DR. JANET SASSON EDGETTE

Sport Psychology for Riders

Helping you channel your full potential

Natural, innovative and sensitive to the ways in which people truly can change, Janet’s strategies go way beyond traditional sport psychology techniques in order to match the needs of each rider, rather than the other way around.

AS A SPORT PSYCHOLOGIST

Pioneered the application of modern performance enhancement principles to the equestrian industry.
Wrote the ground-breaking book entitled Heads Up!: Practical Sports Psychology for Riders, Their Families, and Their Trainers, which advanced the field past the limiting traditions of relaxation and imagery work.
Also wrote The Rider’s Edge: Overcoming the Psychological Challenges of Riding — a collection of essays about the broader experience of owning, riding, training, showing and loving horses.
Served as sport psychology consultant for Practical Horseman magazine for eight years, and wrote a monthly column on sport psychology.
Consults individually to recreational, junior, amateur, and professional riders as well as to trainers, instructors, and other equestrian industry professionals.
Offers sport psychology seminars, keynote lectures, and informal Q&A sessions to barns, national organizations and other equestrian governing bodies.

JANET’S RIDING HISTORY

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Hunter/Jumper

An accomplished hunter/jumper rider who competed successfully as a junior under the tutelage of Wayne Carroll. Her junior career included call backs in both the AHSA Medal and ASPCA Maclay finals, and numerous championships in the equitation, junior hunter, and junior jumper divisions.

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Trained with Champions

Has since trained for periods of time with such excellent instructors as George Morris, Chris Kappler, Neal Shapiro, Mark Leone, and Emil Spadone, winning ribbons at American Gold Cup, Autumn Classic, Upperville, St. Christopher’s, the Winter Equestrian Festival, and the Budweiser Amateur Owner Invitational in the Amateur Owner and other jumper divisions.

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Continued Passion

Janet continues to ride and train, currently with Diane Little at Diane Little Stables in West Chester, PA.

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My Approach is Different for Riders…

Sport psychology is a lot more than just relaxation exercises, visualization, and positive thinking. Unfortunately, that’s all most people ever hear about, so when those strategies don’t work they feel stuck, with nowhere else to go.

My sport psychology approach differs from conventional sport psychology models, and has proved to be much more effective in helping riders manage the performance anxiety they experience at shows, clinics, or when riding other people’s horses. Instead of investing a lot of energy in trying to get rid of thoughts or feelings you don’t like, you learn how to ride well in spite of them. That way you’re not always looking over your shoulder to see if your nerves are catching up with you, and you don’t have to pretend to think or feel a certain way that you may not be thinking or feeling.

By taking the “fight” out of anxiety management or your real fears of getting injured, and remaining very authentic and true to your real experience, you will be disempowering the anxiety you feel and empowering your own self.

From there, it’s easy to figure out how to compensate for the ways in which anxiety affects your riding. So, for example, if show nerves turn you into a passive, “second-guess-every-decision” kind of rider, then our job together will be discovering the best ways for you to quickly access and mobilize your more assertive, confident side. If show nerves turn your legs into a vice grip and your hands into steel, then our job becomes one of figuring out the thoughts or images that bring flexibility and softness into your body. These are things you can control. Making yourself “relax”—not so much.

Besides, who do you know who’s really relaxed at horse shows? The only ones I’ve ever known were the ones who got there by “accident”—they either were thrown into the ring on a strange horse at the last second or were riding under other unforeseen circumstances that made their expectations (and everyone else’s), well, soft. For the rest of us, once the outcome matters, everything changes, including and especially our anxiety levels. That’s just human nature.

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Janet’s Practice in Child, Adolescent, and Family Therapy

In addition to her work as a sport psychologist for riders, Janet is nationally renowned for her work as a therapist for teenagers, kids, and families. Her approach with families is consistent with her belief that respect, accountability, and prudent transparency are the cornerstones to healthy, enduring relationships between loved ones.

Janet is the author of six books, including the popular parenting paperback, Stop Negotiating With Your Teen: Strategies for Parenting Your Angry, Manipulative, Moody, or Depressed Adolescent, and Adolescent Therapy That Works: Helping Kids Who Never Asked for Your Help in the First Place. Her most recent book is The Last Boys Picked: Helping Boys Who Don’t Like Sports Survive Bullying and Boyhood, which examines bullying through the lens of boys and sports. The book addresses the challenges faced by non-athletic boys growing up in a culture that glorifies physical skills at the expense of many other skills, and was listed as a “MUST READ” by Parents magazine.

Janet speaks frequently at various professional conferences and has taught workshops for mental health professionals, educators, and parents all around the United States and parts of Canada, as well as in Mexico, Russia, Croatia, and Germany. She writes regularly on topics related to parenting teenagers in articles and on her blog (http://www.janetedgette.com/blog/), and invites you to visit her other website ((http://www.janetedgette.com) and follow her on social media.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/janetedgette

http://fb.me/janetsassonedgette

https://twitter.com/janet.edgette

Featured Publications

Magazine Articles & Interviews

Visualization Techniques- Not Always 20/20

Some athletes like visualization exercises and find them useful but others find them tiresome and tedious and unhelpful. In a sport that has as many moving parts as riding has, a technique as “static" as visualization can leave a rider riding the horse she had in her...

Stop Taking It Out On Everyone Else!

Being nervous about your show or event is a terrible excuse for lashing out at family and friends, especially when they’re probably just trying to help you get ready. Read about some ways to constructively manage your feelings and better deal with the stress that is...

I Am Terrified to Ride My Young Horse

Read about how you can think through dilemmas like this in ways that allow you to continue moving forward with a horse on whom you feel over-faced while respecting your need to remain safe. See full article HERE