Improving My Mental Game

These last few years, my mental game has definitely been a bit off. I mean, I think most people have experienced some kind of dip in their mental health due to this damn pandemic. But specifically with riding, my mental game hasn't been at it's best in a long time, probably since 2018 (which, coincidentally, was my worst year of non-horse mental health ever). Back then, I felt like TC and I were really in sync and showing was fun, even when he bolted up centerline or I had to withdraw him from playing too much in the 1-3 that one test. 

Also good for my mental game: bareback trail riding

Since 2020, it really took a nose dive because I was so distraught over TC's condition. Also, you know, a global pandemic where my entire family got COVID right at the beginning of it. 

This fall, I finally figured it all out and so my feelings of distress about TC went away! But then those feelings were replaced by fear, which was weird given that I hadn't had much fear on TC in a long time. But he was feeling great and I had changed saddles from my very secure Custom to the less secure saddles I've been riding in since (this will be remedied soon I hope). 

I think on the blog I've been pretty open that I've struggled on and off with fear during my riding. It's just a fact of life, right? Sometimes you get afraid of things. Sometimes those things are things you REALLY love. I dunno, I wrote about it a long time ago and I still stand by my original sentiment: I have so much respect for people who are afraid to do the thing but do the thing anyway. 

It's so beautiful

Much of my fear was surrounding TC's new gaits, which were difficult to sit without shutting down, and his excitement over his new gaits, which he expressed by leaping. Without spurs to skewer him and hold myself on him, without big blocks to hook my knee behind... wow that horse can get REALLY high up into the air. 

I'd also come off the pony a couple of times and so falling off was a thing that felt possible. I don't think that TC would ever mean to toss me off of him, in fact, he's demonstrated time and time again that he will go out of his way to catch me when he throws me into the air. But there are always accidents that happen, and hitting the ground recently reminded me of what an asshole gravity was. And that was off of a smaller horse! 

I love how green it still is (we could
use some more rain so it stays this way!)

The best thing I do for my fear is to be physically strong, so I've been working hard at that. I also have a saddle on order (I'm not counting it as a done deal until I've been riding in it for at least several months lol). But I also realized that TC's gaits only really made me nervous because I had told myself that we were kind of starting over in his training. I forgot about the super trained horse I had a couple of years ago as we stumbled through rebuilding his strength. But the training isn't gone, it's just on hold. 

So I started to imagine him not as a bit of a gangly guy, which he feels right now due to learning to use himself differently, but as my future upper level horse, or even my current mid level horse. This way, when he surged, I felt giddy with excitement about what he'll be capable of when he's stronger, not nervous about what he might do with that power. He isn't a baby, he turns 11 this year! And while he is hilarious and absurd and goofy, he is not dangerous or malicious. 

Pretending that we were actually back in the show ring and I was showing off my fancy mid level dressage horse, or even pretending that we were in the FEI ring, that eliminated my fear and allowed me to channel these amazing gaits into something even more spectacular. 

Love this valley!

His response to my different mindset was interesting, he really buckled down and has been working really hard at his work rather than even thinking about goofing off. Maybe my anticipation that he was going to go back to his silly baby ways made him think that's what I wanted him to do. He still does leap a bit, but he gives me ample warning and is much more of an adult about coming back to work. And it's more of a weekly occurrence rather than a daily one. 

I'm so excited by how he's doing in this new work! Fingers crossed that the saddle fits because that will eliminate the need for me to have to psych myself up to ride these silly moments out. I can just hook my knee in the block and go with it! 

Hey Asshole...

The title is from a Watsky song, one of my favorites actually. Well, most of them are my favorites. The lyrics go like this (not in order): 

The attitude I wish I had all the
time, I forgot to hand my phone
off and it started slipping out of
my brace so I had to chuck it out
of the arena lol

Hey asshole,

See the sun is shining

But you are not smiling

And I don't know why

I know I'm often told

That there's a pot of gold

But I don't see no fucking rainbow and my coffee's cold

I know I should be grateful

I know I'm good and able

But I don't have the strength to get up from the kitchen table

Got the power of my will
I don't wanna win a mil
But I'm looking at window sill
Gotta take a bitter pill
Gonna pay for what I did to my head and my heart'll foot the bill

Telling myself it'll happen when I'm happy
But I'm climbing up a ladder that has got no end
Hung up on a rung I'll never make it to the top
I'm looking at the bottom and I must descend
All I want to do is buck this trend
Everybody need a buck to spend
And I'll be working on myself, 'til I work on someone else
'Til I get there Ima just pretend

Obviously it's a song about depression. I am not depressed. I have some problems like most people do, but depression isn't one of them. Which is I guess one thing I have going for me currently, at least for now, this pandemic has shown us that anything can happen, right?! But I really relate to some of these lyrics when it comes to my feelings about dressage over the last year. 

