Confidence is a big topic, and it can have many factors affecting it.
I’m not going to talk about the deep psychological stuff here, I’m want to talk about how having a body that feels secure and strong in the saddle can affect your confidence.
If you feel like you’re wobbling around not really in control of your limbs that’s not going to fill you with confidence is it.
If your core feels strong and your body feels like it’s reacting to your horse underneath you that will make you feel like you’re in control of the situation.
If you’ve trained your body to be stable whilst absorbing the movement of the horse, yet remain soft enough to move freely with it when the inevitable spook, buck or trip happens; you’re going to absorb and go with that too rather than execute an unplanned dismount. It’s a pretty cool feeling to sit a decent buck or a spook and barely move out of the saddle; not even the slightest hint that you were going to exit stage left.
If you feel that you may be on a spooky horse but your body has “got you” that’s one aspect of your nerves taken away. That feeling of “I might fall off” doesn’t seem so real anymore as you’ve trained your body to cope and react to the unexpected.
How do you train your body to react and stay with the spooks and the bucks?
It starts with the basics as always. A body that is comfortable and stable using the big muscle groups during exercises such as Squats, Deadlift and Rows, then able to isolate stability during movement in core work such as Deadbugs or doing movements on an unstable surface such as wobble boards or hedgehog pods. Make it functional first, then you can add in the reaction training starting small with things like Kettlebell swings and building up to maybe reaction based games or Olympic lifting depending on what you’re into.
As we always say- riding is a sport and that therefore makes the rider as much of an athlete as the horse. In all other sports the athletes not only train in their sport they also spend time in the gym working on their bodies as a whole; so maybe it’s time you started training like an athlete and see your confidence soar!
