How do you all beat the nerves before a competition? Our horses only feed off of them, so what do you do to combat them to acheive your goals?

Best Answer

just try and know that u've practiced this over and over and that its just like another practice and its no different and i try and think that its no big deal. I try to just take deep breaths to calm myself down and it helps when i just give a huge hug to my horse and bury my face in his neck when i hug him and i pray that we do the best we can and this usually calms me down big time. Alot of the time if you can just learn to channel that adrenaline into action instead of nerves you can channel it to focus on what you there to do, (like just focusin on the barrel pattern and like u know what your horse is prone to doing, like dropping his shoulder on the first barrel or sumthin then just be focusing before hand on getting his attention to be listening to you before he does it so when you cue him to pick it up so he does and the problem is solved before he even drops it.) I just try and focus on what we have to do and that usually helps :)