hey there amelia here so today's video is what to do when you fall off your horse
and i think this is something that's really hard if you've ridden horses for any length of time
at one point or another you're going to fall off the unfortunate part is that when you do come off
it's not good for you it's not good for your horse so let me know in the comments if you're
watching this video because you recently came off your horse and i'm really sorry if
you did come off your horse i'm making this video because i did recently fall off and i hit my head
and it sucks you know when you come off your horse it kind of takes a hit to your confidence
and hopefully you didn't get hurt too badly but you know when you come off it sucks and
it takes a while to build up and get back to the place that you were with that horse but it
is possible and i wanted to break things down for you and give you some steps that you should follow
for how to build up your confidence how to build up your horse's confidence again after a fall in
this video so be sure to check out the links below also if you like this channel give us a thumbs up
and subscribe i post mainly dressage videos on here but today's video is for any discipline
and check out the link below i have a free link to sign up for a mini course on confidence which
would be a good thing for you to do if you just came off your horse so let me know what happened
and hopefully this video will give you a few good tips to help you out okay so the first thing to do
is to assess so like when you first come off and you hit the ground you kind of want to just take a
moment to assess check yourself out see how you're feeling and then decide whether or not you're able
to get back on your horse it is best if you can get back on right away so like if you didn't get
hurt too badly and you feel okay then catch your horse again i usually like spend a little time
doing some ground work maybe put the horse on the lunge line for a minute and then try to
get back on because what happens is that if you don't get buck on your horse right away
like the pressure and the fear of it just builds up more and more and more and it gets harder and
harder so if you can get on your horse right away again if you're not up for it and you've
hurt yourself then maybe see if someone else there could get on your horse and if you have
hurt yourself i'm really sorry it really sucks we've all been there we've all gotten hurt
and give yourself the time to heal i think that's really important that you take that time
let your body heal and fully recover before trying to ride again while you're recovering see who you
can get to still train your horse and exercise your horse because that is really important
so once you've assessed the situation the next thing to do is to analyze the trigger it's always
really important to know that there's a reason that your horse bucked you off or that you fell
off it never just happens randomly like i hear people say like oh i was going along
and like everything was totally fine and then for no reason my horse just blew up and bucked me off
so there's always some reason that it happened to you it could be that you know it was really
cold that day and your horse was feeling fresh or it could be that something spooked your horse
or it could be that your horse was just asleep and like like pretending to be lazy and suddenly
they woke up because you like kicked them and they suddenly blocked you off or it could be
that maybe you're just learning to ride and you lost your balance and it was totally kind of a
rider air issue in my case um the reason that i got dumped last week and hit my head
was because of rehab and i think that rehab is really a dangerous time with horses because
any time a horse is off for an injury and you lock them in a stall and you don't allow them to
do what horses do which is run and buck and play and they have all that pent up energy in there
then that's a really dangerous time because at some point the horse needs to you know let
all that out and oftentimes that results in you getting dumped or you getting hurt so if you're
rehabbing a horse please put your safety first and it's always it's just not worth it it's not worth
you getting hurt over trying to save your horse so once you've analyzed and identified the trigger
the third thing you want to do is you want to come up with a plan and after you come off of
your horse the next couple of weeks or months is really critical i would recommend getting
some help i think that that is really important have your trainer help you out if there's someone
else that can you know ride your horse a little bit just to help kind of get your horse going
while you get your confidence back i think that that is really really helpful another really good
idea is groundwork and lunging and i'm a huge fan of that because again you don't want to have a
repeat of the falling off incident so you want to kind of push the boundaries on the ground you know
make sure that you can really liven your horse up and that they can canter around on the ground make
sure that you can get your horse to bend and yield and disengage their hindquarters because
when you can bend your horse and when you can turn your horse then you're able to control your
horse so that if they panic or spook or whatever that you have some kind of a control mechanism
and another really important part of your plan is staying consistent so horses are
creatures of habit and the more consistently that you're able to exercise them and get them out
and work with them the better so once you've analyzed the situation you have a plan then
it's important to kind of move on you don't want to keep playing that moment over and over again
in your head you want to kind of think about what happened right before you got dumped and then have
a plan of what you're going to do differently so like you're going to sit back you're going
to keep your hands down you're going to bend your horse you're not going to let it get to that place
but what you don't want to do is keep playing that moment over and over again and then one
thing that we always did as kids is if you fell off you had to make everyone at the barn a pan
of brownies so go make yourself some brownies and let me know in the comments if this was helpful
and i hope that you don't fall off again oh and one very important thing this is my helmet
which i fell often it's a trauma void helmet these helmets are like seriously the best helmets
they have special technology it's called mips m-i-p-s i forget what it stands for but
really good technology to help prevent concussions i'm very grateful to have had this helmet on when
i came off and i'm going to be throwing this helmet away and getting a new one
because whenever you come off it does damage the helmet and you're supposed to get a new
one so i hope this video was helpful and let me know in the comments i hope that
you get your confidence back your horse gets your confidence back and it happens
but we want to prevent it from happening in the future so thanks so much for watching