John Haime is a human performance coach, who helps you to bring the best out of yourself. Many athletes around the globe trust him to enhance confidence and self-awareness. He is also the author of the book “Ride Big” in which he interviewed numerous world-class riders to find out their secret to success.
In this episode, Christian Kroeber sits with him to talk about what confidence exactly means and how you can improve yourself.
Podcast Transscript
*** This transcript was created by AI and has not been proofread ***
[SPEAKER 1]
Hi everyone, this is the Equestrian Connection from wehorse, the online riding academy. My name is Christian Kroeber and in today’s episode we talk about how to build confidence in the saddle and how you can actually also improve it yourself. Today’s guest is John Haime. John trains athletes, corporate leaders and many more to become self-aware and more confident. He recently published a book for equestrians about how to solve problems, build confidence, and eventually have a better experience with your horses. Super interesting stuff. And for the book, he interviewed many of the best riders in the world to learn what makes them actually successful. So let’s go. Hi, John.
[SPEAKER 2]
Christian, how are you?
[SPEAKER 1]
I am very well. How are you?
[SPEAKER 2]
Well, I’m doing great. It’s a beautiful day here in Canada today, and we’ve enjoyed that and doing a little bit of work. So it’s all good, Christian.
[SPEAKER 1]
Great. Great to have you on the podcast, John. I think it’s an exciting topic that you spread now in the horse world. You are, and I looked this up on your homepage, you’re an athlete, coach, mentor, speaker, author, philanthropist. If you would explain yourself, who’s John Haim?
[SPEAKER 2]
I help very simply if you, who’s John Haim is a big question because there’s many facets I think but on the professional side, what I do is very simple. Christian, I close the gap for performers. So that means that I help them go from where they currently are to where they want to go. And, uh, that’s as simple as I can possibly make it. And it’s quite complex how to do that. There’s many, many parts to that, but, uh, when you break it down to its simplest form, you know, somebody wants to go somewhere or wants to do something. And I help them achieve that, that target.
[SPEAKER 1]
You are now in the equestrian space, in the horse world, but originally you have been working with athletes and talent from golf, I think NBA, NHL, and you name them. So you have been working across different sports, not only in the horse world so far.
[SPEAKER 2]
Yes, so we work in two primary spaces, Christian. In fact, we’re just kind of rebranding right now a little bit. So, you know, I take my own advice and when I work with my clients, we do a lot of planning. So I do a lot of planning too, and I’m planning out the next 10 years of the company’s future.
[SPEAKER 1]
Really? You have a 10-year plan?
[SPEAKER 2]
A 10 year plan, yes, we break it down into two and five, but we have a 10 year plan. So we know exactly sort of where we want to get to. And that there’s a lot of components to that, too. It’s financial, and we have a vision for the company on where we want to take it, how many people we’d like to impact. how many people we want to help. So yes, definitely. And I think it’s necessary that everyone sits down and does that. It’s a fantastic exercise. It creates clarity and it’s essential to build confidence in the organization. And one of the things I write about in Ride Big It’s the idea of confidence and riding big and part of that is planning and you have to have a plan of where you want to go. It’s like your GPS and you’re not going to head out when you don’t know where you’re going and you head out without a GPS. It’s a very difficult time to get there. This is like our GPS for a company that we set and we point ourselves in the right direction sort of, and it’s 10 years out and then we work on that. But getting back to that, we work in two primary spaces. I work in corporate, so I coach executives. I coach high potentials in organizations. I deliver speeches to company gatherings on a number of different topics related to performance. And then, you know, on the other side, we work in sports, too. So I work, like you said, I work in all the professional sports league or have worked in all the professional sports leagues. That’s been fascinating. And the idea was to bring sort of a very established, proven process to equestrian sport. So yeah, and I guess how we got into equestrian sport, I started to work with a meter 20 show jumper in my home city here of Ottawa in Canada. And the entire business sort of grew out of working with her. We had some success with her. We moved to some other riders at different levels. And then we started to work with professional riders and help them. And we’re getting really great results helping the riders and measurable results to seeing them move up in the rankings, et cetera, significantly. So that’s how we started in equestrian sport too. And I’ve really, really enjoyed my time in equestrian sport. It’s so different. It’s so challenging for me to, it’s a steep learning curve to learn everything that I sort of need to know, and certainly I don’t know everything, but it’s been a steep climb to learn everything I need to know in order to make an impact with our clients. So, you know, I’ve been to clinics, I’ve been to the best horse shows in the world. I’ve taken riding lessons myself to understand the feelings. So I’ve been committed to this and like I said it’s a challenge from the other sports that I’ve been doing for so long and I’ve really really enjoyed it and the horse aspect of it is fascinating and it’s so fun.
