See it, believe it
Visualisation is an essential tool to help improve both your mental health and your performance in the saddle, explains Olivia Towers
I’M PASSIONATE ABOUT people practising mindset — not just for their riding, but in every part of their lives. You can’t switch personalities on your way to the yard, so it’s about improving your mental health for every aspect of your life and not just when you’re around horses. For example, if you’re very negative in one area of your life, that’s where you would start when improving your mindset, whether or not it has anything to do with riding. Take me, for example. I had tough times with relationships and they had a massive impact on my riding, but once I’d sorted that out, my riding got better.
It’s hard with mindset and personal development because people want a quick, easy fix, but you have to ask yourself very hard questions and delve deep into your whole life — not just your riding — which can be tough. I like solid foundations and I don’t like to cover things up or brush over the surface of things. So for me it’s about starting with clearing out the bad and making way for the new.
Visualising success
Visualisation is spoken about a lot in most sports. The great thing about it is that you can practise your ride (whether that’s a hack, a dressage test, or a cross-country round) over and over again without actually being on your horse.
Another amazing thing about it is that your brain doesn’t know the difference between visualising something and doing it. For example, if you’re constantly playing a loop in your mind saying, “I’m going to fall off, I’m going to fall off”, the likelihood of that happening is quite high because you’ve played it over and over again and your brain thinks it has already happened. Before you’ve even got on your horse, your brain will act as though you’ve just fallen off.
If you run through your dressage test and picture everything going right instead of going wrong, you get on your horse and your body and mind are confident that it’s going to go well. Even if it doesn’t, you’ve set yourself up for it to be a positive experience. I used to have a problem with serpentines in dressage test advanced medium 98, as my horse used to freak out during that particular movement. One day I just said to myself, “right, I’m going to get this right in my head and that’s how it’s going to go in the test”. My body then expected it to go that way in the test and my horse was so much better.
How to do it
Visualisation is all about setting yourself up to succeed instead of fail. People hear the word visualisation and it sounds big and complicated, but really it’s just about playing with your imagination.
To do it, sit there, close your eyes and feel, not just picture. For example, take your hands first, then your body and your surroundings: What do the reins feel like in your hands? What do your feet feel like in the stirrups? Where are your seat bones in the saddle? What does your horse feel like?
What is around you?
The more senses you can heighten, the stronger your visualisation will be. Then start running through your test or ride. It’s important that you keep it in real time, because if you run through it more slowly or more quickly, your brain will expect to do that when you actually ride.
It’s important when you start practising visualisation that you don’t stay in it for too long because it’s mentally tiring and it needs strengthening. As with anything, practice makes perfect. Start by visualising yourself doing something other than riding or competing so that you’re not putting pressure on yourself — baking some cookies, perhaps. Imagine yourself pouring out the flour, mixing the ingredients, putting the tray in the oven and smelling them cooking — that’s how you train your brain. Then it’ll become second nature when you come to do it for riding.
You don’t want to start by putting lots of pressure on yourself. It’s like training a muscle — the more you practice visualisation, the better you will get.
A centre point
Sometimes, when I’ve got a lot on my mind, I struggle to focus on visualisation for more than five minutes. I can be 10 seconds in and my mind has gone, so don’t be disheartened if that happens, and don’t try to bully your brain into it. It’s like when a thought comes into your head — don’t immediately push it out, just let it pass. The more you get angry with yourself for thinking about something, such as doing the shopping, the more you’re going to think about doing the shopping… By allowing thoughts to come and go, you will gently refocus your brain onto whatever it is you actually want to think about.
When I ride, I have a centre point to bring my mind back to neutral, and my centre point is my hands. A lot of people use breathing, but that doesn’t work for me. Just focusing on the feeling of my hands helps to bring my attention back. So, during a test, instead of letting my mind wander, I think about how my hands are feeling (see box, page 61) and that helps me to re-centre.
People have different things that they like to use as a centre point. It just needs to be something that draws you back in. It does take practice, though.
“Visualisation is all about setting yourself up to succeed instead of fail.
It’s about playing with your imagination”
The 5am club
To help with my mindset, I follow a morning routine based on a book by Robin Sharma called The 5am Club. I try to stick to this every morning and it involves getting up at 5am and doing 20 minutes of exercise, such as a run when it’s light enough outside, or a HIIT session indoors to raise my heart rate and get all the right chemicals going. If you do a good thing early on, the rest of your day will follow in a positive way.
Next I do a 20-minute reflection session. For me, a lot of that is prayer and visualisation, or imagining how I want my day to go. Then I do 20 minutes of learning, such as reading The Bible or listening to an audiobook while I muck out.
So, in the first hour or so of my day, I’ve exercised, meditated and reflected and learnt something new. Try it — it’s a great way to set yourself up for the day ahead.