20 Expert Tips to Reduce Riding Horseback Anxiety

One might think that anyone who loves horseback riding would look forward with sheer excitement and delight to the joy of climbing into the saddle.  But if you find yourself feeling increasing tension, stress, and anxiety before a ride, you are far from alone.  You can love something with all your heart and still be super anxious about doing it. In this article, we’re going to give you tips for reducing riding anxiety.

Tips to Reduce Horseback Riding Anxiety

But first, let’s go over some of the reasons why riding anxiety happens.  If you, or someone you know, struggles with being anxious about riding, it's actually perfectly normal.  Below I will share some of the reasons why this happens, then go into the ways you can reduce that anxiety and make horseback riding a bigger part of your life.

What Are Some Causes of Riding Anxiety?

There are a lot of possible reasons why riders might experience anxiety, but here are some common ones

Safety concerns

Riding a horse, like driving a car, can be a relatively safe activity if you know what you are doing and always take appropriate measures to minimize risk. But horses are big animals. Working with them is never 100% safe, and there are a lot of things that can go wrong. If you ruminate on these possibilities enough, you will probably get nervous

previous accident

If you or someone you know had a bad accident on a horse at any point, that experience is bound to leave a mark on your psyche. You may be scared either consciously or unconsciously that it will happen again.

Recent performance problems

We all have phases where we do not ride as well as we usually do, and make more mistakes than usual. If you have recently had one of these streaks of poor performance, you might lose confidence in yourself.

Growing up with an overprotective parent

Did you learn how to ride as a child? Maybe you had a parent who gave you a lot of bad feedback. Even if they were supportive, they might have worried a lot about you. But in doing so, instead of communicating the message “horse riding can be dangerous, make sure you are riding safely,” they communicated the message, “you are incapable of riding safely, you do not know what you are doing.” Whether they meant to do that or not, that is what your brain and body learned. And even as an adult, you might struggle with feelings that you are an inadequate rider.

Dealing with bad feedback from an early trainer

Poor feedback from a trainer growing up could also cement your feelings that you are not a strong rider. Like messages from your parents, messages from trainers might also keep ringing in your head long after you received them.