[SPEAKER 1]
I mean one of your topics is confidence and you already mentioned that. Why is confidence for equestrians important, regardless whether I’m riding competitively on a high level or just a leisure rider? Why is this topic of confidence important to me as a rider?
[SPEAKER 2]
Well, confidence, Christian, when you break it down into its very, you distill it to its very simplest form is knowing you can do it. So you can imagine that’s kind of important in anything that a person chooses to do, whether it’s equestrian sport or, you know, uh, corporate sales or, uh, playing in the NBA, playing in the NHL, whatever it is, you, you really, you really need to know that you can do it. So confidence is like the secret sauce. It’s like your secret weapon. It’s like your Superman cape. It’s really important. And I really found that when I came into equestrian sport, there was a real confidence crisis. There was a deficit of crisis, sorry, a deficit of confidence. And how I know that is when I was getting calls, and I still do. Obviously, we still do get the calls. But when we get calls from equestrians, I would say in the first couple of minutes of the conversation, they always want to talk about confidence. So I’ve lost my confidence. I would like to have more confidence. How do I build confidence? So that’s one factor. Um, the other factor is just working with the equestrians and, and being at the shows and seeing the, and I think a lot of people will agree with me because every time I talk to people about this, they say, yes, we see it too. Um, but there is a deficit of confidence and there’s a lot of factors why, um, there’s a deficit of confidence. And I think, um, The world we live in creates, creates issues now for sort of the modern rider. I think tech has created issues where, you know, it’s created the idea of comparison with other riders that put comparisons on social media, Instagram. So all those things, right? Everybody wants to have the best horse and the best coach and the best boots and the best pants and the best this and the best that. And you’re always comparing. So it’s almost like a lot of equestrians are not completely happy with themselves because they want what the other person has. The other factor, Christian, too, which is a big one, is that in the past, results weren’t as immediate as they are now. But immediately when you come out of the ring or wherever you come out of in equestrian sport, whether it’s the polo field or the ring or whatever it is, results are immediate. So you know that, that people are going to be perhaps judging you. Um, you know, there’s expectations on you. They’re going to be creating opinions of you immediately because they see your results and they’re basing those opinions and that judgment on those results. Now, in the past in equestrian sport, it wasn’t like that. And I had some amazing conversations with some riders when I was interviewing some of the top riders in the world for Ride Big. And I’ll agree that in the past, or not long ago, it was more about development of the horse. And you had that opportunity to develop the horse. And there wasn’t as much emphasis on results. So you’d bring the horse along slowly. and obviously you want to result at some point but you had the opportunity for development and didn’t have to worry about as worry as much about the judgment etc but now since the results are so immediate there’s more focus on results less focus perhaps on development of the horse And that leads to issues too. So there’s all sorts of things currently for the modern writer, Christian, that inhibit confidence or take it away or make it difficult to grasp. So that’s the reason I wrote Ride Big in the first place. I wanted to write the book five years ago when, uh, when I was two years into, uh, working with equestrians, but we didn’t have the time at the time. And COVID really presented up an opportunity for me to, uh, to write this book, gave me a little extra time to, uh, to create this, uh, this sort of roadmap for equestrians. And, um, it turned out well, so I’m happy the way it turned out.
