Dr. Janet Edgette / Sport Psychology for Riders

06/30/2025

How getting homesick at eleven years old taught me that performance anxiety doesn’t have to stop me from riding my best.

I thought that if I could have anxiety about being away from home and still manage to have a good time, maybe I could be anxious about horse showing and still ride well.... and this was true and became a foundation for my sport psychology approach..

06/28/2025

You can’t use sport psychology to take short cuts with your mental prep.

Plastering over the thoughts and feelings you don’t like with things that you wish you thought or felt isn’t going to hold up to the robust force of performance nerves.

Let yourself be nervous and instead figure out how to make up for the ways in which your performance nerves change your riding. That’s something you can control - nerves, not so much.

If you get too aggressive with your horse or too impulsive in your decision-making when nervous, focus on the things you can control that will help you to ride with more finesse, more diplomacy, more tact.

If you become indecisive, spacey, or worry so much about making mistakes that you stop riding, focus on the things you can control that will help you to ride with more decisiveness, more assertiveness, more margin for error, even more pace.

05/09/2025

04/10/2025

DO YOU SPACE OUT AT HORSE SHOWS??

Some riders “space out” when they feel anxious at horse shows. They say “It’s like I just disappear into my head,” or “I can’t remember anything I’m supposed to do,” or “I’m just sitting there waiting for my round/test to be over.”

When riders space out, however, their horse bears the brunt. Suddenly his rider has disappeared on him - there’s no support, no direction, nothing. Sometimes, a rider's recognition that My horse needs me to show up can be enough of a prompt to bring her back from orbit, clear-headed and ready to execute…

…. We will often do for others what we don’t do for ourselves….

04/10/2025

Here, you can show this to all your friends who think you "just sit there."

03/12/2025

03/11/2025

Why your “BAD RIDE” always feels worse than it looks...

"In your personal and professional experience, do mistakes and 'bad rides' usually feel worse to the rider than they look to spectators?" asked Ally Layos, a writer from Diagonals Magazine.
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They sure do - is how I replied - after all, who is paying the most attention to what just happened? The rider herself! And to whom does it matter the most? The rider…. Maybe the judge saw it, but they make a mark on their card and continue judging. They don’t think about it again. The trainer will care, of course, but isn’t embarrassed, so it doesn’t haunt them. Maybe he or she is frustrated or disappointed or simply reminded of what still needs work, but most don’t see it as a personal reflection of their training, and certainly not of their riding.

So, that leaves the rider, who imagines that their bad ride or mistake is what everyone thinks of when they see them after the class. And maybe others are reminded of what happened, but—while the rider is thinking, Omg they must think I’m the worst rider, or, Omg they’re thinking I shouldn’t be in this division, their friends or barn mates or family members could very well be thinking, That was a tough ride, or, You rode through it well, or Yeah, that happens with horses…..

I think that we, as riders, need to recognize that at any given moment we are truly trying our best. Most riders in this very difficult and very consuming sport take their training and showing very seriously. And so when things don’t go as planned, well, can we give ourselves the margin to be less than perfect, or to let our horses be less than perfect….?

I believe that the best riders are able to do that, and move on quickly from bad rides and mistakes because they don’t make much meaning of them, such as, Making such a mistake means I’m not a good rider …

Instead, they understand it as part of the process of refining one’s skills or developing one’s horse, and respond to their mistakes not by belittling themselves but rather by absorbing whatever "information" there is in those mistakes that can guide their training going forward.

The truth is that all riders who continue to challenge themselves and their horses make mistakes and have bad rides— the untruth is that others who witnessed them really give it the time of day.

02/18/2025

Wondering what to do with your show nerves?

12/28/2024

Thank you to The Chronicle of the Horse for publishing my newest article, "No, You Don't Have to 'Push Through' Your Fear in Order to Get Over It."

If you've been battling anxiety or outright fear at the thought of getting back on the horse who ran off with you, reared up on you, or bolted and left you in the dirt - or maybe it's just a horse who's got your number and intimidates you - continue reading to learn about an approach to managing your anxiety that doesn't have you riding around with your stomach in your throat or experiencing panic attacks as you head toward the barn for your next lesson.

As you'll discover, one of the biggest untruths I have to push back against as an equestrian sport psychologist is the idea that in order for you to get over your fear of riding after a fall or runaway or crash, you have to push through it.

You don't. And you probably shouldn't. There is a better, safer, and more effective way to get back in the ring. Check it out -

12/01/2024

"I'm terrified to ride my young horse..."

I hear this all the time from riders asking about sport psychology services for their trepidation or frank fear of getting on certain horses that are too green, too mean, too spooky, too looky, too *anything*........ The worst thing to do is to try "just pushing through it" - that's dangerous, and it's a miserable way to ride. Moreover, it will simply make matters worse, where you go from "I can’t wait to get to the barn" to "I can’t wait to be done." Read on for a different and more effective (and safer) way out of this predicament.

Q: I’m terrified to ride my young horse. I’ve only had him for eight months and in that time, I’ve felt myself becoming more and more afraid. Each ride seems worse than the last, and while I haven’t been seriously injured, I can tell my trainer is getting frustrated with me. What do I do? -J...

11/02/2024

Watching the National Horse Show and thinking about my last junior year (1974) in the Maclay Finals. Went in and won the warm-up (!) only to get so excited about the possibility of pinning in the Maclay that I lost the finesse from my earlier ride and overrode everything.... oh well, good memories though!