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Hannah & Obi Orange

Hannah has studied with Mary for 20 years, achieving RWYM Instructor training Level 1 – Mastery. Her clients range from beginner all the way up the levels, over multiple disciplines. Hannah thrives on seeing improvement and giving people the tools to progress and gain more enjoyment and skill from their time with their horses.

  

The skill of coaching lies in the coach’s/trainer’s ability to cross that skill-gap, and show the pupil their own personalised next steps. Hannah has honed and developed these skills and finds great pleasure in seeing horse and rider happy with their riding and working together to improve their way of going.

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It is a phenomenally effective way of helping riders develop both feel and influence.

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Talent really can be taught!

Rider Biomechanics

 

Ever spent time in your lesson being told to get your horse to do this and do that, but not really having a clue what you should be doing up there to achieve it?

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Ride With Your Mind coaching may answer some of those thoughts and the questions you had, but were always afraid to ask.

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Ride With Your Mind (RWYM) was originated by Mary Wanless (internationally renowned coach of the US Olympic Team).  30 years ago, Mary was frustrated with her limited progress as a pupil, she set out to discover how talented riders do what they do. Her guiding question was ‘What is pre-supposed by a trainer when she makes a specific statement to a pupil?’ So when a rider is told, for instance, to ‘Get the horse on the bit?’, what is the trainer pre-supposing? That the rider already has these skills (but somehow forgot, or just didn’t bother to implement them?!) Or that she ought to be able to do it because it’s easy?

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Science has now proved what Mary instinctively knew all those years ago – that the world’s best riders may have implicit knowledge or ‘know-how’, but they cannot always put this knowledge into words. This is because physical skills and verbal descriptions come from different parts of the brain. The resulting dislocation between expertise and explanation makes it hard for skilled riders to ‘clone’ themselves – indeed, what they do and what they say they do can be poles apart. What Mary has discovered, and then taught is that their skills have an underlying structure, and knowing this explicitly enables her to communicate it to others. She clarifies the ‘how’ of riding, making its biomechanics explicit and learnable whilst avoiding the ‘oughts’ and ‘shoulds’ that stifle learning.

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