Olamber Equestrian Education

10/01/2025

The hardest part of starting any project is often overcoming that initial inertia.

I’m always reminded of the strongman 💪 competitions where athletes pull a truck—there’s a lot of grunting and straining at the start, but once they get the wheels rolling, momentum takes over, and the effort needed decreases.

🌟 The same principle applies to mindset work. Whether you commit to something like joining my online course or simply subscribing to our monthly newsletter, taking that first step today can set you on a path to transformation.

Imagine where you could be in a year’s time, with a new mindset and a stronger sense of confidence. 👏
What's the first step you’re ready to take? Share below⬇️

04/01/2025

Continuing to push outside my comfort zone with another launch - this time our monthly newsletter “The Mindful Rider”

Heading straight to your email inbox once a month you can sign up here⬇️

*** First edition coming out Wednesday- feel free to share

29/12/2024

Fact or Myth
Riders can achieve peak performance at competition by focusing solely on technique, without developing their mindset.

19/12/2024

Super excited to finally release my online course- Transforming Your Competition Mindset.

It has literally been 3 years since I was encouraged by a friend, thanks Laura Cardinal, that this course was something I could do and would have a lot of value for others. Thanks also to Jean Mulder for reviewing my scripts/videos and to Bec Jackson for helping me understand IT stuff behind the scenes.

25/06/2024

21/06/2024

Hey horsey FB friends just wondering if you could help me out?

I am doing a talk for equitana this year and I'm after a photo of a horse expressing itself with its ears back. It is to illustrate that although we may want the perfect relationship with our horse and have them connect with us, they might have a different opinion.

For some reason the image i have in my head is of a chesnut mare, saying back out of my space. Just wondering if anyone has something like that?

17/07/2023

As much as we don’t want to do this for so many reasons We have had to accept that we are not in a position to make that choice. So all we can say is how much we appreciate the support we are receiving in so many ways

Today, we’re coming together to show our support for Amber and Oli, two remarkable pe… Belinda Febey needs your support for Help our friends battle Leukaemia

16/07/2023

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-our-friends-battle-leukaemia?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_campaign=p_cp_guide_do&member=28131539

Today, we’re coming together to show our support for Amber and Oli, two remarkable pe… Belinda Febey needs your support for Help our friends battle Leukaemia

09/07/2023

Hi guys.. I'm writing here with bad news I'm sorry. I know it's going to be hard for some of you to be receiving this news in this way but I am not able to easily handle telling people on repeat in person as it's far too difficult.
I need to let people who we know and who care about us know that Amber got very sick over the last week week, and as her body tried to mount an immune response it became rapidly apparent that all was not well. After a short bit intense work up in hospital it was confirmed that she has Acute Myeloid Leukemia leukemia. She is part way through hernfirst cycle of treatment and this will be ongoing for now and the goal is to get to the next stage of each hurdle. She is extremely sick and cannot receive any visitors and will not be able to in the foreseeable future. Only myself and another very close friend are able to be with her which we are doing through each day. She will be in the oncology/bone marrow unit at RMH during the duration of her early phases of treatment. We are, needless to say, utterly devastated and very lost. It's an awful shock and we are very lost and overwhelmed. Amber is not able to receive or respond to messages mostly and as a rule we will prefer to keep all communications to a group chat page which a friend is going to coordinate. Please feel free to comment here and if you want to be added to the group so that I can maintain some updates and even hopefully make a list of messages that I can read to Amber when she’s up to that. We do know that there are many people who will be feeling the hit from this and we really appreciate the support that has been shown so far. It’s a long and difficult battle to get from day to day. As a result please limit communication to being with either Belinda Febey or Dianne Shaw who can be contacted via messenger and one of them will let you know what you want to know. There are no secrets or anything that can’t be talked about but I only have a limited capacity to communicate and I have to spend what time I have, looking after Amber and also after myself. I am still trying to respond to messages etc but please don’t feel that I’m ignoring if don’t. It’s definitely lovely to hear from people and that can happen I hope via the group chat. I won’t be a member but I will be forwarded what I need to know in single messages. My apologies for the ramblings but it’s the best I can do for now im sorry
Lots of love Ollie and Amber

19/06/2023

The awkwardyeti.com is one of my new favourite comic strips, and I just had to share this one. I am sure most of us have stared at a failure and felt like giving up. As riders we have enormous passion for our sport, with hard-work and sacrifice being part of the deal. When things don’t go to plan it can be tough.

