All jokes aside, wasn’t there a trainer that used the collars you put on dogs after surgery to prevent riders from looking down?
I use my equicube, if I look down I fall over the front. I need to work on engaging my core more.
All jokes aside, wasn’t there a trainer that used the collars you put on dogs after surgery to prevent riders from looking down?
I use my equicube, if I look down I fall over the front. I need to work on engaging my core more.
Just brainstorming here, but how about doing your training rides wearing a soft cervical collar as a training aid, making looking down an effort?
Or a shirt with a high neck collar buttoned under your chin, as a reminder?
Focus on what TO do, rather than what NOT to do.
Focus on looking beyond the jump. Even have someone stand at the far end of the ring for you to look at. Fences should be ridden “through”, rather than at them. Riding through them means you’re keeping pace even on landing, you’re focusing on the first couple of strides after the fence.
Start with poles, which you may not look down at, but if you do even there, there’s little to no risk by looking down and dumping your horse onto his forehand and catching a rail.
A great, simple setup is 3 trot poles with standards set at the 3rd one. Trot through them a dozen times if that’s what it takes to start looking through them to the other side.
Then take the last 2 poles and make an X at the standards. Same thing - little to no risk.
Then, a 2nd set of standards set 1 stride from the X, putting a placing pole in the middle. That placing pole helps you feel without looking, that you’re going to have a good spot. Look beyond the 2nd jump at all times.
Having been there, looking down is a way of trying to see where the takeoff spot is. The above setup, and all gymnastics that expand on it, set all the spots for you so you can focus on learning to trust them, trust what your brain has seen 5 strides out, and so on.
The OP mentioned she has the issue mostly while riding on the flat, not over fences.
I looked down my whole life. I got better on the flat but physically couldn’t look up over fences. Started working with StableBody PT and got a workout program that fixes my tight spots and voila, well not voila, 8 months of hard work, and I can look up. It has also massively improved my tendency to look down on the flat as well. Turns out strong core and a thoracic spine that can move are really important
I was brought one by a RN friend as a joke after I had to hold a piece of paper in my mouth to prevent me from looking down…
Just wanted to say - I can relate OP! My head is the first thing to go when I get tired, and I start looking at my diagonal line. I also look down when I jump, as I’m worried about essentially missing the jump.
It’s been many years, probably close to 30, since I’ve read Centered Riding (should probably put that on the list of things to do…) but I’ve noticed a huge difference when a lovely former instructor got me to start taking in the whole landscape. I found that the standard “pick a spot and stare at it” was a detriment; I would lose my distance, pace, softness, everything. What she finally got my brain to do is scan the whole landscape by envisioning my track. My brain almost maps out the track, like I see it in a highlighted path, up in to the distance, usually into and through the next turn. She trained me to use an active eye; not just to fixate on a point but to look up and forward, then come back to the fence momentarily to check distance, then forward and down the track. This active eye that she instilled in me allowed me to be able to take in a lot more of my surroundings and I became much more effective in so many aspects of my riding.