About Linda

I’m Linda Hennings. I’m a lifestyle and sports performance coach – focusing on the mental skills you need to elevate and enhance your chosen area of performance. I’ve applied my experience in corporate coaching to develop strategies to help riders step out of their comfort zones and into new achievements in any area of equestrian sport. As a lifelong rider myself, I understand the specific challenges facing riders in any discipline. We spend a lot of time training our horses. Let’s not forget that as riders we are half of the team. Don’t let your mind stop your body from enjoying every minute of your ride...

Coaching Approach

Linda is a Mental Skills Coach with a diploma in Practitioner Coaching (DIPC). Having worked extensively with leaders and teams in corporate, she now offers performance enhancement skills to riders of all abilities, to help them maximise their equine partnership. Linda will show you how to apply subtle and huge mindset shifts in any equestrian discipline. As an enneagram practitioner who also works with Process Oriented Psychology, Linda is able to offer each client a fully individual approach, while still covering ground that is common to all riders.

She offers individual face-to-face, video or telephonic sessions as well as group clinics and workshops, either at her Noordhoek based practice, or at your chosen yard or venue in South Africa.

My Story

As a coach and facilitator of high performing individuals and teams in stressful business environments, I have years of experience helping people overcome their fears, find their focus and set healthy and sustainable goals. I’m also a fiercely competitive sportswoman who also happens to love horses and riding. I wanted to combine my experience with my passion.

Having ridden as a teenager and young adult, I took a 15 year break to raise my children and have a career. During that time, I was fortunate enough to represent South Africa in my age group for triathlon, as well as run several Comrades, complete 2 full Ironman and multiple half and olympic distance triathlons, as well as several other rather extreme events. After a decade of training hard as an endurance athlete, I found my re-entry into the world of equestrian competition more challenging than I had anticipated.

I discovered that just pushing myself harder wasn’t producing the results I wanted. No matter how many hours I practiced, or how much equipment I bought, or how well my training was going at home, I felt anxious and unprepared at shows. My confidence took a nose dive and my horses sensed it. I had always believed I had great Big Match Temperament, so I couldn’t work out why my horses didn’t seem to agree. My previous mental strategy clearly wasn’t working for me anymore.

So I delved into my knowledge base of coaching for enhanced performance, looked at all the material I had gathered about how adults learn, and began to research the specific issues that riders face. I realised that I’m not alone, that most of us face our physical fears before we are willing to address the ones in our head and that riding truly is a sport where the balance between body, mind and soul is crucial to success.

Mental Skills coaching for Equestrians

THINK BETTER, RIDE BETTER

+27 83 743. 7203

Noordhoek, Western Cape, SA

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