Aches & Pains Equestrians Gain: The Hidden Secret to Fast-Tracking Your Success

Aches & Pains Equestrians Gain: The Hidden Secret to Fast-Tracking Your Success

It’s no secret that aches and pains are a part of your equestrian lifestyle. You sport many honorary badges for ‘riding it out’ as you celebrate the incredible athlete you have underneath you…though they might have been a little too exuberant in their display of showing you just how much they can round their back when airborne. But did you know that you can actually use these aches and pains to fuel your progression as both an equestrian athlete and a leader in your sport?

Let me show you how!

Where does your body hurt?

Your lower back? Your shoulders? Your knees?Or, perhaps you’re feeling pretty lucky right now because you don’t have any current aches or pains. I celebrate you! Now you get to explore a little deeper:

Where is the resistance in your body?

For most of you the challenge will be in picking just one area to focus in on. You’re an equestrian—you’re made to roll with the landing!

And you didn’t need years of wrestling 1,000 pound plus prey animals to develop toughness. Your toughness is what pulled you into this equestrian love affair.

💪 Your toughness has you laughing as you peel yourself out of the mud because you accidentally grabbed the hot wire instead of the gate on your morning hack.

💪 Your toughness allows you to ride with a cast on your foot despite what the doctor tells you.

💪 Your toughness gives you the opportunity to proudly sport your missing tooth for your yearly photo with Santa because you gracefully stuck the Eiffel Tower of rears as your horse’s head met your face on the way up…

Your toughness is to be admired, no doubt. It’s given you the grit and determination that has gotten you quite far. But it also gives you the ability to tune out the very thing which will actually deliver your equestrian goals to you…before you run out of the pink vet wrap you keep borrowing from your horse in a valiant, yet endless attempt to carry on no matter what.

No, your toughness is not your downfall—but it is distracting you from the downfall that lurks beneath the layers of your toughness... And if you only knew that this hidden treasure was the key to unlocking your victory you would take a moment to pay attention what it has to tell you.

You’re quite aware that the upward path toward greatness is a gradual rise of peaks and valleys but you continue to dread the downs as you distract yourself with another valiant climb. This distraction causes you to let a powerful opportunity pass you by—an opportunity that would launch you up the next ascent so you didn’t have to rebuild your momentum by inching your way up the side of the mountain.

When you learn to welcome the inevitable downfall—often seen as a fail—as opposed to tuning it out, you gain the ability to use its downward ride as a powerful boost upward so you can reach your goals in less time and with less effort.

Are you ready to begin your rise to the top?

Get started by locating the resistance, tension, ache or pain in your body. Whether it’s a whisper or a not so quiet scream, this is your opportunity to give yourself a boost forward—getting you closer to your goal instead of pushing it away from you.

There are only 3 steps to start exchanging your failure for victory and you’ve already accomplished the first one!

1. Find Your Fail 

Your body and your mind are one. They cannot be separated from each other and one cannot operate without creating an affect on the other. Your body is a very powerful way to access your unconscious mind. When your body is stuck anywhere your mind is stuck somewhere. Paying attention to where your body is tense, tight or rigid is a doorway into unconscious habits and patterns which currently have you stuck, keeping your goals out of reach. Sometimes this stuck-ness is obvious, and other times subtle.

Tip: Check in with your body. All it takes is a moment to close your eyes and take a breath—and it doesn’t cost you anything!

Bonus: Turn it into a pre-ride ritual and you will be doing both yourself and your horse a favor.

2. Feel Your Fail

I used to be a pill popper. I was addicted to the sweet relief of Ibuprofen—the magic of which gave me so many more opportunities to ride! I…Well I needed it in order to get through my day. And perhaps you do too. But, if you’re ready to start failing faster so you can reach victory sooner give yourself a pause. Before you reach for the bottle, crutches or temporary flipper so you can talk without a whistle…just give your body a moment of your awareness. Place your hand over your aching back, acknowledge the mobility granted by the support of your crutches and smile as you rejoice at your newfound ability to whistle thanks to the flying tooth that chose the arena dirt over your mouth. You will soon come to find that a small moment of attention will develop into the ground covering strides of an extended trot which defies physics.

Tip: Catch yourself before you fall into the trap of automatic distraction action by putting your horse’s picture on your bottle of Ibuprofen. That way, the next time you reach for the bottle you will have no choice but to reframe the distraction to that squishy nose needing a kiss!

Bonus: Let the picture remind you of the top performance that awaits so you can you recall the why behind your intention to change your default settings.

3. Befriend Your Fail

Your fail is your best friend—it is your ticket to the top! When you catch yourself cringing at the thought of it, briefly go through the steps again. Find it in your body, feel it with some attention and take a moment to explore where it has been helpful for you. Your fail is not your enemy and, when you realize it’s not your frenemy either your relationship gets a little bit closer. Your fail is your best buddy and it’s looking out for you because it, too wants to see your rise to greatness. When you welcome your fail in as the unsung hero that it is, you will be well on your way in exchanging failure for victory!

Tip: Let your body be your guide. During your warmup walk on your horse, feel into where your body might be tight. When you find it, see if you can catch the initial story that might be playing out in the background of your mind.

Bonus: When you start to notice your default story, see if you can open yourself up to another angle. For instance, instead of ‘my tight back is hindering my riding’ another version might be ‘the tightness in my back has an important message which is going to advance my riding’.

Now that you know the hidden secret to fast-tracking your success, you will be unstoppable!

Enjoy your ride to the top and I’ll see you in the Winner’s Circle.