Early canters with this horse were mildly out of control

In so many ways, I am no longer the person I was when I was chasing down my Gold Medal, or before getting any medals at all. I almost feel like the accomplishment of the Gold Medal ruined the sport of dressage for me in some ways (wow I sound like SUCH an asshole saying that, hence why I thought about the song above). A lot of people work their whole lives for something I earned when I was just 28 years old (again, putting this in writing is so painful to me, I am SUCH A DICK I AM SO SORRY). I mean what do you do next, really? Start over and do it again, but better. Because does it really count if it was just one horse? Does it really count if I didn't score in the 70s? Does it really count if it wasn't at a CDI? Were my judges too easy? Is it too easy to get scores these days? 

I talked to new remote trainer about this. Told her the story of walking out of my first Grand Prix on Rico. On a horse who had recovered from so many injuries, some supposedly career ending. A horse I had brought through the levels myself (in lessons, of course, but rarely with training rides) for almost ten years. My heart horse. And I walked out of the ring upset... not in that "happy tears" kind of upset (which is what I expected), but low key annoyed that we'd halted in one of the piaffes. That our passage wasn't as powerful as it is at home. Worried for the score. So many emotions, but none of them were joy or happiness, the closest was maybe relief? No emotions about me finally making it this far on my own horse. 

Conversely, TC is always happy at shows

 

I always thought that making it to the Grand Prix on my heart horse would be the number one thing that made me most happy in riding. Maybe this will change in the future but... it's really nowhere near the top of the list of things that have made me most happy in my riding. 

Jumping a course on Rico bridleless made me way happier than getting my Gold medal. Galloping him on the trails after getting my Gold medal. Teaching my clients on him. Taking TC to the bombproofing clinic when he was older and having him help other horses through the obstacles that once made him so reactive. Earning a 73% at TC's first overnight show at First level. Jumping Flounder at Twin just last month. 

I would say that earning my Gold medal doesn't even make the top 10 most happy times I've ever had on horses. Probably not even top 20. It was so unbelievably stressful and honestly kind of lonely, which was weird because I was surrounded by my friends and family and trainer. I took such a deep breath coming home from that last show. I cried, but again, they were not happy tears. They were tears of relief mostly, and some sadness about Rico retiring. I kept repeating to myself "I will never go down centerline on him again" that night. 

I've heard that the best part of completing your PhD is telling people about it, or how impressed they are to hear you correct them with "actually, it's doctor" and I would say that the Gold medal is the same for that. When my new kids ask me what level I've competed at and I say "Grand Prix" that's way better than earning it.

Maybe the happiest part is seeing pictures of it?

And ever since, it's made dressage so much harder on me mentally. There I go being an asshole again. I feel like there's a lot of pressure on me. I'm a Grand Prix rider, right? I've got those stupid lapel pins weighing down the left side of my coat after all. So if I'm showing at the lower levels, I better be scoring into the 70s, right? Moving up the levels has got to be easier now, right? I mean, I've already done it all before so it's a walk in the park now. 

If I struggle now, does that mean that I didn't rightly earn my medals? If I can't get another horse to do the Grand Prix, am I a one hit wonder? If I communicate my struggles, is it just a sign to other people that I am actually undeserving of my accomplishments? Or, somehow worse, if I communicate my struggles, am I just going to hear "omg it's so great to hear that even Grand Prix riders struggle with the same things I struggle with!" which is easy to take in the wrong way. 