Our brains can often convince us that if we have passion, then put in hard work and effort, that we should automatically succeed. It can leaves us feeling vulnerable, embarrassed or even ashamed if our efforts lead to failure. However these emotions/feelings are actually just our brains way of trying to protect us, but we can change how we view failure.

Failure provides us with an opportunity to learn, to gain a greater understanding of where the gaps in our abilities are. It also allows us to explore different options and ideas, so we are not just stuck with how we have always done something. If we continue to persevere and explore other ways of problem solving, eventually we will find some success and have fabulous new tools to play with.

So try try again.

15/06/2023

A warm-up is all about getting our horse ready for their work session. As a rider, we are responsible for helping our horse to find a good place, where they are physically and mentally relaxed and responsive.
To understand what type of lines might help with this, we need to consider the horse we are on.
-Are they twitchy and offer a leap or even a buck or two? If so, small circles at the beginning of the work can help get the rib cage out of the way and give you more control.
-Are they super keen and approach everything at a million miles an hour? If so circles are your friend, the closing line of a circle can help rebalance our horse.
Or
-Are they slow and steady (or basically just slow), and getting speed up takes a while? With this type of horse you may feel like its is leg day at the gym. If so, then straight lines can help as the horse has long lines infront of then and are often more keen to move.

Sometimes we are on a horse that combines a few of these, which means we may need to pull out the hat-trick and use a combination of all three.

So is your horse better on straight lines or circles for their warm-up?

12/06/2023

Working with horses provides us with unlimited challenges mentally, physically and emotionally. Sometimes these challenges can be a little overwhelming and bring us down.

It can be easy in these circumstances to fall into the trap of gently or fiercely, trying to blow out other peoples candles. By doing this it can make us think we feel better. But ultimately we need to speak and act in accordance with our values, and if we are not doing that it doesn’t sit well.

We may find ourselves sharing these judgements with others or even just having a list of imperfections we recite in our own head about another’s success. This can provide us with a short term fix, but is definitely not helpful in the long-term.

Firstly this thought process does not allow us to invest time & energy into learning how to overcome our existing challenges. Secondly it effects how we connect to others, and to ourselves. Fostering a team of people who celebrate each others success is important. But also having this team to support us, to protect our flame, when we are down or vulnerable is important.

So who’s flame will you protect, and who is in your team who will protect yours?

08/06/2023

Having good hands is a sought after skill when riding. We often work really hard to improve our hands, and how we use them.

However, we can become overly focused on the hand itself, without really thinking about how the connection to our body influences it.

If you think of the tight rope walker, when they become unbalanced, they widen and sometimes wave or move their hands to regain balance. We can do a similar thing when riding. We may find our hands seem to have a mind of their own, waving about, shifting back/forward or simply just lifting. This can affect both hands, or just one.

So next time your hands are not behaving, try checking your position, have you shifted out of balance? Have you allowed your core to turn off in a way you need to recruit from another part of your body (the hands) to stay on?

We also need to keep in mind that we are working with a horse who is in motion and sometimes the harder we hold the hands “still” the more motion is created due to stiffness. So when you ride next, experiment with tension and relaxation in different parts of the arm. See what helps to stabilise the hand and what creates more movement.

Let us know what you find with your experiments.

05/06/2023

This quote is from Laird Hamilton, a professional surfer, who is speaking about how our thoughts can create chaos and tear us down.

These thought patterns can sometimes be on repeat, and tell us some interesting stories that on deeper reflection are simply not true. But if we hear them often enough, we will eventually believe them.

So check in when you ride this week or when you are spending time with your horses.
Are you being your own worst enemy?
Ask yourself, would you let a friend speak to you like you are speaking to yourself?

If so, kick those chaotic and unhelpful thoughts to the curb.