Finding your Coat of Armor: Managing Stress During Competition

This weekend many of my high school and college-aged students competed at a recognized horse trials. On Saturday, we met in the barn at 6:00 AM and we didn’t pull in at the farm again until 7:00 PM. Sunday was also a long day. In addition, many of these students live forty-five minutes away, which added travel time on both ends. It is April, which means the end of the school year is drawing near. One of my high school students had her prom Saturday night, but her times were such that she was also able to compete. With my college students, they are in the middle of finishing assignments and completing exams. As many of them are pre-vet or pre-med, classes include things like calculus, organic chemistry, and anatomy. This meant that studying while we were at the horse show was a necessity. We also had many family members and friends come to watch and spend the day with us, which is a lot of fun, but also takes its own allotment of time and energy. Lastly, it was over 90 degrees on Saturday, which made for a long, hot day. Going to a competition for these students, and for many competitors, is not just about riding skills. It is about juggling the needs of life with having ‘fun’ time to compete.

Last week, I heard another professional rider say to a student that when he gets on at a competition, he puts on a mental coat of armor. He then said that he doesn’t take it off until he is done with the competition. I thought of that image this weekend as I watched these students work to find mental space to compete amidst the other stressors, pressures and distractors surrounding them.

As athletes, we need to develop a threshold of tolerance to outside stressors. This threshold is what allows us to maintain focus on the task at hand even when other things try to vie for mental space. It comes from a place of mental resiliency — sometimes ruthless mental resiliency. One of the first techniques to developing a threshold of tolerance to stress is to identify what stress looks like to an individual. Stress could be physical, such as fatigue, tension, headaches, experiencing an upset tummy, or feeling too hot or too cold. Stress could also be mental, such as having a clouded brain, being irritable, or feeling disconnected. Other stress triggers could be either internal or external. Internal stressors are ones that we put on ourselves, like “I have to get a winning dressage score at this competition, or else I am a terrible rider.” I saw a lot of that this weekend as everyone checked scores on Saturday and made conscious and subconscious comparisons. External stress triggers have more to do with things like finances or conflict. For my rider going to the prom, her horse needed an outing, and she was brave to commit to both this weekend (and she did a fabulous job), but she had a lot of stress to manage with worrying about time management, both at the show and leading up to the show.

After an individual is able to identify and build an awareness of specific stressors, then it is easier to develop a game plan. For example, for some riders, having family come is an external stressor. It is wonderful to have a support crew, but they can demand a lot of attention! For these riders, having a protocol where the family touches base with their rider but then goes off on their own to spectate until after the competition round is over can be very helpful. Another protocol might have to do with a physical stressor like the weather. For many riders, being outside all day and performing athletic activity in ninety-degree heat is not normal. More than one of my riders on Saturday complained of feeling nauseous while competing due to being excessively hot. This can be mitigated in a few ways. First, having plenty of water, ice, and electrolytes on hand is important. Having cooling towels can also help. Beyond that, though, it is often helpful to modify diet to build a better threshold of heat stress. Staying away from greasy or sugary foods can make a big difference. Lastly, sometimes doing other exercise outside in the heat leading up to a show can help the body acclimate to heat.

There are many ways to build a threshold of tolerance to stress for athletes. As this threshold develops over time, each athlete’s coat of armor will become stronger and more full-proof, and the ability to put it on and take it off becomes easier. It is important to remember, though, that in order to compete at our best, it is good to have a system to rely on when stressors come our way so that we can simply relegate the outside factors to the appropriate outside category and focus instead on the task at hand in competition!