Hitting A Plateau 8 Coping Strategies

We’ve all been there – on the plateau – wondering how on earth we’ll ever move forwards, and if our riding has hit a ceiling. For those who are somewhat less familiar with the plateau than we are – the term is commonly used to describe the point in learning a new skill, when you realise you’re just not making any progress, and that you have no idea how to get to the next level. Most, if not all, riders will hit plateaus with a frustrating degree of regularity on their journey to the top.

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Plateaus can lead us, as one rider beautifully phrased it, ‘to circle the drain’, questioning everything we’ve ever done, been taught, thought to be true and worked to achieve. In fact, for many of us, a full existential crisis can result upon arriving on the plateau. Thoughts like these are fairly common on the plateau:

• Am I really cut out for this?

• Am I failing my horse?

• Maybe I have no natural talent for this.

• I’m not sure I can do this anymore.

• I’m just not good enough.

THE DANGEROUS MYTH

Many of us have a pretty deep-seated belief that life is supposed to be easy, whether or not we vocalise this. This, unfortunately, leads us to run away from tricky and uncomfortable situations, citing them as signs that we need to be doing something else, somewhere else. The truth is, however, that nothing worth achieving can be achieved without some hard work, and that hard work isn’t just drilling our horses every single day of the week, but also improving ourselves and our training methods to allow our horses to flourish.