EquiTeam’s Louise Gillings reflects on life outside of the bubble.
At Equiteam Confidence Camps and in EquiTeam Connected we are used to a supportive environment and I for one had started to perhaps take it a little bit for granted.
At the beginning of our Confidence Camps we always talk to people about pushing out of their comfort zones and into their stretch zones, and at some point during camp they might need to dig deep – but that as a coach, Liz won’t ever ask someone to do something they are not capable of, (I’ll come back to that later).
We also often mention that it is important to remember that everyone is on their own journey and just because they are jumping bigger than you, or look like they have it all together, doesn’t mean they don’t have the same apprehensive feelings that you do, it just means they are on a different stage in their journey.
People feel nerves for all sorts of reasons, and these can change throughout our riding journey; stretch zones become comfort zones, and sometimes a set back means a comfort zone becomes a stretch zone again. But that is ok – horses and progress are never linear.
We always talk about being encouraging, kind and supportive, but actually this is more from habit than needing to remind anyone to be kind.
In EquiTeam Connected we love that people can feel safe to ask questions and know that there will be no keyboard warriors or judgement. For us this is the new normal, but back in the real world the reality can be somewhat different, highlighted sadly a couple of our members have experienced negativity and bullying and subsequently moved their horses to new livery yards. (Read more on that in ‘What is wrong with people’).
Protecting myself
But for the most part recently I think I have been living in a bubble. I have stopped watching the news as I just don’t want to know what is going on as quite frankly it is depressing, I’ve unfriended people on Facebook who are just not my people, or post things that I find offensive or negative, and I have left groups that I don’t enjoy. It makes my world much more positive.
Recently Chloe had a try at rugby and whilst chatting on the side-lines to some parents we got onto the subject of coaching and how rugby is one sport which seems to have a very good reputation on the coaching front. There is no side-line coaching from parents, the children and parents trust and support the training methods completely.
It got me thinking about an incident that happened on the cross country at camp, with one of the riders becoming quite agitated about what Liz was asking the other riders in the lesson to do.
Liz is great at having a plan and adjusting this for individual riders and horses even in a group situation. Her plan was that this particular rider would do a different version of an exercise to build confidence rather than throwing them straight at a complex set of obstacles.
My thoughts were – why was the rider instantly so agitated before hearing what they would be doing? Was it a past experience with another coach that made her think that she was going to have to do the same thing because the other riders were, or was it nerves getting in the way of clear thinking?
Or maybe just that she hadn’t built up enough trust in Liz ‘yet’ to know that she wouldn’t ask the rider to do something in her panic zone?! Maybe she hadn’t ever had a process to trust in?
Honestly, it could be any of the above, but it made me remember that people don’t always react rationally in situations they find stressful.
After a further chat with Liz, the rider realising she was in a safe environment and only being asked to work on something within her skillset, she gave it her best shot with both horse and rider finishing the lesson very happy, having had fun and achieved.
Outside the bubble...
Emotionally fuelled, pressured situations, coupled with nerves, can show a completely different side of people – and the more you speak to people, you realise that the kind, supportive and encouraging ethos of EquiTeam isn’t as common as we think.
Our pitch side conversation at rugby training about trusting the coaching process turned to horses, and one lady told me how several of her friends have horses and really struggle with the toxic environments on their livery yards.
She shared that her friends find it really stressful to go and care for and ride their horses and how much of an effect the negativity has on their enjoyment of their hobby.
The bit that surprised me was, that she was speaking about several people in her social circle, all on different yards – and yet all united by one common negative problem of toxic relationships in the equestrian industry.
I think because I am now so used to the supportive environment that we have, I expected the level of non-judgemental support to be more common place, and that mean experiences would be a one off rather than a regular occurrence.
How can we help each other?
I for one like my bubble and we would love to let people affected by this negativity know that it doesn’t need to be like that – and that there are amazing, kind, genuine, supportive people in the equestrian world.
We do know that we might not be able to change the world, but in our bubble, we can help support people’s worlds.
Our EquiTeam survey into Equestrian Motivation and Support is looking into this more, and we would love you to fill this in and share it with everyone you know in the equestrian world.
Hopefully, together we can better understand the issues and find ways to help change the equestrian world together.
Take the survey HERE!
Find more people like you HERE!
Lou x
