Everyone probably knows what horse riding fear feels like (or am I the only one?). I was scared to death when my horse just ran away with me and I wasn’t able to stop him. I was a kid and I was just learning how to ride. But that still was not the worst part.
I was doing a pentathlon, I was 12, and it was my third month since I started learning horse riding. I was barely holding on in canter, but I really enjoyed horse riding. I was doing the whole pentathlon mainly because of horse riding. I was spending all my free time around horses and I was always looking for a horse that would be free for me to ride on.
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Back then I was riding with other boys that were much older than me. They were already doing jumps. After one lesson, my coach showed me a one-meter tall obstacle that I was supposed to jump over. I was expecting that just the other boys were going to be jumping. I felt like riding on my horse in canter was the maximum I was capable of, but my coach just told me “come on it’s your turn to jump now.”
I just didn’t understand why he wanted me to jump. I was hoping he was just joking and I got really scared because I was expecting that if I try it, I will just fall down on my face. However, it turned out, he wasn’t joking and he just said “what are you waiting for, its time for you to go.”
Everyone knows horse riding fear. It is not just you.
I was scared to try the jump, but I was scared even more that I would fall and next time I wouldn’t be able to go riding. But I just went and my horse jumped over the obstacle. I am saying my horse jumped because, even though I didn’t fall on the ground, I bounced up really high in the saddle and then fell back on the horse. Because I was a boy, you can probably imagine that it would be less painful if I just fell on the ground.
And guess what my coach said?
“Not bad, go ahead and try it again!”
So I went again and the exact same thing happened. Since then, my coach always allowed me to ride whenever possible, and since then I was never as scared on a horse as I was that one time right before the first jump. My horse riding fear was slowly fading away as I was becoming a better rider and as I was learning more of what to expect from my horses. This is my advice on how to handle horse riding fear. Spend time around horses, continue learning as much as you can, and your improvements will give you confidence.