[SPEAKER 1]
You mentioned social media and I think all of us we feel in our daily lives that social media fundamentally changed human interaction and the way we think to a certain degree as well. How can I break free out of this? out of this downward spiral to a certain extent. I’m comparing myself against my friends, I’m comparing myself against fellow writers in the stable, at the show, in my state, nationwide, eventually worldwide. So how can I break free out of that spiral where I’m just measuring myself against other people that normally like if social media wouldn’t exist and we know that there are benefits from social media and on the other side there are also very negative implications of social media. How can I break free from that?
[SPEAKER 2]
Like this, your question boils right down to the whole sort of purpose and gist of the program I run for equestrians. And one of the ideas I talk about in the Ride Big book is an idea of riding, the difference between riding inside out and outside in. So confident riders, riders who ride big, ride from a position of, it’s called inside out. So that means you develop the inside, you develop all the pieces of the inside, all the self-awareness, all the values, all the purpose. understanding everything you can about yourself, understanding your own voice, understanding how your emotions impact you from moment to moment. It’s a real structural piece of you, and it’s really the truth about you, and you express that from the inside out. and I can see when a rider is doing that that’s that we’ll get you know we’ll kind of look at the difference between people who ride big and ride small and here in a minute and we’ll kind of talk about the two of them but then on the on the other hand is the rider who rides from the outside in and that means that all these pieces from the outside the social media the expectations the people’s opinions the everything the results everything that’s coming from the outside penetrates you on the inside and really defines you on the inside and it’s not really the truth about you it’s uh it’s it’s very it’s very far from the truth in fact it’s the opposite of the truth so And I find a lot of riders because they haven’t developed the inside they don’t know exactly perhaps who they are they don’t know you know what they believe in their values they don’t know why they’re writing perhaps and and many other factors around self awareness or self discovery.
[SPEAKER 1]
So.
[SPEAKER 2]
So that’s a problem, as you can see, right, if you’re writing from the outside in, because all these pieces are directing you from the outside. So I think that sort of answers your questions around what can you do? You have to develop the outside in idea and develop the inside so that it almost you almost become. not immune, I don’t know what the word is, but it becomes impenetrable for people to expectations, results, all these things from the outside to reach into you. I think that’s really, really an important idea in the book for riders. If you do happen to get the Ride Big book and you see that in the book, I define it a little bit more, a little bit more in a detailed fashion in the book. but basically you definitely want to try to ride inside out which means you’re expressing yourself from the inside and really expressing the truth about yourself.
[SPEAKER 1]
And this also relates to the notion that you have to have a purpose. I think it’s something that we see in the corporate world that more and more organizations build their employees or their entire culture around their purpose, eventually I for myself have to have a purpose as well, correct?
[SPEAKER 2]
Everybody has to have a purpose. You have to understand why you do something. And if we if we relate it to equestrian sport or relate it to riding, you have to know why you ride and you have to ride on that purpose. That’s that’s the important thing. You’re not riding for the expectations of somebody else or the or what somebody else thinks or necessarily the results. If you ask 98% of riders why they ride is because they love being around the animal. They love being around the horses. They love being around the barn. I have this exercise I give to all of my clients. It’s called Possibilities in Riding, and it really flushes out very carefully the rider’s purpose. That’s one of the exercises that is important in the self-discovery exercise that we do. Yes, the purpose is really key. And if you can, if you can always bring somebody back to the purpose, when all these things from the outside are sort of trying to make their way inside of the rider, then you can really, you know, sort of numb that, uh, by understanding your purpose and riding on your purpose. Definitely. Does that make sense?
[SPEAKER 1]
Totally. And I think you mentioned self-awareness and consciousness and all those things. I think this has also changed throughout the past 10 to 20 years. If you look into the equestrian world of the 90s, late 90s, completely different. And now you have athletes that think, okay, why am I actually doing this? And also, if we relate this back to social media, I think those that are really authentic, also tend to have real authentic followers on social media. If we can link this back also to what we see in the modern world, what we are faced with, it’s making a complete circle.
