Do you want to learn how to create a 30-second dressage visualisation habit?
In the 99th episode of Unstoppable Equestrian, I share with you my sixth weekly ‘Rider Habit’ video. I talk about how you can learn how to create a 30-second dressage visualisation habit and meditation to improve your riding.
This is a quick 30-second exercise you can use to feel more confident before your next ride, whether it’s a training ride or a competition day.
We are all visualising all day long, but generally, we are not intentional about it. For example, if you have a competition coming up on the weekend, how many times a day do you think about this competition? This obviously depends, mostly on how nervous you are feeling about the competition!
If you are feeling nervous about the competition I can guess that you are thinking of the competition day at least five or more times a day, and I can take another guess and say that most of your thoughts would be made up of negative things like ‘what if I forgot my dressage test?’, or ‘last time I rode at XYZ my horse was scared of XYZ’, or ‘what if my horse is tense or naughty in the warm-up with all the other horses around?’.
Every time you have one of these thoughts your brain must visualise this negative thing happening. The good and the bad thing about our brain is that it doesn’t recognise the difference between thinking about something negative happening or if it actually happens. Therefore, if you visualise yourself forgetting your test five or more times a day leading into your next competition, the chance of you forgetting your test goes up very high!
So what’s the answer to breaking the negative cycle of visualising yourself forgetting your test?! The good news is there are lots of mindset exercises you can put into practice to help override this. One of the best exercises is to replace the negative thought/visualisation with a quick 30-second positive visualisation habit.
How do you do this? Simple, every time you realise you’re thinking about the negative thing you don’t want to happen in your riding, pause & (with your eyes open or closed) visualise and feel in your body what you want to experience instead.
So using the example of forgetting your test, the positive 30-second dressage visualisation habit would be to feel and see yourself riding focused, relaxed and connected with your horse in the moment.
The key is to practise this 30-second dressage visualisation habit daily. Notice when your thoughts have wandered into picturing something negative happening in your riding and pause and change them to picture something positive happening instead.
I can guarantee, that if you put this into practice for at least two weeks you will start to see an improvement in your riding mindset, and how you show up in your rides both training rides and at competitions.
So, give it a go!
If you love the idea of creating quick new habits to implement daily to help you be the best rider you can be then you may want to go and watch the other 7 videos in this short Rider Habit series, as linked below.
8 Rider Habits to implement to improve confidence, performance & enjoyment:
In these videos I aim to give you a different mindset or body awareness exercise that you can practice throughout the week in your riding, to start the process of creating new, empowering habits.
Enjoy your next ride!
Danielle
P.S. If you missed the last episode of Unstoppable Equestrian, you can click here to go back & watch it!