Note to Coach: Help Students Deal with Fear

Note to Coach: Help Students Deal with Fear

I think that anyone who has ever ridden a horse while in the saddle at least once experienced fear or excitement.

If you are a riding instructor, especially if you are working with beginner riders, you will have to learn how to professionally help those of your students who are afraid. Working with them takes time and patience. I want to share my experience in this area, to talk about what has helped me to cope with such problems over the years.

Students are brave and not very

Naturally, some riders are more shy than others. I have taught children who would gladly agree to jump over obstacles in their first lesson if I let them. On the other hand, I taught children who had to spend a lot of time with just so that they were not afraid to gallop.

Initially, I didn’t feel confident in dealing with horses. As a little girl, I dreamed of riding and always looked forward to my training, but as soon as I got on a horse, I was terrified. At the same time, there was no reason for him – I rode good horses and trained with experienced instructors. I remember my grandma asked my mom why she makes me go to class every week if I’m scared. The reason was that my mother saw how much I wanted to ride a horse. All week between workouts I talked about horses and how I would ride. But when X-day came, everything changed. Looking back, I understand that it was stupid, but what happened, happened.

As instructors, we must be attentive to students’ fears, even if they hide them. Our goal is to discover the problem and help the student deal with it.

None of the instructors in my childhood ever asked me why I was afraid. I’m sure I wouldn’t have an answer. I wanted to know everything about horses and be close to them, I loved everything about horses. But in real life the horses were huge and sometimes stubborn and the little kid had a hard time controlling his frightened inner voice and would start drowning out the instructor’s commands when things started to get a little wobbly.

Replace Fear of Horses with Respect for Horses

Gradually, slowly, developing on the right horses with the right teachers, I became a confident rider. I had a lot of crazy moments and got a lot of fractures. Instilling self-confidence in the rider, one must also teach him common sense. He must be clearly aware of the fact that we are dealing with large animals that do not think like we do. Telling your students about the nature of the horse and explaining to them that it is a prey animal and its instincts often cause it to react differently than we would like, you will be of great help to both them and yourself. The common sense is that the more we know about the 500 kg beast we are sitting on, the better we can handle it.

Meet and Build Relationships

If you are a naturally brave and confident rider who has never heard the inner voice saying “what if…?”, you are very lucky, because it takes perseverance to overcome this voice. Put yourself in the shoes of a student!

Sometimes it seems to me that instructors and confident riders forget what it means to not know what to expect, or just what it means to be afraid. Watching different students over the past 20 years and how they overcome their fears has helped me better understand how to help someone overcome them.

Just because you, as an instructor, don’t think something is scary at all, it doesn’t mean your student has no right to be afraid. As instructors, we must remember what it is like not knowing what to do with your body to make the horse finally hear itself, to be surprised by the new reactions of the horse.

You need to make sure that you form a bond with your student. Try talking to him – not just about horses (family, school, pets, everything). You want the student to be comfortable and easy to talk to you. In this case, when he is having a hard time and he starts to get nervous, he will not be afraid (or embarrassed) to talk to you and tell you what is happening.

You must communicate with the children you teach – this is how they learn to trust you. It also helps them relax.

If there is a beginner in front of me, and I see that he is very afraid, I will spend the whole lesson explaining, and he will just sit on the horse, which I will lead on the lead around the arena. I will talk to him about himself. This helps the beginner to relax and forget about their fears. The more his mind calms down, the more his muscles relax, and then the student can begin to really listen to your instructions and build the muscle memory needed to end up with a balanced fit.

Be observant

You can help yourself in your teaching business by paying more attention to your student’s body language – not only when he is on horseback, but also on the ground. You can learn a lot from how your child behaves when they first meet you. If he blushes, looks down and leans back, he is probably shy and fearful. These qualities of his can manifest themselves more strongly when he has to make new places for himself in a new place. Do whatever it takes to make the student relax and feel comfortable. Taking the time to do this will help the student follow your instructions, even if they feel nervous.

Active, enthusiastic children also show their character. Pay attention to it! Such a child will need to learn about how his energy affects the energy of the horse, that horses need the calmness of the rider.

Solve problems step by step

It is very difficult to see a student struggling with himself and the horse, realizing that you are saying the right things to him, but he does not hear you. But remember how loud the voice in his head can scream when he thinks things are going wrong. When your student’s inner voice is louder than your guiding voice, nothing will come of it.