[SPEAKER 2]
Yeah, I think, I think Christian you know the authenticity obviously and everything is important so I think that plays along with and, and is in alignment with the idea of writing inside out when you’re writing outside in there’s all these things inside of you and. and they become part of you and you don’t present an authentic presence. But when you’re riding from the inside out, your truth, your purpose, your values, everything about you, then there’s an authenticity, I think, to that too. And just a much easier way to ride and a much easier way to live.
[SPEAKER 1]
For your book, for Write Big, you interviewed writers like Beze Madden, McLean Ward, Laura Tomlinson, Michael Jung from Germany. All of them are highly professional. They are super successful. From your standpoint, what do they share? What is their common ground when it comes to confidence?
[SPEAKER 2]
I think a lot of things, Christian, and they’re all different. That’s the thing. Like when I interviewed, for example, Michael Young, BZ Med, and McLean Ward, who else did I interview for the chapter on pressure? And I asked them all how they consume pressure or what their idea of pressure was, and all of them were different. So they all consume pressure in their own different way, which I think is really important. Does pressure exist? Yes. Do they all have pressure? Yes, but they all consume it and, and address it and deal with it in a different way. So that’s one thing you understand about when you, like, I have the chance to work with the best athletes in the world. They’re all so different, so authentic, so original, especially the really good ones. and they all have their way of doing it. I think all these people, if you want to go through the pieces here of riding big, they all ride big and they all have the pieces of riding big. They don’t ride small, these people. These people ride and they maximize their abilities. So, yeah, they’re all I think they’re all different. They were all fascinating, Christian, to interview, too. They were such great people. Like you said, Michael was fantastic from Germany. Michael Young had many conversations with him, was very impressed with him. McLean obviously is a very professional writer and a professional person. And he was fantastic. Beasy was the same. Very, very humble. and just a world class rider, but also a world class person, too. And I think I found that with all of them. I think I interviewed 13 different riders from different equestrian disciplines, and they were all I was impressed, equally impressed with them as people as I was with them as riders. So I think that’s an important point, too, that I think in order to be a great rider, you have to be probably a pretty good person, too.
[SPEAKER 1]
Is that also the case for other sports, actually?
[SPEAKER 2]
Yes, yes, definitely.
[SPEAKER 1]
If I’m doing well in the NBA or if I’m a good hockey player, are those characteristics also… Can you find those characteristics also there?
[SPEAKER 2]
Yeah, and I think in order to be a really consistent, sustainable performer and a really good memory… And that’s the biggest challenge, consistent performance.
[SPEAKER 1]
Right.
[SPEAKER 2]
You can maybe have some issues as a person maybe and still produce some performance, but can you produce consistent year after year after year type of performances? That becomes difficult. You have to be a good person because there’s requirements in the community and there’s demands on you and demands on your time and everything. Being a good person is helpful, you know, toward being a good athlete too, I think.
[SPEAKER 1]
So what does ride big actually mean? You already said riding big, riding small. What’s riding big?
[SPEAKER 2]
Okay. So let’s look at ride big and ride small and what the differences are between the two. And, um, the story of ride big and ride small is I was, uh, I was in Wellington, Florida at, uh, you know, watching a five-star show jumping event and sitting around with a bunch of riders. And as the. As the riders came in the ingate to go through their course, they would ask me, well, what do you think of this rider? So the rider would go through the course, and they’d say, what do you think of that rider? And I’d say, well, that rider is riding big. And then another rider would come a couple of riders later, and they’d say, well, what do you think of that rider? How’s that rider riding? And I would say that rider’s riding small. So that’s how Ride Big and Ride Small sort of well, Ride Big, especially because the name of the book is Ride Big. But that’s how Ride Big sort of emerged was just out of that conversation with the riders in Wellington. And, you know, they knew right away if I said Ride Big, they knew that there was a specific style of riding that I was framing for them. And then if I said ride small, it was the same thing. There was a specific style that the rider’s missing something. So I think riders who ride big know they can do it, first of all, and they know they can do it in competition. And riders on the other side of the coin, with respect to that point, I think riders