Coping With Nervousness When Riding A Horse

Nervousness can be a serious problem for so many people. Learning how to cope with it is one quality a lot of people would want to posses. Read the article below and you will discover some tips that could help you cope with uneasiness when riding a horse.

How to Cope With Nervousness During Horseback Riding Instructions
Written By Jim Milton

If you are a horseback riding student, your trainer will adjust your lessons specifically to you, and as part of your horseback riding instructions, you will need to be prepared to attempt things that are new to you. If this did not occur, your riding skills would not advance.

As your lessons progress, you may find yourself in a situation where you feel uneasy about something that your trainer has asked you to do. This situation is exaggerated further when other riders in your group are able to easily perform the maneuver that is causing you so much anxiety.

What should you do when this occurs?

Take an introspective look at your situation.

You need to confront the true reason that this maneuver makes you nervous.

We can take a look at your first trot to examine this situation. During this task, does the unpredictability of what your horse will do make you anxious, or are you more concerned about how others may look at your inferior riding skills?

If the latter is your main worry, this would be the ideal time to gain the ability to laugh at yourself. Learning to ride is a process that will afford many opportunities to laugh at yourself, so there is no need to take it so seriously. Other individuals in your group will tend not to laugh if you are able to laugh at yourself.

The circumstances are completely different if a sincere fear of becoming injured, is what's bothering you.

Talk Openly With Your Trainer About Your Feelings

Explain exactly how you are feeling to your instructor. By sharing your anxieties with your instructor, they will be able to offer support in helping you get passed them. Many riding students experience fears when learning to ride, and your safety should take precedence over your pride.

Two Alternative Answers:

We would like to share two possible solutions with you, in the event that the trainer's efforts to put you at ease, are unsuccessful.

1. Try riding a different horse

Let's continue to use the example of trotting. If you are concerned about your horse acting up when you attempt to have him trot, you may ask if you can switch horses for a short time, with another rider who is having success trotting with their horse.

This will give you the opportunity to observe your horse working calmly with another rider, and you will feel more confident about asking a horse that you have already seen trotting calmly, to perform this task for you. You will be much more confident getting back on your original horse, after you have seen him behaving well for someone else.

2. Perform requested tasks on the lunge

It will be much less unnerving to attempt a new gait, if you are working on the lunge. This means that there is a long line attached to your horse, and the trainer holds the other end while standing in the center of a twenty meter circle.

This allows you to focus your attention on mastering your balance while sitting on the saddle, because your trainer is managing the steering for you. In the case of learning to trot, you will be going from walking quietly to a gait that is extremely bouncy, therefore, being able to focus just on balancing yourself is quite helpful.

Whenever you are learning new maneuvers on horseback, it is common to feel uneasy at times. The best thing that you can do, is talk to your instructor honestly about your concerns, so that they can help you deal with them.

Read more about horse riding by visiting Jim Milton's horse riding classes website. Milton is an international horse rider who will guide you to be comfortable on your horse with his horseback lessons with video instructions.