Amy Phipps Equestrian Coach

A new year is a good time to set some riding goals. I offer supportive, structured coaching to help you reach them. Please get in touch with any questions you may have ☺️

Christmas tree poles 🎄 making learning fun for both pony and young rider! A great exercise for improving straightness and practising centre lines.

A little clip for lovely boy, Roman ✂️ Don’t worry, I didn’t touch his very impressive moustache! 🥸

✨ Meet Barney ✨
A couple of months ago I was lucky enough to welcome a new horse into my life. Many of you will know Bailey, who’s now enjoying a much quieter life - which left me really missing riding.

When Barney arrived just over two months ago, I thought about sharing regular updates but worried that things may not always go to plan and I wouldn’t have anything positive to post. To be honest this is exactly what happened. Nothing major went wrong, but things didn’t always go as smoothly as I’d hoped. This felt a little disheartening at times but once I took the pressure off myself things then felt a lot easier.

We are definitely moving in the right direction now that he’s settled in and we’ve gotten to know each other much more (I’m sure I still have so much to learn about him!), I feel very excited for our journey together 💫

This week started off with a show jump course riding session at Royal Alexandra and Albert Stables.

I coached a variety of levels including riders completing their first course. This group were trotting over cross poles, learning how to ride accurate turns and lines into their fences. I used the white boards to help guide them.

The more experienced riders were focusing on their canter rhythm around their course and working on recognising canter leads and correcting them where necessary. I also made use of the white boards for this group too by using them as targets for the riders to have their canter leads organised by.

Both groups did a great job and achieved the goals set out in each session.

Charly Press BHS Accredited Professional Coach and I are off on an adventure! 🇧🇪 stay tuned for updates!

I recently had the pleasure of coaching Sophie on her lovely pony Timmy who is now in his teens and has some mild stiffnesses just like most horses his age do.

Timmy is lucky enough to have regular treatment from Evie Bennett Veterinary Physiotherapy. Prior to the lesson Evie and I communicated about what exercises would benefit Timmy and decided that it would be best to focus on his lateral suppleness.

Throughout the session we worked on some turn on the forehand, circles of various sizes and leg yeilds towards and away from the fence focusing on the change of bend. These exercises really helped to loosen Timmy up.

We mainly worked in the walk and trot as Timmy’s canter is his weakest pace and like most of the smaller horses he tends to get a bit stroppy when he finds something tricky 😂 so we chose to keep him on side for this session by keeping things within his comfort zone. We did however incorporated some canter work to help him loosen up further.

In future sessions we will include some pole work as this will help to keep things interesting for Timmy but also encourage him to use himself better. In our next flat work session we will be focusing more on the canter by using some shoulder in in the walk and trot to help. Of course between our sessions Sophie will be doing plenty of hacking (Timmy’s favourite!) as this is not only important for a his mental well-being but the hill work is also great for him physically too!