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Dr. Janet Sasson Edgette

“Don’t Let Your Performance Anxiety Get in the Way of

Your Performance!”

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Ten Take-Aways

1. Stop trying to conquer your show nerves! It makes them too important. They are not the obstacle to good performance that you may think they are. Besides, once you declare war, they will always win.

2. Recognize too that you can be nervous and still be an effective rider. Having anxiety about doing well does not have to make you a lesser rider than you are. It just makes you have to ride while feeling anxious. You may not like it, but consider it the price of doing business (i.e., competing).

3. Identify your particular “style” of getting nervous – spacey-ness, over-riding (riding too aggressively, for instance), under-riding (riding too passively or without authority), freezing up – and once and for all own it. It won’t make it get worse, as some riders fear. Once you identify and own the ways in which your nervousness changes your riding, you can begin to take speci!c steps to compensate for it.

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4. Recognize the limitations of perfectionism. She is like a drug, always promising you more and more, all the while staying just out of reach. She gets you to tie yourself in knots pursuing levels of performance in a sport that can’t ever really be perfect except for in a single moment. Table settings can be perfect. Not people. Not horses. Perfection is expensive and unreliable; tell her to scram.

5. Yelling, imploring, or berating never made anyone a better rider or a better person. Whatever yellers think they are gaining is more than offset by what is lost: the opportunity to inspire, build con!dence, perfuse your teaching with grace. I’ve yet to meet a rider who wasn’t, at most any given moment, doing the best she could with what she had that day. There are very few slackers in this sport. If you are a yeller, try to !nd a different way of explaining or teaching something. Try giving your student more time to learn it. Maybe all she needs is someone to acknowledge her own frustration with the problem at hand. Your patience can be a gift to a struggling, self-conscious rider who is trying so hard she’s lost touch with her own natural rhythm and feel.

6. As a rider, learn to be pro-active in getting your trainer, friends, parents/spouse to help you in ways that will actually be constructive. Let them know which things they say make you more nervous, and ask them to refrain. Tell them which remarks do help you keep things in perspective, keep your sense of humor, or keep you feeling con!dent. If you need a little bit of space or quiet time before competing, see if they will support that (as much as is practical.) If last minute instructions or too many pointers at the in-gate #uster you, ask your trainer if there is a different way for her to prepare you for your round so that you’re not having to organize a lot of information in your mind as you start off.

Performance anxiety becomes a problem only when you think you shouldn’t be having any.

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7. Fear (of injury, loss of control, shame) is not something that can bullied into submission. It will simply come back a bigger monster. Riders’ fears must always be taken at face value, at least to start with. Whether or not one should be scared or nervous or tentative becomes irrelevant in the face of heart palpitations and racing thoughts. We cannot control what we feel, and often enough, there’s an emotional logic behind it all that rings very true: Yes, I was able to make it through the gymnastic on Tuesday because it was my "rst time jumping again since my accident and nothing was really expected of me but now it’s Friday and I feel that since I did it on Tuesday everyone’s expecting me to be able to do it anytime, everytime. Which makes me nervous all over again. Which makes me mess up - even though I was able to do it on Tuesday.

8. Talent, misfortune, or just plain having a bad day does not give anyone the right to act less than graciously in a sport setting.

9. Be aware that there is “good” sport psychology … which uses stories, perspective-taking, rituals and a respect for human nature to inspire athletes to rise above their real or perceived limitations. Good sport psychology endorses self-acceptance and self-respect and leaves people feeling better about themselves and their efforts to improve.

10. … and there is what I call “bad” sport psychology …. which teaches athletes that they necessarily need to alter their negative feelings or change their perception of their inner experience in order to achieve a winning state of mind. Bad sport psychology encourages riders to dismiss what’s real and true in favor of a contrived state of self-satisfaction or con!dence that can, unfortunately, evaporate in a split second.

Exert less. Accomplish more.

www.sportpsychologyforriders.com