Part I

For those who may not be familiar with equestrian psychology, how would you describe your role at Ahead for Horses and the positive impact it can have on a rider’s performance?

JM: A lot of people don’t actually understand what psychology is, but it is simply the scientific study of the mind and behaviour. It’s looking at how people think, how they feel, and then how they act. If we put that into a sporting setting, sports psychology is really about understanding how you can work on your mind to affect your behaviour just as deliberately as you would work on your body.

As riders, you’re already doing that physically all the time. You’re thinking about your natural aids in the saddle – your hands, your weight, your legs, your voice. So, what I do is really the next step on from that. It’s about helping riders understand how they can connect their mind, body and physiology so they can ride at their best.

What that looks like depends completely on the rider who is in front of me. For some riders, the issue isn’t nerves at all but the challenge of juggling everything that comes with running a business or the fact that you’re away from home so much. So, the work is about helping them get to the point where they can put their feet in the stirrups and just ride, without all the other worries going round in their head.

Then of course there are the areas people do traditionally associate with sports psychology –focus, emotional regulation, confidence, nerves, anxiety. Those absolutely matter as well. Going to your first championship, your first Olympics, your first Nations Cup – those are daunting moments. But actually, at the very top of the sport, particularly around the level we’re talking about with the Rolex Grand Slam, it’s often the wider system around the rider that becomes just as important as the nerves themselves.

I often explain sports psychology to riders in very practical terms. When I was a child, we used to put straw under a rug to cool a horse down and absorb sweat after exercise. Now we use very modern coolers, and the horse is dry in a few minutes. Sports psychology is the equivalent of using the modern tool that we now know works. It’s science-based, it’s been around a long time, and in other top sports there really isn’t anybody at elite level who isn’t working with someone in this space in one form or another.

So for me, the positive impact is that it helps riders perform better, yes – but also live better, cope better, think more clearly, and become more effective in every area that supports performance. We need to remember that riders are people first, and then they ride horses.

At the very highest level of show jumping, how much of success would you say comes down to mindset rather than technical ability?

JM: At the very highest level, everybody can ride. They’ve got the skills, they’ve got the horses, and they’ve done the work to be there. So, when you get to that point, mindset becomes incredibly important.

What people sometimes underestimate is that mindset is not just a “nice to have” or something abstract. It directly affects your physiology. Your body remembers fear. It remembers tension. And fear and tension affect your position, your feel, your timing – all the things that matter in riding. So, if your mindset is off, that doesn’t stay neatly in your head. It shows up in your body and then it shows up in your horse.

We also know now that horses are extraordinarily sensitive to our emotional state. Emerging research in animal cognition suggests that horses possess mirror neuron-like systems – in very simple terms, they are reading and responding to the emotional state around them. A horse can feel your heartbeat from about a metre away. So, when you are on the horse, your mental state is not only affecting your own performance but also transmitting directly to the horse as well.

For me, one of the biggest differences at the top level is whether a rider has an open mindset or a fixed mindset. If you are in a fixed mindset, you tell yourself things like, “I’m just not good in big atmospheres,” or “I get nervous in this arena,” or “I’m not the sort of rider who does well here.” That becomes very limiting, because if you believe your qualities are fixed, you stop looking for ways to improve them.

What I see in the top riders is the opposite of that. They are open. They want to learn. They’ll steal ideas from other people. They’re interested in new science, new systems, better ways of doing things. They want the best veterinary advice, the best farrier, the best travel arrangements for the horses, the best tack, the best support team – and that same mindset applies to themselves. They want to know what they can do to become better, rather than simply accepting the rider they currently are.

So, at the top end of the sport, mindset is a massively underrated performance factor. Technical skill gets you to the door, but mindset has a huge role in whether you walk through it consistently.

What are the most common mental challenges you see in elite riders competing at 5* level?

JM: I think people often assume the big issue is nerves, but in reality, it’s much broader than that.

At elite level, a lot of riders are not just athletes – they are also running businesses. They’re managing staff, owners, horses, logistics, clients, travel, sponsorship, and all the systems that sit behind the sport. That’s a lot for one person to hold mentally. So, one of the most common challenges is simply the volume of responsibility they’re carrying.

Another big issue is travel and recovery. This sport is hard physically and mentally because of the constant movement. Sleeping in different places, eating out, changing time zones, never really switching off – all of that affects focus, emotional regulation and performance. Sometimes what looks like a confidence issue is actually sleep deprivation or accumulated fatigue.

