About

Sam York FBHS

Equestrian Performance Coach

 

Sam is a passionate and highly motivated equestrian coach, she coaches at all levels in all three disciplines, she is praised for her innovative and creative approach to facilitating learning with an infectious energy and an overwhelming ability to inspire and install great confidence into all her clients and their horses. She takes great pride in supporting riders both on and off their horses and has a very holistic approach to her coaching and mentoring of all her clients old and new.

Sam holds over 30 years of experience of breeding, producing, and competing horses in all three disciplines. Sam has competed at top level eventing and represented her country at European level. Riding professionally gives Sam a great empathy for producing horses of all types and abilities and helps her to support her riders of all levels in all three disciplines.

Sam is one of only 53 Fellows of the British Horse Society, world wide, with her name sitting on the same list as Carl Hester MBE, Ian Stark OBE, Yogi Breisner MBE, Jennie Loriston-Clarke MBE, William Micklem and Ferdi Eilberg.

The BHS Fellowship is the ultimate aspiration for any coach. Considered as experts in equitation and horsemanship, BHS Fellows are renowned throughout the global equine industry as an ambassador for the equestrian profession and a leading advisor in the sector. A Fellow is an admired trainer of horses and riders from grass roots level up to world class competition riders.

Sam also holds her UK Coaching Certificate (UKCC) level four, again a qualification level that is not held by many equestrian coaches, this qualification is combined with a Postgraduate Diploma in Professional Practice in Sport Coaching and a Master’s degree in Professional Sports Coaching.

Sam is a lead assessor for the BHS qualifications and is heavily involved in the BHS assessment system as an advisor, trainer and assessor both in the UK and Internationally.

Sam is a committee member of the Fellows and BHS I’s association (F & I) and the BHS Qualification and Training board.

Sam also sits on the executive committee and is the Technical Delegate for the International Group for Equestrian Qualifications (IGEQ) this organisation has over 40 affiliated countries worldwide that hold the IGEQ coaching passport status. Sam is responsible for advising and development of the countries qualifications systems and the standard setting of equestrian qualifications within this group as well as organising and running of their annual conference held in a different part of the world each year. Sam’s role involves a lot of coach development, running of many workshops and courses on equestrian coach development across the world.

As well as Sam’s equestrian qualifications she has a very strong academic background with a 20-year post as a senior university lecturer, involved in all aspects of the equestrian university programmes from design, content, research and delivery from foundation degree, up to Master’s level.

Sam has been very influential in working to bridge the gap from evidenced based research to front line coaching and facilitating education in the equestrian sector, Sam very much believes that research informed coaching combined with effective traditional coaching techniques will be the future of effective equestrian coaching.

Some of Sam’s current coaching roles include: British Eventing Youth Performance Coach, a British Army Sports Team Eventing Coach, Pony Club Team training, Riding Clubs Team Training, ROR clinics to name a few.

Sam is no stranger to being in front of a crowd and is very comfortable to present to large audiences during conferences, filming, lecture demos and training days. Sam has also had a lot of experience in both presenting and producing of online training as well as live filming and video productions.

Sam spends a fair amount of time coaching Internationally where she has been in high demand in many parts of Europe and other countries including Dubai, India and South Africa.

Test

“You can change lives through coaching, I have been lucky enough to witness that time and time again. I strive to empower my clients of all levels to have the knowledge, skill sets and especially the confidence to achieve their ambitions and dreams”