“It’s OK to have butterflies. You just have to make them fly in formation.”
This quote has been used so much I couldn’t find an original author to give credit to.
There was a time when I was so nervous before a competition I was barely functional.
I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t leave the restroom. My hands would shake.
It was an exercise in torture and I wondered WHAT ON EARTH I was doing.
Tales From a Bad Eventer arose out of that overreaction to what is supposed to be fun.
I was hell bent on achieving my “goal” and a significant portion of my nervousness was unrealistic <make that…… completely irrational> performance expectations.
I slowly realized I was taking this FAR TOO SERIOUSLY, and decided the best way to take myself LESS seriously was to make fun of how bad I actually was.
And Wahlah! Bad Eventer was born.
I’ve come a long way from the days of vomiting all night < yes – seriously>. And I thought I’d share some of my secrets.
One of the worst parts of my show anxiety was
“Dehydration meets nervous bladder”
I’m not very good at taking care of myself. It’s easy to load horses, unload horses, bed stalls, carry buckets, organize feed & hay, walk to the show office, walk courses, sweat 2 1/2 gallons and then as you’re feeling a little dizzy realize the only “fluid” you’ve had in the last 7 hours was the latte you had at 5:00AM.
A large portion of my anxiety was just plain old dehydration. I thought, this was an easy fix! Chug water all day long!
Not so fast.
That’s when I discovered…… the nervous bladder. For my lucky readers who haven’t experienced this, you’re nervous and you feel like you have to pee. When you really don’t need to.
That’s where guzzling water can become problematic.
I was struggling with the worst show nerves in history when I watched Oliver Townend’s talk at the USEA convention. Someone asked him how to handle show nerves and he said, “Show more often. If you go every weekend, you don’t get nervous anymore.”
For those of us who aren’t named Ollie…… we don’t get to show that often. But this really made me think.
You have to practice like you play.
The recognized shows were where the nerves really kicked up a notch. When I went to a “for real” horse trial I did things differently. I wore the show coat, braided my horse, put in studs, pinned a number on my horse, put on make up…………..
And I realized that those were the things that really set my hands to shaking.
Just “thinking” about braiding my horse gives my stomach a flip.
So I traipsed off to the next schooling show, and I went all out. Braids, show coat, studs, show number………I lost count of the people that took time to say, “Honey, you don’t have to do all that.”
But, yes…… Yes, I do have to do all that.
After a few full on practice runs at schooling shows….. when I went to the “real” show the nerves were SO MUCH better.
I was thinking about this recently. I used to never stud for anything except big shows.
And just breaking out the stud kit was terrifying.
But since heading off for my working student adventure I’m jumping on grass. We stud for every jump lesson. Now that I put in studs every week, when I put them in at the show I don’t get the accompanying stomach flip.
Practice like you play.
It works.
I LOVE this. And I DO this…cause it works!!!!???
Yes! Last weekend, did a “practice show” with braids, etc. It felt a bit silly at first…but my OTTB decided I was going to pull his mane, rather than braid it. He got very grouchy, and I was thinking of giving up. He relaxed after a while when he figured out what I was doing. Fast forward two weekends, our first show of the season is next week. He may well remember that I not only pull his mane, but I also braid it sometimes, lol.
BTW, beautiful photos of you on the chestnut (Wonder Pony?).