How do I train away stress in the warm-up arena?

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Hi! I understand her completely. I think warming up before a class can be the most stressful thing I have ever done with a horse! Here are a few tips around the horse and stress. It is always hard to train for situations that only crop up at a competition, because there is usually a rush of stress there anyway. So training for that exact situation can be difficult. What you can do instead is build a routine and a system that she knows inside out. In other words, every session, at home and away, you run through the same set of exercises in the same order until you get the same calm, relaxed result. So you need to start by doing this at home in your own quiet environment. With my own horses, I make sure I have a system that lets me walk, tölt, trot and ideally canter calmly and in a relaxed way as we warm up before a class. I start that system even with the young horses, and it consists of: 1️⃣ Flexing the neck while standing still, no more than 90 degrees to the right and left 2️⃣ Being able to control the pace and the gait on a single rein, which keeps horses calm and relaxed 3️⃣ Through the work, above all leg-yielding, being able to offer the horse a longer outline and let it relax in walk, trot and canter (or tölt for that matter) There are of course plenty of steps in between depending on the horse, but that is the system in brief. When you get to the competition (you might even travel to a show purely to work through the system in the warm-up arena without competing), you work through the system you have established at home. Do use positive reinforcement to help her relax, and again, embed this at home before you go to a show. So my best tip here is to step back from competing for a while to embed a system you can test in various other situations where she shows mild stress, building up gradually until you can get through a warm-up. Sometimes we have to set our own wish to compete aside a little to solve this kind of problem. 💕 Do come back with any questions! Good luck!