United States Eventing Association

Pressure Proof with Daniel Stewart: Feedback Rehearsals

Last month we discussed flooding and exposure therapy, two techniques that help us overcome things that overwhelm us. While both are very effective, there are two unfortunate problems with them: (1) some of the things that overwhelm us require more practice than we’re able to give while in the saddle (like twice a week) and (2) some of the things that overwhelm us aren’t exactly the kind of things we want to practice (like falling or reacting to a spook). I suppose falling or spooking over and over is one way to get better at them, but there has to be an easier way of solve them than practicing them, and that’s where this month’s Pressure Proof tip comes in.

Fortunately there’s a third stress management tool that’s just as effective as flooding and exposure therapy, but what makes this technique so unique is that we can actually practice it without even riding, or practice it when working to overcome unsafe fears like falling, bucks, runaways and spooks. This technique is called Feedback Riding Rehearsals (FRR) and it works in five stages.

STEP 1: We begin by identifying a fearful or frustrating stressor that we’d like to overcome. Is it riding in front of crowds, overcoming a bad fall, or a fear of failure?

STEP 2: We identify the way that the stressor makes us feel. This is called the “stress-response,” and it can include everything from holding our breath and clenching our jaws to pulling on our reins and tightening our muscles.

STEP 3: Once we’re familiar with our typical stress-responses, we actually practice them until we can re-create them on-demand (meaning we actually practice holding, clenching, pulling, and tightening).

STEP 4: We now create several “skill-responses” to eliminate our “stress-responses.” These are productive actions like taking a deep breath, sitting-up tall, and relaxing our hands and legs that help us eliminate our destructive stress responses. When used together, these productive skills improve our courage and confidence because they stop our destructive stress responses.

STEP 5: This is the most important step and the real secret sauce to FRR’s. Here we (1) close our eyes in a quiet, non-mounted location and visualize the stressor (say riding in front of a crowd) and then (2) purposely recreate the negative stress responses that we actually feel when riding in front of crowds (meaning we purposely hold our breath, clench our jaws, and tense our muscles). Once we’ve created the unwanted stress responses, we spend a few short seconds getting to know them and how they make us feel and act. After these few mindful seconds we take a deep breath and begin replacing them with our positive skill responses from Step 4. It’s now that we breathe deeply, relax our jaws, supple our hands, and relax our leg.

The key to this technique is that we aren’t just using feedback from the challenge itself, but using biofeedback from our own bodies to solve it. It’s very important to remember, however, that the key to FRR's isn’t creating the negative stress responses, but learning how to recognize and stop them using our learned skill responses. We simply train ourselves to identify any negative feedback from our bodies as a way of triggering our minds to stop them by using our new skill responses so that if they ever happen again (for real) we’ve already practiced how stop them!

The idea behind FRR’s is that you get better at whatever you practice, so this month why not use FRR’s to get a little better at recognizing which challenges create your negative and destructive stress responses, and then learn how to stop them by using your positive and productive skill responses! Just pick your challenge. Is it the nervousness caused by judges, spectators, losing, failure, mistakes, spooks, or falling? Once you’ve found it, feel it and fix it!

I hope you enjoyed this month’s Pressure Proof tip and are looking forward to more in the future. If you’re a trainer or upper level rider and would like to take the Pressure Proof Coaching Academy’s instructor certification course on equestrian sport psychology please let me know. The course is online and self-paced so you can binge it in a month or take your time. For more information visit https://pressureproofacademy.com/certifications/