My Magic Sports Kit
Reluctantly, I wandered into a local football club, for what I suspected would be a dull 3 hours. And was very pleasantly surprised by a thought-provoking evening. Which was? Child safeguarding. Whether it was this trainer and his method, or whether it was the UK Coaching system, we had a good evening of different coaching ideas and a nice interaction between coaches in a wide variety of sports. A couple of aspects made me think, but one in particular…Children are often bullied and this is a problem. Whether cyber bullying, bullying in class about being “stupid” or wearing glasses or whatever other reason. But, what about in sports? A classic bullying moment comes when the two team captains are tasked with yelling out kid’s names and building their teams, and they each avoid calling out the last couple of kids because they know they have no ball skills. Is this the worst bullying in sport? Actually, no. The worst bullying often happens from the parents.The kids’ practice, they are coached, they enjoy the sport, and then, come match day, the parents stand on the edge of the sports field to cheer on the little darlings. Some parents are awesome, they cheer, they clap, they encourage. Others, not so much.“You call that a pass?”“Hit it to the other team”“Go on, kil’em”“Oi, ref – you call that reffing? Are you blind? What part of penalty do you call that?”Parents screaming at their kids, parents screaming at other kids, parents screaming at other parents, parents screaming at refs. And THEN, they have to get in the parent’s car and get yelled at going home too. Awesome. Kids drop out of sport and decide that much as they love football, rugby, hockey, riding, whatever, they’d rather give up, because they don’t want to be yelled at. I love this video – really gets the message across…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2uH9Dle8mQAnd that got me thinking about something else. How often do horses feel this too? Lots of horses school nicely at home but fall apart at a show. Yes, some of that is due to rider’s nerves, and horses suffer from stage fright too. But often, horses will have home tack that they school, train and hack out wearing, and then a set of fancy show tack to compete in. One horse and rider combination who I used to teach a lot always did a fabulous job at home when we were schooling but so often the horse would start head shaking when ridden through a dressage test. I’d seen a couple of videos of the tests, but never saw them in real life. Finally, I managed to be at a show where they were competing and was standing chatting to them in the warm up arena. On rubbing the horse on his face, I felt his fancy diamond encrusted browband, and it was so small that it was pinching the base of his ears in front of the head piece. How can you ride him in this bridle? Well, it’s his pretty show bridle. We swapped it for his usual bridle and magic – the head shaking stopped.That was a physical issue, but how many horses associate a piece of equipment or a place with being beaten up or pushed too hard in competition?When I started riding and working with stallions, one of the first things that I was taught, was that a working stallion who was also covering mares must have two bridles. They have a “concentrate, we are schooling” bridle, and they have a “let’s go cover a mare” bridle. My stallions would cover in a loose ring rubber snaffle and work in some form of metal bit. Why? Because the instant the horse sees, smells or wears his bridle, he knows what to associate with it. The behavior was very different in his two different bridles. So, does he see his show bridle, and think, here we go with My Magic Sports Kit? Does your horse like competing, or does he feel stressed by the extra pressure?Have a look at this video too – do you tell your horse, I love watching you play? Do you tell your child/ pupil / sibling / friend, I love watching you ride?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXw0XGOVQvw