Upskilling instead of conditioning - coaching expert Marianne Davies shares her dynamic approach to coaching and training that has coaches, riders AND horses wanting more

Marianne Davies is an expert in coaching riders and developing equestrian coaches. She is a senior coaching developer for UK Coaching and runs her own coaching business, Dynamics Coaching and in her spare time she is completing a PhD and leading ground breaking research in coaching science.

This week she shares her dynamic approach to coaching that sees both the horse and rider as active participants in the learning process, which is quite different from behaviourist approaches, such as those used in equitation science.

Marianne explains the science behind her approach, and in the second half of the episode she gives some really practical advice for riders and explains how to set up training situations to help your horse learn.

It’s a great conversation, we hope you enjoy it!

Terminology

Affordance - opportunity to do something that a horse or person perceives - when coaching and training our horses, we can change the environment to make it easier for the horse (or the rider) to recognise an opportunity so they can attempt a desirable movement or posture.

Constraints-led approach to learning - introductory article

https://adaptivemovement.net/blog/brief-introduction-to-the-constraints-led-approach/

Blog posts by Marianne

• Behaviourism and Ecological Psychology

• Do humans and animals need different theories of learning?

Recommended reading

de Waal (2016) Are we smart enough to know how smart animals are?

Papers mentioned in the podcast

Wulf & Lethwaite (2016) Optimizing performance through intrinsic motivation and attention for learning: The OPTIMAL theory of motor learning https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26833314/

Scott Kelso (1995) Dynamical system theory and human movement and learning.

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=-VlkX4YAAAAJ