Jon Pitt Performance Management Clinic

Well we started the training with Jon saying that 65 billion people live in the world and 63 billion people think that people like me are mad. He was refering to my chosen path of riding or being in the vicinity of huge dangerous animals or galloping fast along cross country and jumping over huge fixed fences. But I thought he had made a rather accurate assesment of me, applying that more locally and to my friends and family that would mean 95% of them think I am bonkers - yes very accurate assesmnet!

I had heard such great things about Jon's performance coaching, and it certainly was an amazing session over at Littleton Manor whose facilites were really impressive.
During the riding element I learnt so much about myself and where my weak points are and what I need to do to correct them.Everyone is different. But for example I am ever so slightly in front and over on the left seat bone, so I need to roll my shoulders back and pull in my stomach muscles so that my pelvis tilts back and this will then put me right in the centre of the horse which is the centre of balance. A great example Jon used as a rider who is always in the centre of balance of their horse no matter what is William Fox-Pitt. Jon showed me where the centre of balance was and so from now on that I'm going to remember that for every horse that I sit on. After Jon had made all his corrections on me and had shown me how to correct them I rode off again reminding myself of all those things and wow what a difference it made in Yara, the new position stopped me from putting to much pressure on the front end, she started reaching with her front legs and came up in the whither, which then meant she started engaging with her quarters.

After the riding which Jon had videoed we went inside and did some video anaylsis, this enabled me to really see what I was feeling. I could really see the difference. We talked through my ultimate aims with my riding and some short term goals, Jon gave me such sensible advice and then just when I thought I had used all my diversion tactics to stop him thinking about exercises, we moved swiftly on to............exercising! We did some exercises on the fit ball to help improve my core strength, but interestingly this all really backed up what the physio had said to me earlier this week. Very interesting was when we mimicked somethings that I do on the horse and what effect that had on other parts of my body such as elbows!

I left the clinic feeling really motivated, Jon was really kind and said that essentially I rode well, he was just helping me make some adjustments to make me and the horse perform to our best.


Later that afternoon I used what I had learnt on Arabella and wow she moved amazingly and it made the transitions much more effective. Amazing session and have booked in the next one in April!