worried I'm going to make a complete idiot of myself... Chills can more than easily do it, I just don't want to let her down!!
 
I have off days, usually around the mid cycle and a few days before the actual one. Its like i literally can't ride, i can't rise to trot, i can't give aids, i can't collect and lengthen, sometimes i can't even turn properly! Next session, i'm back to normal. Don't sweat it. The most important thing i have learned with riding is that its the session your having that matters, not the one that came before.
 
Concentrate on the good bits... what went well, how can you progress that work.

With the bad bits, was there a theme running through it (horse behind the leg, rider not straight, etc)? If so,plan some exercises to address that next time, so you feel like you're doing something positive.

Chalk the rest up to experience. Horses aren't robots and not are we. One bad day doesn't change anything... take what you can from it and move on. :)

It's the worst thing when you only have one to ride. At least if you have 2, chances are the other will go ok! :D
 
I spent along time getting frustrated with myself and my horses over the years, a lot of which i regret now, but it taught me that even that doesn't work!

Now if I'm having a bad ride, nothing is going right and i can feel my blood pressure rising, I just get off or walk up the farm track. Sometimes i'll go back into the school and ask for some simple things, sometimes i just put her away and give her a pat. My instructor tells me your either teaching them bad habits or training them which rings so true - tomorrow is another day!

Its funny since doing this, the bad days don't come nearly so often - I'm a huge believer in positive mental attitude, if you know you aren't going to let it escalate into a fight, things go a lot better.

Don't dwell on it, one day of bad training is unlikely to wipeout all the good positive work you've put in prior to today :)
 
We all have them, me more than most or it feels like it! What I do is, when Ive stopped sulking and given him a groom and put him to bed is - try to think of at least one thing that wasn't horrendous and give yourself a mental pat on the back about it. I rode in this wind last night, mine is still quite young and he's learning so it was mainly an exercise on spooking but....not only did I not fall off, some of the trot work was quite forward and round and in a lovely rhythm so that's what I was focussing on as I drove home!
 
A couple of years ago i went to a talk by Charlie Unwin and he was talking about emotional loading (i think that was the name!). Basically we remember things more if we are in an emotionally heightened state. So if you have a great ride you should review it straight away - what went well, how it felt etc. This will help you beuild a better memory of it and of that feeling. But if you have a bad ride you should decide to mentally put it aside for a bit. If you review that ride say the next day you will (hopefully) be a bit less emotional and not only will you be able to review it more objectively you won't build up such a strong memory of how you felt and what went wrong.

I have tried this a bit and I think it does help. I find as long as I know I will eventually think about it I don't leaving it for a bit.
 
equi said:
I have off days, usually around the mid cycle and a few days before the actual one. Its like i literally can't ride, i can't rise to trot, i can't give aids, i can't collect and lengthen, sometimes i can't even turn properly! Next session, i'm back to normal. Don't sweat it. The most important thing i have learned with riding is that its the session your having that matters, not the one that came before.
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Thank you :)
milliepops said:
Concentrate on the good bits... what went well, how can you progress that work.

With the bad bits, was there a theme running through it (horse behind the leg, rider not straight, etc)? If so,plan some exercises to address that next time, so you feel like you're doing something positive.

Chalk the rest up to experience. Horses aren't robots and not are we. One bad day doesn't change anything... take what you can from it and move on. :)

It's the worst thing when you only have one to ride. At least if you have 2, chances are the other will go ok! :D
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Yes, perhaps this is an excuse for another pony :)
LeannePip said:
I spent along time getting frustrated with myself and my horses over the years, a lot of which i regret now, but it taught me that even that doesn't work!

Now if I'm having a bad ride, nothing is going right and i can feel my blood pressure rising, I just get off or walk up the farm track. Sometimes i'll go back into the school and ask for some simple things, sometimes i just put her away and give her a pat. My instructor tells me your either teaching them bad habits or training them which rings so true - tomorrow is another day!

Its funny since doing this, the bad days don't come nearly so often - I'm a huge believer in positive mental attitude, if you know you aren't going to let it escalate into a fight, things go a lot better.

Don't dwell on it, one day of bad training is unlikely to wipeout all the good positive work you've put in prior to today :)
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Yeah I've certainly done that a few times. I must try not to get into the zone of I'm a failure if I don't manage to get what I want.
Brummyrat said:
We all have them, me more than most or it feels like it! What I do is, when Ive stopped sulking and given him a groom and put him to bed is - try to think of at least one thing that wasn't horrendous and give yourself a mental pat on the back about it. I rode in this wind last night, mine is still quite young and he's learning so it was mainly an exercise on spooking but....not only did I not fall off, some of the trot work was quite forward and round and in a lovely rhythm so that's what I was focussing on as I drove home!
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Sounds good progress for your youngster :)
daydreamer said:
A couple of years ago i went to a talk by Charlie Unwin and he was talking about emotional loading (i think that was the name!). Basically we remember things more if we are in an emotionally heightened state. So if you have a great ride you should review it straight away - what went well, how it felt etc. This will help you beuild a better memory of it and of that feeling. But if you have a bad ride you should decide to mentally put it aside for a bit. If you review that ride say the next day you will (hopefully) be a bit less emotional and not only will you be able to review it more objectively you won't build up such a strong memory of how you felt and what went wrong.

I have tried this a bit and I think it does help. I find as long as I know I will eventually think about it I don't leaving it for a bit.
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This is really good advice, thank you!
 
