Jane Savoie Dressage

Article

Burn Out

At the end of a long and intense Florida circuit this past winter, a friend turned to me one day and said, "I need to go to a spa...or on a cruise...or even just out for lunch! I just don't feel like riding today."

As the days went by, she came up with all sorts of excuses to skip her daily ride. It was too hot, cold, wet, or windy. It was too late. She was too tired. Her back hurt. She couldn't find anyone to watch the kids. She was puzzled and distressed to find that she had lost somuch of her enthusiasm for riding her horse.

When she did manage to get herself to the barn, she just ended up going through the motions half-heartedly. Even worse, she found that she was impatient with her horse and long standing problems. She was sick and tired of working on perfecting 10 meter circles. She was about to give up trying to develop lengthenings from a trot that felt like a sewing machine. She lost her temper when her horse shied and acted like he was afraid of the judge's booth at C. She snapped at him, "Give me a break, will you? It's the same booth you've seen almost every day for the last 3 months."

My friend said she had gotten to the point that rather than eagerly looking forward to schooling her horse, it was getting to be just one more obligation for her to get through each day. And she asked me why I thought she felt this way.

I told her it sounded like she was burned-out. That was the bad news. The good news, however, was that not only is burn-out "treatable" but it also is "preventable".

FINDING A BALANCE

As riders you hear the word balance a lot. Much of the training you do with your horse deals with the issue of maintaining and improving his balance.

A horse isn't in good balance, for example, if he's leaning, pulling, on the forehand, or disconnected. When he's well-balanced, there's an ease, comfort, and fluidity to his movement.

If you're not in good balance, you probably feel negative, tired, unmotivated, discouraged, bored, frustrated, or burned out. But when you're in good balance, you feel positive, energetic, challenged, and have a sense of fun and well-being.

To avoid burn-out you need to put as much emphasis on creating and maintaining your own balance -- whether it's physical, mental, or emotional--as you do with your horse's balance.

You must offset work with renewal. Think of it like a checking account. You can't keep making withdrawals without making some deposits. (Well, I suppose you can, but you're going to end up in a lot of trouble!) And the same applies to your mind and body. If you continually make demands on yourself--not only physically, but mentally and emotionally as well-- without doing something to make up for the deficit, you're going to pay the price eventually.

RECOGNIZING THE SYMPTOMS
It's important that you can recognize when you're starting to feel burned out. Once you do, make sure that you pay attention to your feelings. They are warning signs that something is out of balance. They work in much the same way that a physical symptom such as a cough or a shooting pain tells you that something is wrong and needs your attention.

Let's look at the symptoms of physical stress first because it seems like the easiest concept for people to absorb. If you're working hard physically, your body reminds you to make up for it's deficit by telling you that it's hungry or tired. If you ignore your discomfort, you'll become increasingly fatigued or irritable until your needs are met.

You can also stress yourself physically by overworking muscles that haven't been systematically strengthened. Moderate stress is good and eventually makes you stronger.

When you work out, for example, you'll probably experience a bit of discomfort during the effort. And you might even feel a bit stiff and sore the next day. But when you severely overtrain, you go beyond mere discomfort and begin to hurt. If you ignore this pain, you can even seriously injure yourself.

Next, let's look at mental and emotional stress. You make demands on yourself mentally when you concentrate, problem-solve, visualize, analyze, think, or obsess about your riding.

You stress yourself emotionally when you feel angry, afraid, insecure, frustrated, negative, confused, or depressed.

But remember, this stress isn't necessarily bad. In fact, just like working your muscles, it's part of the process that allows you to get stronger and more resilient. You only get into trouble when you're overly stressed without making up for the deficit.

When you ignore your needs, you might end up feeling moody, tired, depressed, anxious, nervous, and bored. Your self-confidence in your abilities starts to slip. You lose your motivation and sense of fun. Or you fall into a pattern of persistent negative thinking. These negative emotions serve a purpose. They tell you that something is out of balance and that you have to take care of yourself.

MAKING WAVES
When you consider the committment and dedication required by our sport, it's not surprising that you'd feel burned out from time to time. After all, training demands a lot of mental energy from us. We're constantly forced to look objectively at our shortcomings, analyze what to do about them, problem-solve unemotionally, stay positive and motivated in the face of repeated mistakes and criticism, and withstand pressure from coaches, parents, owners, and ourselves. That's a lot of stress. And if you're going to be exposed to that much stress, you need to find ways to balance it.

Sports' psychologist Dr. James Loehr explains that one of the secrets to staying balanced and becoming a better athlete physically, mentally, and emotionally is to "make waves". In other words, alternate periods of stress with periods of recovery.

Dr. Loehr points out that stress is a vital part of the process that strengthens us as athletes. However, in order to become better riders and trainers, we need to balance stress with recovery. When the amount of stress exceeds the capacity to recover, you can get burned out.

Let's consider physical stress first. Those of you familiar with training with weights understand that you shouldn't exercise major muscle groups on consecutive days. If you work your chest, arms, and shoulders on Monday and Wednesday, you'd do your back and legs on Tuesday and Thursday. Stressing major muscle groups two days in a row is counter-productive. Those muscles end up getting weaker instead of stronger because they don't have sufficient time to repair. Muscles recover and get stronger on their rest days.

The same sort of stress-recovery cycle exists mentally and emotionally as well. To become a better athlete, trainer, or competitor, you need to expose yourself to stress.

Spend some time each day visualizing the perfect dressage test from beginning to end. Do some problem-solving to figure out how to improve those lengthenings. Analyze what went wrong during your lesson. Practice staying focused during your ride when there are lots of distractions around you. All of these stresses can strengthen you as a rider. But the toughening only occurs when you plan for recovery time.

When you ride, plan to rest each week by scheduling hack days or play days. Do something totally different from your normal routine like take a jumping lesson or ride in a hunter pace. Recharge your batteries by participating in or auditting a clinic so you get some new insights into long-standing training issues. Hang out with other riders who are excited and passionate about what they're doing and get swept up by their enthusiasm.

Schedule recovery time outside of riding as well. Make a point of having some fun away from the barn. Go to a funny movie, shop, garden, go out to dinner with friends that make you laugh, or go fishing (my personal favorite!). Take up another hobby. Paint, write, listen to music, take a hike. One of my students volunteered to be a "big sister" for an underpriviledged youth one afternoon a week. Or how about taking a vacation from riding altogether for a couple of weeks?

How will you know your balance is being restored? One way is that you'll start to feel more energetic, motivated, and excited about your riding again. Another way is simply to ask yourself, " Am I having fun?" If you're having a good time, your ratio of stress to recovery is probably in very good shape and burn-out becomes a thing of the past.