Getting Out of My Own Way

I am a very positive person, pretty much all of the time. I like to keep my head in the clouds.... The view from up here is quite nice! My glass is always half full. Every disappointment is a chance to only make myself better next time... Anyway, you get the picture. There are situations though that can start to weigh on me. I wanted to write a blog about the "other" piece of my riding I am working on, the mental side.

I like to analyze things, all things really. I am a very reflective person because that is what my job as a school teacher forces me to do. I look at all types of data and determine, from that data, what the next steps need to be. I am constantly reflecting and planning. With riding, I am no different.

I make plans- a lot of them! Some of them are completely unrealistic but fun to think about nonetheless. Then, I talk those plans over with Megan, Jenn, Andrea, and Emily on Monday nights over Mexican food. Some of my plans they like some of them they hate! I am ok with both. I am just glad that we can all be honest with each other. I respect all of their opinions for sure. The biggest difference, I feel, between us all is that they are professionals so they get to set their calendar around important shows, etc. I try to do the same but also have to take into account my work calendar. I tend to panic when my plans don't materialize! I AM however, a firm believer that everything happens for a reason. So for example, when I didn’t get to go to the jumper show cause of the weather, I just said, "I just saved over $100 and she's been jumping really well so I don't feel like I NEED to go but it would have been fun!" I have had to train my way of thinking though and it is not always that easy!

As I have said in earlier blogs, Craig Shegog, my show jumping coach, is both my jumping coach and what I'd call the closest thing to a life coach I have ever had. Not the kind of life coach that wants to discuss the ins and outs of my crazy life! He knows I am a school teacher (or that I have a job with summers off), he's met Tom and seen him a few times, and he knows I teach a few clients but that's probably about all he knows about me personally. However, when it comes to my riding, he knows more about my thought process than I do. He knows what I am going to think about a riding situation before I do and often how I will react. He knows and calls me on it when I am not being mentally tough. He knows that sometimes I bring up mistakes I have made in lessons YEARS ago, and that I can have 100 good jumps and one "bad" one and the one bad one stays with me longer than the 100 good ones! He knows Frankie is a different horse from her left side to her right side, and he know that mentally, I can get in my own way by overthinking everything.

We have really been working on demising the ability that I have to get in my own way, but it a daily task. He never dismisses any of my thoughts or makes me feel stupid for asking questions or making a statement and he always addresses my "concerns." We start every lesson with a brief discussion about what Frankie has done the previous days, how she was or what I felt, and what needs to happen the following week. Another thing he has been doing since very early on is recommending sports psychology books for me to read. He has read many himself and says with a library card, it's the cheapest coaching I can get because I have the tools and ability, I just have to put it all together.

I have found that many of the books written for the game of golf, can pertain to riding. The last book I read was Life is not a Game of Perfect by Dr. Bob Rotella. It had several good points about working hard and not selling yourself short and about how to train your thinking to reach your full potential. Here are just two pages that I found interesting about thinking you "did you best."

 

I found this interesting even as a teacher because I wonder how many times I have given work back to students and lead them to believe they have done the best they can? And if I have done that, have I limited them in the future. Have I limited myself at times? I highlighted many parts in the book and will skim through them from time to time for sure.

I am now reading this book. If nothing else, reading fills my mind with other thoughts.







 

If you have any good books you have read and would like to share them with me, I'd love to read them!  Until next time, think you are awesome and believe in your dreams!



Summer Plans?!?!

Being a school teacher means SUMMER BREAK and it is finally approaching! Now, it is not as long as most people think, and we do have mandatory professional developments to attend over the summer, but never the less, I have about eight weeks where I don't have to write lesson plans and be responsible for several little humans’ education. Teachers’ time off is basically dictated but I try to fit in as much as I can during the school year, however it seems like the few plans I tried to put into motion this year, for one reason or another, did not play out as I had hoped. Some things were work related while others were just bad timing. Up to this point, I have put together (mentally), about 50 plans for my summer break and none of them seemed to sit well as I mulled over them in my head.

First I thought about going to an adult camp. I am not sure if they offer those for the OI/Adv level but maybe? Then I thought about going to several different well- known riders/ coaches/ trainers for a week or longer and sent some emails pertaining to that. Then I thought about going to Florida. You get my drift….

I have talked to and downright bugged several (very busy) people asking for advice on what to do and who to ride with over the summer. Of course, money and traveling distance play a huge role in things as well as riding with someone who might be accessible to me in the future for a tune up before a big competition, so I have to take that into consideration. I can't just do whatever I want for my eight weeks of summer break but I wanted to have a plan of action for Frankie and me.

Frankie and I ran January and February Poplar and from there we have just been doing our homework. I have packed the double bridle away in my trailer to force myself to work on making her better in the snaffle. I have continued my jump lessons with Craig on a weekly basis, even when the money was a little low, so that I did not get out of the routine of jumping 4'. I have been able to work with Megan Moore and we have made some huge, positive changes in my XC riding. Now that Frankie is trained and ridable, I have really had to change the way I ride her. She is not the same type of ride, thank goodness... lol, that she was even three years ago. And finally, I have been riding Cathy Wieschhoff's very nice, young, sale horses and her prelim horse, Slew Boy, while she recovers from shoulder surgery. In the three weeks I've been riding them, I have already learned a ton and mainly about myself.

I have learned that by riding only one horse consistently for the last eight years, that I have become very use to ONE way of going. I seem to have lost, ummm, maybe resiliency is the word I am looking for? Meaning when Frankie strays from "normal," I don't react soon enough with the tools I have in my toolbox because they have perhaps gotten rusty?! The baby horses and even the prelim horse are helping me sharpen my tools. They have been there all along, just had gotten a little rusty.

So that leaves me still with the question of what to do this summer! There are some clinics coming to town which would eliminate the travel and extended hotel stays for me. I enjoyed the Joe Meyer clinic and he was very complimentary of us as a team. I rode well that weekend and seemed to not make any silly mistakes. It is hard to explain my "issues" to a person that only sees a snapshot of my riding. This is why Megan has been so instrumental in making immediate changes to my riding. Even before she started helping me, and teaching me, (which I am sure can be exhausting because I ask a lot of questions when in a comfortable situation, think A LOT about my previous lessons/ shows, and future goals, and want to discuss all of this, sometimes at random) she had seen me compete a lot. She has been at all of my Advanced and has even seen glimpses of us other places. She already had several things she wanted to work on by the time she started helping me. It was great in lesson #1, which we schooled XC, to have her say, "Ok. This is what we are going to do today." She didn't need any time to get to know us. Sometimes I feel clinics are tough because the clinician needs to have some sort of baseline for your riding but I think this summer instead of skipping town for an extended period of time, I will try a few clinics and see what I think of them. Good or bad…. It will be a two- day experience. I will make myself go and if nothing else, I will have that pressure of riding in front of others, on myself.

With the opportunities I have here in Lexington to keep working with people who really know me and care about my progress, getting to ride other horses, and teaching my own clients and pony clubbers, I think by participating in a couple of clinics this summer, I will provide myself with a good education.

We head to Greater Dayton in two weeks, which almost looks like it is shaping up to be a Team CEO division of prelim, then Jenn O’Neil and I will go to Lost Hounds in June. I have a summer/ fall show schedule taking shape but as we all know, plans are ever changing. I’ll let Frankie help me plan the rest.