I like the silly pictures too, Rico didn't give me as
many of those

Enter: TC. A conformational sinkhole. A horse who will try his heart out for me, sure, but a horse who is not built for the sport. As remote trainer said, "he's not the worst built horse for the sport, but he's never going to make a team." If I could put his mind in Rico's body, I would have had a team horse, I'm pretty sure of it. He's got the brain for the sport but the body is challenging to arrange in the right place, especially as we hit the collection required at Third level (and I've even heard that "the only reason you got that far on him is because you're an exceptional test rider" which... ouch but also thanks? How do you take that?). 

New trainer says "there's no book on how to take your friesian cross to the upper levels, all the books are written for other types of horses, you have to write your own book" and that is really tough. Everything about Rico was pretty much by the book, even the shitty books. You could read that Charlotte Dujardin says to keep your legs off a lazy horse and it'd work. What about a horse who can go from zipping out from under you to balking in a half circle though? Hmmm. 

TC's first show and a good example of the starting point

We talked about how this is kind of a recipe for disaster mentally. I did it backwards, she said. She took an off breed horse (a mustang she worked with from start to finish! so cool!) through the upper levels and now she's coming back on her warmblood. She says she feels like she's cheating, it's so easy to get this horse through the levels with all her prior experience and this horse's natural abilities. She had to work so hard to get her off breed horse up the levels when she knew less, now she knows more AND is on an easier horse. 

I took a warmblood through the levels, making tons of mistakes along the way and somehow having it just pay off for me. Every mistake was recoverable and I got really lucky. I mean, Rico was nearly impossible to ride in the snaffle at the end, just slap a double bridle on. TC would never, he'd crumple. Even now, Rico's topline looks pretty good, he hasn't been ridden in years. He's just built to have those muscles. TC exercising him by galloping around every morning is improving Rico's topline... and probably doing the opposite to TC's. 

Looking over at the crowd during
our free walk LOL

Don't get me wrong, it's HARD to do the Grand Prix. No one doing Grand Prix is having an easy goddamn time with it. Steffen Peters is struggling (I assume this but it seems like it'll track, Steffen if you're reading this please verify). It's hard to do dressage in general, regardless of level or horse breeding or conformation or whatever. Dressage is hard. But Rico is the kind of horse where you could get a bit chaotic with your aids because you got frustrated and he'd just... get rounder and maybe slow down a bit. You could have a trainer say "hold the outside rein and massage the inside rein and he'll go on the bit!" and have it low key work. At least, work well enough to get you through Fourth level. TC's structural integrity drops out from underneath me seemingly at random, even when I'm not frustrated or doing the wrong thing. Conformational sink hole. I'll chase this down with bodywork and vet work and the willingness to inject anything the moment he asks for it, but some of it is just how he is. 

So here I am, putting so much pressure on myself. Hearing from trainers to "use my considerable experience" hearing from people in passing "oh it must be so much easier to come back through the levels since you've already done it!" hearing from myself "well, if you're not going to score better than you did on Rico at this level, what is even the point of showing?" and so on. And I'm riding this horse who, again is the sweetest creature, but who is challenging inherently, to probably a lot of people, not just me. The fact that I can't think of a trainer to send him to for him to actually improve his posture is telling... I've ridden with a lot of trainers where I walk away thinking that he looked worse after the lesson than before. 

His second or third show (just schooling this first
year because he was nuts), coming btv was very
easy for him, toooo easy ugh

Last year we were so successful in terms of scores, but I realized that the path we were going down was not the right one. TC was short in the neck, on the forehand, and behind the vertical. Like all the time. It's okay for me to not want to show him like that, it's okay to strive to be better. I want to put my horse first and what I was being told to do was not putting the horse first. 

But striving to be perfect is going to make me quit this sport SO quickly. Striving to be the best one on a horse who is not the best one (to ME he is, don't get me wrong here, he is the best horse in the world IMO) isn't going to work out for me. And for TC, he loves learning and he loves showing and I'm taking those things away from him right now by focusing so much on building a perfect solid foundation that will never be perfectly solid. 

So I'm going to try hard to find a balance between last year and this year. Between shoving him through the levels last year with no focus on his conformational issues and slowing down to a standstill this year because if it's not done perfectly, it's not worth doing at all. 

