The Pony Club Encourages Continuing Professional Development For Top Coaches
A gathering of elite coaches from both Eventing and Show Jumping attended a Pony Club Continuous Professional Development (CPD) Yogi Breisner FBHS & Mary Tuckettevent on Thursday 19 June 2014 at Rectory Farm, Gloucestershire.
Olympic riders, British Eventing Accredited Coaches, British Horse Society Fellows and the British Eventing team’s Performance Manager Yogi Breisner FBHS all gathered to take part in an interactive CPD evening, which saw lively discussion and debate. British Showjumping Accredited Coach and Coach Educator Corinne Bracken lead on proceedings, offering plenty of useful tips and thought provoking exercises to encourage coaches to adapt to new teaching methods and compare their existing techniques.
As well as leading some of the exercises, Yogi Breisner also received his first Pony Club Coaching Log Book presented by Mary Tuckett, Chairman of The Pony Club; Coaching Log Books, as well as being listed on The Pony Club instructor database, are a requirement for all Pony Club coaches to provide a record of their completed CPD.
The evening was created and hosted by Pony Club Area 9 Representative Pleasance Jewitt, who felt that an interactive coaching CPD session would be beneficial to complement the lecture-demo style more common with such events. As well as enlisting the elite coaches, Pleasance also brought in some young talent to receive training from the 28 coaches. These riders included some of Pony Club rising stars; including Tintin Belsham (VWH Branch) an individual winner of the 2013 Pony Club Open Eventing Championships and long-list rider for this year’s Junior European Eventing Championships. Thomas Tulloch (Sir W.W Wynn’s Branch) who has recently added the Charles Owen British Pony Championship title to his list of wins, Thea Godding (Cotswold Hunt Branch) and Sapphire Graham (VWH Pony Club Branch), both of whom are based at Rectory Farm.
“We wanted to improve how these types of courses had been run previously, and create something more interactive with no one sitting down” commented Pleasance. “We definitely achieved this with Corinne’s input of how to make the most of the evening, and Yogi especially went away full of ideas on how he could run the next course!”
For further information about requirements for Pony Club Coaches visit http://www.pcuk.org/training or contact Jenny Yates 02476 698305
