Was it the boots? – Tales from a Bad Eventer

Athletes of all sorts have lucky charms.

Lucky socks

We’ve all seen Buck’s red socks!

Serena Williams said she has a pair of socks that she’s never lost a match in.

Jewelry

Madonna has a red blacelet she said wards off bad luck.

Whips

There’s a BadEventer blog entirely about my “lucky” whip, that had “never had a stop.”
In case you missed that one, there was a lady at a schooling show who forgot her whip. Her horse stopped at nearly every jump & she asked to borrow my whip. As I handed it to her I said that she couldn’t mess up my lucky whip because it had never had a stop. She got him around at the next attempt!

p.s. It wasn’t true, that whip had plenty of stops…..

“Ms. Janette may not be real, but it doesn’t mean she can’t help people, the mind is a powerful thing.” shameless True Blood reference

Michael Jordan wore an extra pair of shorts from his college under his Bulls uniform.

I remember asking The Fearless Leader once if I should use a certain bit at a show because I believed my horse was less likely to stop in it.

He said, “If you believe it will help, then yes, because you’ll ride better whether the bit has anything to do with it or not.”

If you really want to geek out on superstition-improving-performance there have actually been studies on it! Here’s an article about it.

Sooooooo……….I’ve been having this dropping into water problem.

I’ve watched the videos, and pieced apart the photos.

I am ALL about the photos so I have video & photos from nearly every show I’ve ever done.

Yeah, that’s really me.

So this water thing is a new problem, and I started looking at older footage to see if I could see what on earth could be different.

When you go down a big drop you need to get your feet in a good landing position, keep your upper body back and slip your reins.

For whatever reason I used to have that skill with no problem…………

& why it has vanished was eluding me…………

And then I started thinking about a Pilates class I took eons ago & a theory began to form.

Here’s how it goes.

In the Pilates class we all stretched forward doing your basic hamstring stretch. We noted how far we could reach….. could you touch the ground? Could you put your hands flat on the ground? Did you even get passed your knees?

Then we rolled the bottom of our feet around on a tennis ball. JUST the bottom of our feet, that’s it. Really.

And then we stretched forward again……honestly it was totally creepy how much further we could all stretch after just rolling our feet around on a tennis ball.

I started getting this funny idea that my new boots, which have completely different arches & support than my old boots……….. may be affecting more than just my feet.

Could THAT be why I bounced my face off of my horse’s neck at the water jump?