Then there’s the personal side. It’s difficult to keep in touch with friends when you’re away so much. It’s difficult to maintain relationships. In a lot of equestrian businesses, your spouse or partner is also part of the operation, which can be brilliant, but it also means the pressure never really leaves.

There’s also scrutiny. Show jumping can be very dynasty-focused, and that brings its own pressure. If your father, mother or grandfather has achieved at a super high level, and you are following them into the sport, that is already a lot. But in most family businesses, nobody is watching you with the same level of outside scrutiny. In show jumping, they are.

And social media is a huge challenge now. Riders need it, because it helps with sponsorship and visibility, but it also means people can comment directly on their performance, their horses, their decisions. That kind of access can be very intrusive, and it takes a lot of resilience not to internalise it.

So yes, focus, nerves, anxiety and confidence all still matter. But at 5* level, the mental challenges are often tied to the complexity of the life around the sport, not just the moment in the ring.

The Rolex Grand Slam Majors are some of the most intense environments in the sport - how do riders manage pressure in those moments when everything is on the line?

JM: When riders go into those classes, the ones who manage the pressure best are the ones who have already done the work long before they walk into the ring. They’ve prepared their bodies, their routines, their thinking, and their responses. They’re not trying to invent calmness on the day.

A big part of it is reframing pressure. Every rider in a Rolex Grand Prix wants to win it. There is nobody in there who doesn’t want it. But the riders who handle it best are able to move from seeing the class as a threat to seeing it as a challenge. They know they’ve earned the right to be there. They know the class is the reward for all the preparation they’ve already done.

There are also very practical, scientific things that riders can do. For example, oxygen saturation is a huge factor. When we get very anxious or very excited, some people start holding their breath without even realising it. That reduces oxygen saturation, and when that happens, the oxygen your body does have gets prioritised to your heart and brain. The extremities – your hands and legs, which are two of your main aids – are the last place it goes. So something as simple as taking in as much oxygen as possible as you walk from the warm-up into the ring can make a real difference.

Hydration matters too. Having a drink of water before you go in, making sure your body is functioning properly, making sure you’re not already at a disadvantage before you start.

Visualisation is another major tool. If you can mentally rehearse a course in enough detail, your brain responds in many ways as though you’ve already ridden it. We’ve seen this very clearly in sports like Formula One, where drivers must learn tracks they can’t always physically practise on. The same principle applies in show jumping. If you get very good at visualisation, you may effectively have been round that course two or three times before you ever jump it.

The other thing is familiarity. If it’s your first time somewhere, find out what you can in advance. What is the warm-up like? What is the arena like? Where do you go? What happens when? The brain loves information. It loves a plan. The more reference points you can give yourself, the less destabilising that environment becomes.

And finally, give yourself time. This sport is complex because you are performing through another living being who has their own emotional state, their own read of the atmosphere, and their own version of pressure. So, riders need margin. They need time to reset, time to adapt, time for something not to go exactly to plan.

When you look at athletes in sports like tennis and golf, who repeatedly deliver at Grand Slams and Majors, what stands out to you about their mindset - and how transferable is that to show jumping?

JM: What stands out to me most is that the very best athletes use pressure to elevate them rather than diminish them.

If you look at people like Rory McIlroy or Novak Djokovic, they don’t pretend pressure isn’t there. They work with it. They’ve trained for it. They’ve learned how to reframe it. They also tend to be very vocal about the fact that they’ve worked on their mental game, which I think is important because it helps normalise that conversation. In show jumping, especially amongst the older generation, there’s a worry about what people will think if they speak to a psychologist. All the work I do is completely confidential and I rely purely on word of mouth for work. However,if we normalise the conversation, it will relieve some of the pressure, as riders will realise they are not alone – so many are benefiting from sports psychology. 

Another thing that stands out is their ability to reset. In top-level sport, something is always going to go slightly wrong. What separates the repeat winners from the one-time winners is often the speed at which they can return to micro-focus. In tennis, you see that in between-point rituals. Someone like Rafael Nadal is a great example – those rituals are almost obsessive, but they are reset mechanisms. They help him come back into the moment immediately.

That is incredibly transferable to show jumping. In fact, I would say it is even more important in show jumping, because your mistakes are irreversible in the middle of the round. If you hit a rail, it’s down. You can’t undo it. In tennis, a bad serve can be recovered. In golf, a bad shot can sometimes be clawed back. In show jumping, you carry the fault.

So, the ability to reset quickly, stay in process, trust your preparation, and use routines and visualisation – all of that transfers very directly. The difference is that in our sport, you then musttransmit that clarity and calm through your body to your horse.

The second part of this interview will be available soon.