who ride small are filled with doubt. They’re not sure they can do it. And they may be able to do it in training, but they can’t bring those feelings to competition. Riders who ride big use all of their abilities, and they don’t limit themselves. And I think riders who ride small just use, they don’t use all of their abilities they use a fraction of their abilities because they’re playing it safe. riders who ride big I always find are filled with a certain level of focus and excitement and there’s a joy sort of even under the the great pressures of competition and then on the other side riders who ride small or can be anxious and they hesitate when the pressure elevates so they really have a difficult time under pressure, and they have a tendency to lean towards what’s called bad pressure, so the writers who ride big sort of are able to consume pressure in a good way it’s good pressure, but on the other hand the writers who ride small. It’s all about the bad pressure for them. I think the riders who ride big to ride in the moment, they’re able to kind of stay away from what’s happened in the past and then what’s going to happen. Whereas riders who ride small, they ride on either side of the present moment, which creates fear. So fear always creeps in on either side of the present moment. So they’re thinking about something that may have happened in the past, or they’re sort of projecting ahead and thinking about what may happen. And often those things are negative. So that’s an issue. I think riders who ride big are committed to a process, so they’re focused on a process, that’s how they get the job done. And riders who ride small have a sort of a focus on the outcome, the results, which is a big distraction and a big problem. I think riders who ride big aren’t afraid to make mistakes. This is a big one, Christian. They’re not afraid to make mistakes. And riders who ride small fear making mistakes, and they always try to avoid them. I think riders who ride big also know where they’re going. They have a plan of where they’re going. They have a really good program. And they have a bit of a vision for themselves. And they have a little step-by-step process to get there. And I think riders who ride small, they don’t have any kind of an accurate plan of where they’re going. And then finally, I think, with riders who ride big, um riders who ride big are trying to win and then riders who ride small are trying not to lose and there’s a big difference between those and you know doing this probably for the past 20 years I can tell when I When an athlete comes in the competitive arena, whether it’s the show ring or whatever it is, uh, whether it’s the show pen, whether it’s the polo field or whatever it is, you can see an athlete who’s trying to win. There’s a level of, there’s a really a different attitude. And then you can see also, uh, uh, a writer who’s, uh, who’s trying not to lose on the other side of that. So. I think there’s so many things that define ride big and ride small, but those are some key ones, I think.
[SPEAKER 1]
And I think, John, in my life as a podcaster, I already had so many different riders, dressage riders, eventers from the Western world, but also from the show jumping world. And I was sitting down with, back then, the number one rider in the world rankings, the Swiss rider, Steve Gerda. And we were at a big show and it was right after the Grand Prix. And I asked him, Steve, why did you write this turn like you did? And he answered, I don’t know. Because he has just been in the moment. He didn’t think about how to write the turn. There was no tactics. He was just in the flow, in his flow. And I think this really relates to what you said to How or why are people riding big or small? It is just they are enjoying the process, but they are not thinking too much about the process.
[SPEAKER 2]
Yeah, I agree with you, Christian. And he, you know, in that case, he’s riding on instinct, right? He’s, he has a basic, I think he has a basic plan for the course.
[SPEAKER 1]
Exactly. You have to have a plan, right? It’s not, not, not thinking entirely about the process, but when, when it started, when, um, when the bell rang, he just focused on getting into the flow. Yeah.
[SPEAKER 2]
And you have to adapt always. So the plan is great. You, I think you have to have the plan, but you can be sure that something’s going to go wrong with the plan at some point. So that’s where the feelings and the instinct and all those things, uh, are super important. So, you know, it’s a great story. I mean, I, I see that all the time, uh, in, in all sports, right.
[SPEAKER 1]
It’s just.
[SPEAKER 2]
You know, you have a bit of a plan, but then things change a bit. You have to adapt. And you’re like you talked about, you’re in the flow a little bit and you’re just, you know, you’re just executing the process. That’s all you have to do. And, you know, people like Michael Young, it was it was really fun talking to them because they talked a lot about Michael Young talked about, you know, we talked about fear and we talked about pressure. We talked about all sorts of things.
