You know when you have a bad riding day? What do you do,,,

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clipclop

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to get your head back in gear?

Last night I had one of those sessions where 50% of it was awful and 50% was pretty damn good. The bad 50% was all me I was just such a spaz. I get frustrated.

I have found I have to halt. Take some deep breaths, make a fuss of my horse, shut my eyes and try and focus on what I was trying to achieve and where I thought I might have gone wrong. I then have to have another word with myself about how lucky I am to have my horse and that anything he does is wonderful. It makes me smile and relax lots.

If I am competing and it is going wrong. I used to get in a bigger and bigger pickle but now I make an effort to laugh at myself and tell myself "It really doesn't matter". It instantly relaxes me and I get re focused again and do the very best I can with what my horse is offering me which is normally everything he just can't do it because my tense riding is hindering him.

I am not sure that is the best way to do it so I would love to hear what you do when things are going wrong whilst Schooling or competing?

How you cope with the physical and the mental side of it all?

Are you a person who gets frustrated easily, loses their temper or are you very calm etc?

Thanks
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I am generally very calm but I do have days when as soon as I trot in the school I know instantly Im not in mood to school so I dont even bother I just go for hack. Dont know what it is. When competing I am very calm anyway, If I do have some blips when schooling I go back down to walk get my breath and take it from there but it old ponio I used to have to do that, she was soo naughty at times lol.
 
I can get very frustrtaed and the iodd session I have to find a positive note even if a calm 20 meter circle and leave it for the day. My mare and I can wind each other up cronic and there are some days where you just have to say leave otherwise I might really lose my cool with her. It is always better next time so it doesn't hurt occasionly if you finish on a goodish note.
 
sometimes i get frustrated, if i am not acheiving the best i can, especially in the run up to a comp it can be worse. but normally at home i can stay pretty calm all though my darling horse was in an extremely bad mood the other day and did not want to play and thats tested my patients. if this happens i normally just walk for a few minutes on a long rein and take some deap breaths then start again. sometimes its just hard though.
 
Competeing im a bag of nerves. In jumping or driving cane or obstacles i manage to change that to agression and competitiveness, but in dressage it is a sham! I get tense, Pip stats rearing, I get more tense, Pip starts cantering, I get frustrated, Pip forgets how to steer! With Ginga it is better, he get tense when i do but doesn't do anything wrong.

If I have a bad day riding Pip we go for a gallop. Once i get annoyed with him he just wont play the game, but it is very satisfying to go for good gallop, realise he is very fast and that is why we got him. It sounds strange but i dont get bad days on Ginga, however i ride him he goes the same, which means good days are frustrating!
 
I get very frustrated when we have a bad day (and we've had a few recently). Find it very hard to deal with and think we end up winding each other up even more so the problems get worse and worse. Don't really know how to deal with it and it is getting me down.
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Unfortunately it is the basics we're having difficulty with ! eg getting the right canter lead, transitions are either rushed or delayed etc. I worry so much about ruining my horse with my bad riding - tend to blame myself if anything goes wrong, though instructor tries to reassure me it is just part of the process of training a young horse.
Well think I have seriously got the glums today!
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I had several crap days last week. I wasn't getting anywhere with PF and just making her upset and myself cross so I got off and left it or just went for a hack.
Last Sunday my show day started rather badly and I was worried that I'd make Antifaz look like really bad (when he's actually really rather nice) which made me a bit uptight... some sound advice from Former Instructor helped alot!
 
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