Melinda Macaulay
Lifestyle
Mel was born a crazy horse girl, she lived and breathed horses in a non-horsey household. During her teenage years, she regularly rode the neighbourhood’s ‘naughty’ ponies, which started her journey of connecting and collecting often unwanted and misunderstood equines. Mel and her sister together competed their team of horses and ponies.
Professionally, Mel is an accredited exercise scientist, recently completing research exploring the fitness habits and perceptions of equestrians. She has a history of working with athletes to improve performance, hosting workplace wellness programs, and has assisted thousands of clients to improve their health and fitness goals. Within the health and fitness industry, Mel has been an aerobic instructor, weightloss consultant, personal trainer, gym owner, and coached and accredited other personal trainers. As an athlete, Mel understands what it takes to train, compete, and perform at a high level, having won a National Championship and twice placed 4th in the World 24hr Solo Mountain Biking Championships.
Mel has Mitochondrial Disease, a degenerative condition that has left her with vision in only one eye. Exercise and staying healthy is an important part of her life, as is her passion for horses. Mel found her body changed along with her vision, so she began utilising her skills in exercise and program design to improve her own strength, stability and balance for riding. With over 25 years of experience in adapting exercise programming to the needs of individuals, Mel has a passion for equestrian bio-mechanics and now enjoys working with equestrians to improve their postural foundation to become stronger, stable and more confident riders. She believes that there is nothing stopping us from improving the body we do have to become better riders.
Mel’s biggest enjoyment comes from hosting clinics and working with equestrians to embrace the journey of continuous rider refinement. Mel is an accredited exercise scientist and an equestrian researcher, investigating the fitness habits and perceptions of riders. She combines her equestrian biomechanics knowledge with 26yrs experience designing and coaching fitness programmes to provide simple, effective, easy to understand rider-specific exercises assisting equestrians of all ages to improve their riding and transform their horse.
Visit Melinda Macaulay at the following sessions
Details
Friday November 15th
Foyer, Ariat Pavilion
Reset your Riding: Exercises to improve balance & body awareness
Improving as a rider begins with an awareness of specific areas that require improvement.
Join in this interactive session to assess your balance and stability, explore your body’s dominant movement patterns, your subconscious habits, and preferences. Discover how this alters the effectiveness of your posture, position, and communication with your horse.
Take home simple, effective, and safe rider specific exercises that you can complete in minutes to reduce old unwanted habits, improve your balance, and body awareness to reset your riding.
Details
Sunday November 17th
Foyer, Ariat Pavilion
Posture, Position & Performance: Stretch, strengthen, stability for equestrians
Posture, Position and Performance: Stretch, strengthen and stability for equestrians. Good posture sets the stage for an aligned riding position which benefits riding performance by providing clearer communication to your horse, improves rider safety, confidence, and horse welfare.
The riders posture directly affects the horse’s posture as to remain balanced, the horse needs to compensate for every movement of the rider. Discover the relationship between what your daily activities, your personal posture and biomechanics, your riding position, and the performance of your horse.
Add to your tack box rider specific exercises and stretches designed to improve riding posture and position and to alleviate popular rider frustrations such as an unstable lower leg, unsteady hands, bouncing in the saddle, rounded shoulders, or a hollow back.