[SPEAKER 1]
And
[SPEAKER 2]
One thing that’s encouraging for a lot of riders is he said he’s fallen off a thousand times, but every single time he’s learned something and he just gets back up on the horse. So each time, which I think is fun, but the important point about that is that he learned something from each time he fell. He tried something, it may not have worked. He ended up on the ground. But he learned something he got back up and he was a better writer as a result. So, so that was fun, you know, talking to him about things like that too and encouraging it’s all that stuff’s in the book but it’s encouraging for any level of writer that a writer at that level, you know, perhaps. you know, it’s arguably, you could say that he’s, he’s maybe the best inventor of all time. Um, and certainly, and certainly an amazing horseman, but, um, it’s encouraging to know that, you know, one of the leading equestrian athletes of all time, um, has fallen off a thousand times. Yeah.
[SPEAKER 1]
you know admittedly so it’s great and and for all of our listeners that don’t know michael young he is one of the star eventers from germany i think three times olympic champion twice world champion and seven or seven times yeah seven times european seven times european champion yes Yes, so one of the legends from Germany out of the eventing scene. John, you also mentioned that confidence is important regardless of the level. So whether I’m a show writer or I’m a leisure writer, confidence is important for me anyhow, correct?
[SPEAKER 2]
Confidence is important for everybody, Christian. And it’s, uh, you know, uh, I think in the book, you’ll, I, I interviewed the world’s best writers, but the book is for everybody because, um, you know, People can ride big at every level. You just, you, you, you, you ride the best you possibly can, and you can apply those principles to your own riding. So whether you’re a beginner rider, you can ride big at your level. Whether you’re a medium amateur rider, you can ride big at your level. And then if you’re a professional rider, you can ride big at your level. But yeah, the confidence is really key. And preceding confidence, Christian, self-awareness sort of precedes confidence. So in order to really know something and to really believe in it, I think you have to understand it first. So understanding is step one, and then knowing and believing is step two. So if you understand yourself very well, which is the self-awareness piece, the structural piece, the piece I talked about when I referred to inside out, you have to understand those pieces. Then when you get a nice handle and you understand those pieces, then there’s an opportunity for the confidence because the confidence that the self-awareness precedes the confidence or comes before the confidence. So if you really understand something, then there’s a real opportunity to know it and believe in it. So that’s why you have to sort of put together both those pieces. They go together.
[SPEAKER 1]
Great. John, thanks so much for being on our podcast. It was a real pleasure. And I think it’s a super important topic for every one of us, because if we can manage to ride big or ride bigger, I think that will help us, help the horse, and we will have a better time and better results.
[SPEAKER 2]
Yeah, I think so, Christian. And it’s funny because in a performance model of sport, um, or let’s just say at a performance model of equestrian, there’s the technical part. And we’re all working on that and developing the seat and, you know, developing, you know, the legs and the hands and our fundamentals. And then there’s the physical part. You need a good, a strong body and, uh, you know, a suppleness to be able to support those technical pieces and be able to, you know, posture yourself well in the seat. And then there’s the strategic part, you know, understanding, you know, what you’re going to do in the ring, understanding the sport, understanding a lot of different pieces. And then there’s this final piece, which is the mental and the emotional piece.
[SPEAKER 1]
And
[SPEAKER 2]
People know it’s important. It’s a vital part. It’s a vital part that supports the other pieces, but they don’t really have a process to work on it. So that’s where I really think that’s why I wanted to write the book. And that’s why I wanted to step into equestrian sport, because people need a process to develop this as part of the performance model and excel at this part. And if you excel at this part, then it can really, really um give your you know your riding and your your enjoyment and achievement in the sports of energy so that was the that was the ambition great cool john thanks so much thank you christian and uh yeah see you ciao keep up the great work
[SPEAKER 1]
Thanks for listening to the Equestrian Connection podcast. For more information, follow us on Instagram or visit wehorse.com. Make sure you subscribe to us on Apple Podcast. If you’re an Android user, check us out on Spotify or frankly, wherever you listen to podcasts. If you liked our show, please recommend us to a friend. Thanks for listening from wehorse, the online riding academy. And tune in next time for the Equestrian Connection.