If you feel that a session is going 'wrong', do something really easy that both you and the horse are guaranteed to do right (my fall back 'easy thing' is a short series of halts at various places in the school) and then stop the session on a good note. Then either dismount, or go for a hack instead and don't beat yourself up about the schooling as you ended it on a positive.
 
daydreamer said:
A couple of years ago i went to a talk by Charlie Unwin and he was talking about emotional loading (i think that was the name!). Basically we remember things more if we are in an emotionally heightened state. So if you have a great ride you should review it straight away - what went well, how it felt etc. This will help you beuild a better memory of it and of that feeling. But if you have a bad ride you should decide to mentally put it aside for a bit. If you review that ride say the next day you will (hopefully) be a bit less emotional and not only will you be able to review it more objectively you won't build up such a strong memory of how you felt and what went wrong.

I have tried this a bit and I think it does help. I find as long as I know I will eventually think about it I don't leaving it for a bit.
Click to expand...

this is a great idea, and I try to do this - I write up really good lessons or schooling sessions so I can think about the good things and how I got there (handy if you forget things :o)... and also try and reflect on the less good things a bit later on when I feel less raw. Personally I jot it down on facebook like a training diary but you could keep a paper journal if that helps. I'd just never bother if I had to go home and get a paper book to write in whereas it's really easy to stick to doing it electronically.
 
I also got told by to keep a dairy of all my rides, and note down at least 3 things that went well. They could be as winning every class and standing champion to as little as getting the canter strike off straight away. The reason for this is, as previously mentioned, people are more likely to focus on the negative but, by noting down all the good you can easily see that though on one ride it felt as if 90% was bad. The majority of time it is 90% good! Hope this helps ��
 
Chalk it up as one of those things and don't let it worry you.

Easier said than done, I know. If the diva has an off-day, I tend to quit what we are doing and ask her something I know I will get the right answer for. She is honest enough that I know if she's struggling, it's likely a miscommunication fault, something I am doing or she is genuinely flummoxed. I simply revisit it when we are in a better frame of mind.

It's hard with the hooligan, because we can go about twenty steps back in a session, to the point that I can't even get him to walk calmly with all four feet on the floor, and that is extremely frustrating when the previous day he has given me so much. But again, I just move my goal posts for that day and try to come out the next day without dwelling on the day before because he can go back to being an angel quite easily.

Training horses is definitely a labour of love!
 
I always go back to what I know we can do successfully and easily- load both of our minds with a good, positive schooling session, then slowly begin adding on the difficult stuff again.
 
My instructor makes me tell her 3 positive things after we've been out competing, so even if its been a disaster I reframe it and see the poisitives
 
Faracat said:
If you feel that a session is going 'wrong', do something really easy that both you and the horse are guaranteed to do right (my fall back 'easy thing' is a short series of halts at various places in the school) and then stop the session on a good note. Then either dismount, or go for a hack instead and don't beat yourself up about the schooling as you ended it on a positive.
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Yes to the above.
Also, no matter how badly the ride went, I'm sure there was at least something you've both learned from it!
Same with the dressage test - if anything, it will be a good learning experience.
 
Forget about it. It's done with. I'm afraid you'll have plenty more too - we all do. Our horses are living beings and have their moods. What's that saying , "ride the horse you take out the stable" or something like that. You'll have plenty of fabulous rides too !
 
Our issue is tensing up and not bending, and fighting the contact in canter so when I feel it creeping up and find I'm using too much rein to fix it I drop back down to trot and do some long and low, 9 times out of 10 he needed a break and a stretch and something easy to focus on.
 
So glad ive seen this post again. Had a really disheartening ride last night. Sometimes I actually own Valegro, other times, a beach donkey ! Last night we had beach donkey. She genuinely couldnt be a&sed and maintaining canter was 'donkey' work !! And she was as stiff as an ironing board, particularly to the left. I didnt get worked up, but felt so disappointed as shes been going great guns lately. I can only put it down to the fact that she spent all day long out in that relentless rain yesterday, in a thin rug which i later found out leaked. Ooops. Not a happy pony. I just hope tomorrow we have Valegro back again.
 
Valegro will be back Notime :)

I had the beach donkey on Tuesday, this morning Coblegro was peeking out under the blonde mane, hoping for a full reveal at the show tomorrow :lol:
 
milliepops said:
Valegro will be back Notime :)

I had the beach donkey on Tuesday, this morning Coblegro was peeking out under the blonde mane, hoping for a full reveal at the show tomorrow :lol:
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Ha ha Beach donkeys rule ! (glad its not only me then) At a new yard and kind of trying to look like i semi know what im doing - difficult when pony says Nah, not today thanks pmsl
 
Realise that with horses comes good and bad and your problem is solved. It's not realistic to expect every single ride to go to plan.
 
I do realise this is an old thread, but I had a ride just like that today and so came on here and searched 'had an awful ride' :p. I felt so frustrated after my sharp little mare had had a good jump school at the weekend and today's Dressage was a tension filled mess! She is not an easy ride at the best of times, but today it was just rubbish. Onward and upward (or downward; I must lower my expectations next ride, I reckon.) So frustrating :/.
 
milliepops said:
this is a great idea, and I try to do this - I write up really good lessons or schooling sessions so I can think about the good things and how I got there (handy if you forget things :eek:)... and also try and reflect on the less good things a bit later on when I feel less raw. Personally I jot it down on facebook like a training diary but you could keep a paper journal if that helps. I'd just never bother if I had to go home and get a paper book to write in whereas it's really easy to stick to doing it electronically.
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I keep a journal in my tack room and jot down things after the ride or if I’m not riding, things that happen on the day to day with the horses.
I like the Charlie Unwin advice, I’m going to try that. I tend to jot the bad rides down straight away, now I will wait and do it another time. It seems easier to say something was bad because … but harder to do something was good because…. I tend to write down the ride was great but not why but analyse the bad ones. I need to change my habits.
 
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