About James
I am a BHS Senior Coach in Complete Horsemanship (the new name for the BHSII qualification), and am on the Register of BHS Accredited Professionals. I am currently coaching riders from grassroots through to Prix St George level.
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Having occasionally ridden ponies as a child, I started riding seriously in 2005, taught and mentored by Eve Pool BHSI, who remains my strongest equestrian influence to this day. Early in my riding career I was fortunate to be able to learn on a wide variety of horses, including breaking in and training youngstock, schooling 'difficult' horses requiring retraining, and learning higher-level skills on a variety of schoolmasters. This gave me a fantastic insight into not only what an experienced horse should feel like to ride, but also how to train a horse through the levels in a structured system.
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With all-round experience including breaking and bringing on youngstock, classically-influenced dressage training, eventing, polo, and retraining difficult / badly started horses (see Approach for more details), I enjoy coaching all standards of riders across the Olympic disciplines and helping with problem solving for riders who are finding their horses difficult to work with.
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I have been privileged to ride in clinics with Lucinda Green MBE, Mary King MBE, Stephen Hadley and Lucy Wiegersma, and continue to seek out opportunities for further professional development. I am training for the BHSI exams at Ingestre Stables with Tim Downes FBHS, Andrew Bennie FBHS, and Rob Lovatt FBHS.