Banish Pre-Show Nerves & Anxiety!

At some point, most folks who show horses experience that moment where your brain short circuits itself. You may find yourself frantically scrolling through your phone; trotting or loping longer than necessary to warm up, or just mindlessly staring off into the abyss. You become paralyzed. Your brain may even start to offer up all kinds of unhelpful negative thoughts.

It’s like your brain is overwhelmed and overloaded and you just lose the ability to do anything. Not ideal when you’re due to perform in the show pen in five minutes!

Why would this happen? It’s because your brain doesn’t just see your upcoming run with the simple requirement of trotting, spinning, and loping around where you aren’t in danger of death at all. No, your brain sees the threat of scarcity. Not enough time. Not enough energy. The threat of the seemingly all-terrible failure! The threat of disappointing others or yourself.

And like all humans, our body and mind decide between fight, flight, or freeze as we react to these threats. We literally trick ourselves into thinking that walking out to do our reining pattern is the same as walking out into a car crash!

So what should you do when your turn or your class is almost up and you are stuck feeling overwhelmed, paralyzed, or procrastinating doing something, anything! Here’s one way to ground yourself in the present using the 5-4-3-2-1 technique and get your head back in the game, and rock your run!

The great thing about this technique is that it doesn’t require any special tools and you can do this literally anywhere. Let’s walk through this together.

5 - Look around and simply name five things you can SEE right at that moment. What’s right in front of you wherever you are.

4 - Close your eyes (if you can relax a bit), and simply LISTEN and name four things you can hear.

3 - Reach down and pet your horse. Observe three things (so two more besides your horse), that you can FEEL and touch. You can touch your horse, your jeans, your saddle. You can even hop off and get a hug from a friend.

2 - Inhale deeply. You’re now going to name two SMELLS. And it’s a horse show so there’s no way you won’t smell something. (It’s ok to laugh, too!)

1 - And finally, identify something you can TASTE. Take a sip of cool water or lemonade. You can even just focus on the taste of your own mouth.

Incorporating an exercise like this into your warmup routine is key. It will interrupt the overwhelm by grounding you in your senses, and in the present moment. And by giving your brain the job of counting and working through your five senses, it interrupts all those thoughts spiraling out of control.

Try this moment of mindfulness at your next show - heck, the next time you ride - and let us know how it goes!

Happy Trails!

Nicole