It's going to take a lot of work for me and probably a lot of leaning on other people. I am so excited to have remote trainer in my corner. She's affordable and available and totally gets the weirdness I am feeling. She likes TC a lot and seems equally as excited to help me work on the basics as to help me get him back in the show ring this fall or next year. Also a huge shoutout to all my friends who have had to read huge paragraphs of me whining and look at so many videos where they're probably like "I don't know why Megan is so upset about this... it's just TC trotting."

He's always loved showing so I do want to show him

I've been feeling way better about these things in the last week. My last lesson with remote trainer and then my lesson with local trainer (and all of her sweet clients telling me how great we looked and how beautiful TC is) really helped me out. And then the acupuncture this week made me feel better too. We are getting there, slowly but surely.  

But still, I think I have a long way to go for my mental game to be good enough to head back into the show ring with TC. But it really seems like we are getting somewhere! Hopefully we can keep up this momentum, the air isn't looking like it's going to let us though, ugh. 

I Probably Just Found Lemons

Like I said, not much is going on with the riding front so it's been hard to keep this blog going. I'm also probably suffering a little from SAD or just generally being really dehydrated all the time (I can't seem to fix this ugh) and not seeing enough sunlight because I'm a lizard, so I haven't had the motivation to come up with anything to post. I can't believe I kept posting so much when TC was injured and I also had nothing to ride!

He is so bored :( 

I woke up Thursday morning feeling kind of blah. I was sick of not being motivated to do anything but go to work (because I have to) and go to the gym (because I know I'd really fall off the deep end mentally if I didn't go).

Being around TC just makes things worse, since he is so visibly upset about not being ridden. He is destroying his paddock and tormenting everyone who handles him because of it. I feel terrible but the footing has been so questionable, I still can't bring myself to work him in there and risk him going lame (and then needing more time off). Selfishly, it makes me sad to be around him and watch his topline diminish and dodge him trying to bite me out of boredom. I have been doing stuff with him, please don't think he's being neglected, every day I'm out there playing with him for an hour (brushing, walking, ground work, in hand work, longeing, whatever I can do), but it's not the fun stress reliever that it once was.

Me these days, mostly

My mental health is generally pretty good, but I do have an anxiety disorder that rears its ugly head sometimes. And there it was again on Thursday morning giving me shit. The thing about my anxiety or maybe just myself though, is that I tend to want to fix things RIGHT NOW. And that has been something I've had to resist against a lot when I get anxious because I start thinking that it's caused by an external factor that I must fix in order to not feel anxious anymore. As Bo Burnham said in one of his shows: if life gives you lemons... you probably just found lemons.

For me that's been huge in reminding myself that when the anxiety takes hold of me and my instinct is to figure out why I'm feeling bad and fix it... sometimes there is no solution but to wait it out. I don't have to evaluate WHY I'm anxious and try to fix it, because it's not being caused by anything more than my brain chemistry. So I probably just found lemons on Thursday.

This is something I think about a lot

As I walked TC that morning I told myself (out loud no less because when your brain is being stupid sometimes it's better to hear things out loud) that the anxiety was all in my head, nothing was really *causing* it, so there's nothing to fix. BUT that if I could come up with something to do on Friday (today) other than going into the office that would make things BETTER and not just worse/the same (like sitting around at home is way worse for me, so is running a bunch of errands, really just being alone), I could take a mental health day and do that thing. Give me something to look forward to and something to do that would help bring me out of this anxiety-ridden state. And honestly, something to blog about for once!

So I texted Alexis and asked to come bother her. I mean I asked for a lesson and will be paying her for it. She said yes and offered me two of her Grand Prix horses to pick from. I told her I'd ride one of her pigs, I was so desperate to ride something. And to work on myself, no less! My core has for sure suffered in the last six weeks.

TC with six weeks less topline is still pretty good looking 

Today I'm going to try to ride TC in the outdoor this morning (or just take him on another long walk if the footing is bad), then I'm going to hop in the car, drive out to her barn, and ride whatever she's got for me.

I think that's a pretty good mental health day. It will hopefully give me a boost to sit in the sun all day, MAKE SURE I drink enough water because what the hell, and hang out with some of my favorite people. This weekend is more of the same, auditing a couple of clinics, hanging out with some awesome people, and again sitting in the sun like a lizard. I think that will help me out a lot!