Confidence

It's funny how the little things make such a big difference when horse riding, isn't it?

You may remember how in this post I mentioned that I had a slight loss of control of Izzy when learning to do flying changes. Well, I've since had two more lessons on her (both PC) and I have to say things have gone from bad to worse.

Normally, after a little mishap, I'm perfectly fine. I just get on with it. But for whatever reason, this time, that isn't happening. The next lesson I had on this headstrong mare was a pony club session dedicated towards jumping. There were three jumps to go over by the end of the lesson, and I felt more agitated each time.

The first time I went out to jump the combination, I turned to go out on the track when trusty old ponio spooked for no apparent reason, nearly colliding with Bails. Great start, huh? She then proceeded to get twitchy every time I tried to get her to go out on the track, which is what I wanted to do so that I could have more time to bend her and get straight. I walked up to the jump for the most part, hoping that I could just trot over them, but she wasn't having any of that! We cantered over the combination. The thing is, she doesn't put a hoof wrong when jumping. She goes over the jumps without hesitation and she's so easy to stick with. The problem was getting to the jump. She kept threatening to spook every time after that.

Thus concludes that lesson. Physically I had the shakes after the spooking incident, not massively but the knots in my stomach and then my hands not being quite so steady. Mentally I was fine at first, but then the onset of feeling physically shaken up meant that a mental aspect did come into play. And so began Saturday's lesson just gone. I had a different instructor last weekend, and we were doing flatwork, so apart from feeling apprehensive when I had to canter everything was fine (oh, and the couple of times she reacted to the horse behind me getting a tap on the shoulder because she kept napping).

Yet the feeling of nervousness carried on. I don't know what it is because honestly, the lesson was fine. I'm just hoping that whatever the problem is, it'll go away with another good lesson and I can regain my confidence because it can't be nice for Izzy to feel my apprehension, even if she doesn't show it!

Do you guys have any tips for this sort of confidence issue?

Until next time!