Mary Wanless - Ride With Your Mind

Mary Wanless BHSI BSc•dressagetraining.tv

MARY WANLESS presents crucial information on how the Ride With Your Mind approach to Rider Biomechanics can transform your learning, your riding, and possibly your life.

Out of frustration at her progression as a rider, Mary embarked on a journey to discover the 'how' of skilled riding - why couldn’t she learn to ride as skilfully as “talented” riders? Over more than 40 years she has decoded the hidden laws of rider-horse interaction and now teaches the skills that combine to create “talent”, both in person and through online courses at www.dressagetraining.tv.

In these podcasts, Mary talks about her journey to date, her key discoveries, and some pivotal moments. She illuminates her key points with metaphor and story, and, at times, presents insights derived from sports psychology.

Prepare to be entertained, to learn, to become curious, and to understand a little (or maybe a lot) more about your interaction with your horse. Check out these podcasts, and visit www.dressagetraining.tv for information about their vast library of online courses and webinars, presented by Mary and her Ride With Your Mind colleagues.

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Episodes

Ep. 10 On the thrills and spills of putting words on feelings.

Send us your feedback! How easy do you find this, and how much have you been encouraged to do this during your training sessions? As you’ll hear, it’s the best answer to confusion and miscommunication! Our traditional language that has been handed down through generations has been subject to deletion, distortion and generalisation, but the potential for misrepresentation and misunderstanding gets even worse than this. It’s those As and Xs again!...

May 10, 2020•22 min•Season 1Ep. 10

Ep. 9 On how you cannot not influence, and maps.

Send us your feedback! The best ever story about stirrup length, and how in other sports, it’s all about angles. You cannot not influence your horse - he is constantly reading your ability to support your own body weight (or not), your asymmetry, how wibbly-wobbly you are, how ‘shovey’ you are, wether you can match the forces of his movement etc. He knows more about you than you know about yourself! The possible effects of being given the wrong map, and how communication in riding arenas goes aw...

May 06, 2020•22 min

Ep. 8 On stirrup length and posture stools

Send us your feedback! How is your weight distributed on your horse’s back? If it is concentrated into the area where he would hollow his back, you create or perpetuate that hollow. Your weight needs to be spread down the inside of your thigh, with your thigh bone at 45 degrees. This mirrors sitting on a ‘kneeling stool’ - which is very different to treating your horse like a mobile arm chair! The paradox of how your stirrups might look longer when they are actually shorter…...

May 03, 2020•22 min•Season 1Ep. 8

Ep. 7 On noticing mode, trying mode and tune out.

Send us your feedback! The brain is like a manual camera lens, and all of us have to learn how to ‘tune’ our brain into a state of clear focus. As skill develops it’s as if you’re given a more powerful miscoscope lens, becoming able to observe detail that you could not have previously imagined. But all learning requires the willingness to feel weird - and here is an exercise in weirdness that I invite you to take to your riding....

Apr 30, 2020•24 min•Season 1Ep. 7

Ep. 6 On Unconscious Incompetence

Send us your feedback! New students commonly begin by telling me what’s wrong with them, and what they know they SHOULD be doing. Their problem really is ‘premature automation’ - when they first learned their up/downs, they automated a pattern that was far from biomechanically correct. So now they face the challenge of ‘rewiring’ themselves, and they have to become ‘consciously competent’. Will elite riders talk to you about the ABC’s of riding, or its XYZ’s? An analogy to icebergs explains the ...

Apr 25, 2020•20 min•Season 1Ep. 6

Ep. 5 On finding ‘weird’…

Send us your feedback! Did the lessons you’ve taken, the lecture/demos you’ve attended, and the DVDs and webinars you’ve watched actually make a difference to your skills? They are mostly addressing the language brain, and intellectual information does not help you to ‘groove’ a new habit. This requires you to feel weird: so welcome to some of my favourite off-horse exercises!

Apr 22, 2020•21 min•Season 1Ep. 5

Ep. 4 On "More!", and the question "More what?"

Send us your feedback! 'More!', and muscle tone (alias 'stuffing') which men have 35% more of than women. The 80/20 of how much of your attention should ideally be where, and the biggest task that probably faces you in learning. Being a rider who wants to be picked up vs. being a 'sack of potatoes'.

Apr 18, 2020•22 min•Season 1Ep. 4

Ep. 3 On noseblowing, and core strength

Send us your feedback! On noseblowing, spacehoppers (hippity-hops), and forces that act either from the back to the front or from the front to the back. The physics of 'an independent seat', and how stability, not relaxation, is the key to skilled riding.

Apr 15, 2020•23 min•Season 1Ep. 3

Ep. 2 What does waterskiing have to do with riding?

Send us your feedback! What does waterskiing have to do with riding? Much more than it ought to! How Mary stopped that horse from jogging but took many months to work out how she was doing it. Multifinality, equifinality, and the 'how to' of accessing your core, and 'leading the dance' that you share with your horse.

Apr 11, 2020•22 min•Season 1Ep. 2

Ep. 1 How it all began

Send us your feedback! Mary's background story, from begging for riding lessons as a child, to riding schools and riding whilst at university studying Physics. The 'blinding flash of light' moment that led to becoming a full-time professional instructor, and ultimately to giving up riding in despair. It was the act of giving up, coupled with returning to riding and schooling a horse who jogged a lot, that sparked the beginning of the 40-year Ride With Your Mind empirical research project. If you...

Apr 11, 2020•22 min

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