You need to find out what skill the student lacks, because of what everything is happening, because of which he cannot follow your command and work correctly.

For example, if a student’s pony constantly pulls him forward from the saddle and starts to graze, and the student just lies on the pony’s neck and cannot lift his head up, you should not continue to say “lift the pony head”! You need to teach him how why do it and as. The “why and how” is just as important as the actual steps in fixing the problem.

You must correct the leg position to give the student a better base of support. Raise the student’s arms to bring their shoulders back, which in turn helps lift the pony’s head off the grass. Remind the student to keep pushing the pony forward, making it work (he needs to work hard enough and be attentive enough to the rider and not think about stopping and grazing).

You must make sure that the student has all the tools and that he understands what and how to do. For more experienced riders who experience this problem, I encourage them to improve their position and work at a faster pace. We do this in the middle of the arena between several cones until their seat becomes firmer and they start to ride more confidently. Then I let them go back to the grass to deal with the pony’s cunning with full knowledge of the matter.

Your shy or nervous students will develop faster if you try to break down the skills you teach them as much as possible so they understand why they need to do something and how it will help them control the horse. If your nerves are on edge and someone just repeats an instruction you don’t understand, no matter how many times they repeat it, it won’t fix the situation.

When and how to apply pressure?

In some cases, the only way that can help our student overcome fear is through pressure. However, you should not put pressure on your student until you see that he is able to do what you ask.

If you put pressure on a scared and unprepared rider, you will only make things worse. He will not be able to really understand the problem, but, on the contrary, will be more afraid of him, in the worst case, he will also lose confidence in you.

If we do not want this, we need to train the rider gradually. If he already has a particular skill, then when the rider gets scared, we can push him a little, and he will know that you are objective, believe in him and do not ask to do something that he is not capable of.

Fear goes hand in hand with disappointment. Obviously, we cannot promise that our students will never be disappointed, but we can avoid this by making sure they acquire and use one skill with confidence before moving on to another. So hopefully we’re setting up the students right and they’ll be ready for anything that makes scary things not so scary.

If your student is on the right horse and gets scared while learning something, it’s best if you work on the same problem on the same horse for a couple more lessons. The student may be reluctant to accept this, but we must not let him give up. Sometimes that means we may have to take a couple of steps back and help him gain confidence again. In the process, you can discuss how improving these particular skills is related to the problem he is facing. When the student sees that he can do some things instinctively, confidently, without hesitation, ask him how he feels, if he understands how this relates to what scared him. I bet if you take the time to go back for a bit and show the rider how things work, he will be much more confident next time.

Do I need to change horses often?

We want the student to understand that he can succeed on any horse. Nothing will give him more confidence than this. Obviously, this rule does not work if the horse the rider is afraid of really puts him at risk. However, if you know your riders and your horses well, this will never be a problem.

A common fear that visits all inexperienced riders is a lack of understanding of how to behave in a new situation. It goes without saying that no novice or skittish rider should work with a horse with dangerous habits. Such horses, in principle, should not be used as training horses.

Short resume

Try these tips and I think you’ll be surprised at how easy it is to help your students overcome their fears. Get to know your students, talk to them, calm them down so they can tell you what scares them. Take your time! Let’s be honest, if your main job, like mine, is teaching beginners, then there is no need to rush – you are not preparing them for the Olympics now!

A slow and steady pace is always better. If I were to form a golden rule of riding, it would be: “It is easier to spend time and gain confidence than to go back when it is lost.” Help students understand why you are asking them to do certain things. We all feel better and worry less when we know what we’re doing, more, don’t we? Riding is no different from life. Make sure your students know that everything is fine and that they have nothing to fear.

I tell my students all the time some stories about what I was really afraid of and how I was able to overcome my fear. By telling your students stories about your personal experiences and struggles, you will make them feel better when they realize that overcoming fears is just part of gaining general riding skills.

Ask them what you can do to make them feel more comfortable. You may be surprised by the simple answers. If a child is especially nervous, you can ask their parents for advice. The child may tell his parents what he is embarrassed to tell you.

Our job is to set up riders for success. Each case is individual. I am not saying that you should change your program or system. You need to change how you present it, depending on the rider’s personality and their level of trust and confidence.

Allison Hartley (source); translation Valeria Smirnova.